Teacher Training
On Sunday morning, I had the pleasure of taking a Bikram Yoga class at my home studio, Sealevel Hot Yoga with both my husband and one of my yoga teacher training coaches (and favorite Yoga Sculpt instructor), Sunny! This was the first Bikram Yoga class I had taken in five weeks. I was a bit worried how I would do in class since I hadn’t been to Bikram in so long. Even though I’ve been taking plenty of Hot Power Fusion classes at Corepower Yoga over the last five weeks, a Hot Power Fusion class is only 60 minutes. A Bikram Yoga class is 90 minutes. Both are done in a room heated to 105 degrees with 40% humidity. There’s something about the extra 30-minutes in a hot, humid room. They really make a big difference! I made sure to drink plenty of water before class and get plenty of sleep the night before.
As soon as I walked into the studio, I felt like I was home. I’ve missed practicing at Sealevel Hot Yoga on a regular basis, especially my 6AM classes! I was super happy to see Andrea behind the desk. She was our instructor for class this morning. I really enjoy taking her classes. Even though I might be physically suffering through her class, she somehow manages to make me laugh during class, in-between postures. Sometimes all you need is a little comic relief in a Bikram class to make it through.
Now that I’ve been in yoga teacher training for the past five weeks, I knew I’d be taking the Bikram class with a different pair of eyes. No longer am I just a Bikram Yoga student. I’m now studying yoga and learning how to teach it. I now know stuff like the Sanskrit name for many of the yoga postures. I have a better understanding of how to get in and out of each posture correctly instead of just watching the more advanced people in front of me. I’m also aware of a lot of the physical benefits of each posture that go beyond the cues given in class. Plus, with all of the practice teaching I’ve been doing, I now pay closer attention to cues like breath – all of the inhales and exhales cued during each of the postures. I admit, this is something that used to go over my head before I started yoga teacher training.
Even though Hot Power Fusion gets a lot of it’s inspiration from Bikram Yoga, it was really interesting to see all of the similarities and differences between the two sequences in class this morning. In a Hot Power Fusion class, a majority of the postures have a breath cued during each posture. With Bikram, some of the postures were cued with an inhale, but not an exhale. Instead, we were encouraged to just breathe our way through the posture, through our nose. This was a difference in style I had never noticed before.
With practicing Bikram Yoga over the last several years, I don’t know how many times I’ve heard “Lock Your Knee” in class. “Lock Your Knee” is one of Bikram Yoga’s traditional cues used in the class dialogue. You hear it in every single Bikram Yoga class. Before this morning, I never realized how many times this cue was actually used during class. “Lock Your Knee” was sometimes cued once, twice or several times during one posture. I kind of missed hearing it because we never hear or give this cue in a Hot Power Fusion class.
I was of course really excited to hear the word “Coccyx” being used during the cues for the Hands To Feet posture, Padahastasana. Now after taking the anatomy lectures in yoga teacher training, I finally know what that word means, the very tip of the Sacrum aka your tailbone.
In class this morning, there was no music, no flow from posture to posture and no hands-on assists. I did find myself to be way more stable in both the Standing Bow, Dandayamana Dhanurasana and Balancing Stick, Tuladandasana postures because we didn’t flow into them. Flowing from posture to posture requires a certain level of grace and balance, both of which I’m not very good at yet, even though I’ve been working on this quite a bit in yoga teacher training over the last few weeks.
I was so excited to do the same 26 postures with two breathing exercises, twice in a row, in the familiar sequence for a full 90 minutes. I surprised myself by not having to sit out a single posture, even Camel, Ustrasana! It was a whole lot of yoga and a whole lot of sweat. I started sweating half way through the first breathing exercise and loved every minute of it. By the end of class, my mat was completely soaked – a guaranteed sign that my entire body got worked from the inside out.
Class #32, Bikram Yoga at Sealevel Hot Yoga (Outside Class-5)
Image Source: Sealevel Hot Yoga