Is Hot Yoga for Beginners?
Many people who are attracted to hot yoga or Bikram yoga wonder, is hot yoga for beginners? Since there are many different styles of hot yoga and varying temperatures and teaching styles, then it depends on where you go to take a hot yoga class. If you have never taken a yoga class before, hot yoga may not be the best place for you to start, unless, of course, you find a studio and teacher who caters their hot yoga classes specifically to beginning students.
In hard core hot yoga classes, students have passed out due to dehydration, medical issues that went unaddressed by the teacher of sheer exhaustion and an inability to acclimatize to the heat. This can especially be true for people who have low blood pressure. Even though many athletic people have low blood pressure due to their active lifestyles, if this is coupled with a sensitivity to heat, a hot yoga class can be pretty miserable if you have a drill-sergeant like instructor who locks the doors and won’t let you leave without humiliating you and tells you to just lie down on your mat – even if you feel like you are going to pass out or throw up. Other studios realize that people will generally stabilize their blood-volume levels, even in a heated room, but allow them to do it progressively, offering classes of differing ‘hot’ temperatures so that they don’t have to be miserable and feel sick getting used to a hot yoga practice.
Even though there are benefits to practicing in a heated environment, such as the fact that muscles seem to stretch more easily when warm, and you can sweat about three pounds or more of water weight in a single class – ideal if you are trying to fit into some tight pants or that little black dress for a special occasion – this is not really the true purpose of yoga, and though yoga masters of India practiced in monsoons and hot days, they also didn’t eat for weeks on end and practiced other rather extreme acetic practices which we would not voluntarily put ourselves through in the West without good reason. It doesn’t mean that these practices are not sound within an overall yoga experience, but may be more like jumping on one leg and saying it will make rain come. No one should have to suffer in a hot yoga class just because they are new to yoga, so to answer the question – is hot yoga for beginners? It depends on how tolerant your studio and yoga teacher are of your journey into yoga. Do they allow beginners to leave the room or get a drink of water if they start feeling sick? Do they offer classes that are heated, but not as hot as the advanced classes for people who have had lots of time and many hours of practice to acclimatize their bodies to doing yoga in heat? Do they crack a door when it starts to get sweltering and they see people fading, or do they just seem to relish the suffering? Use your best judgment and always consider getting a doctors o.k. before starting any hot yoga class. Your gut instinct is usually right on.
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