If you practice Bikram Yoga in
hot room it's
always a good idea to take a shower both after and before your session. While
the reasons for taking one after are obvious, taking a shower before a Bikram
Yoga session is something many people forget to do. There are a few very good reasons for doing so:
- It helps you get rid of any lotions
or other oils that you might have on your skin. There’s nothing more
frustrating than achieving a perfect pose, and then “slip” out of it due
to a slippery skin texture.
- If you take a hot shower, it helps you ease into the temperature that you will be training in, making it less of a shock.
- If you use cologne or perfume,
please remember that the smell of it can become really intense in a
heated yoga room, particularly when you sweat (and you will sweat!).
This smell can be very disturbing to anyone else training in your
vicinity and can easily break their concentration.
- It’s a great experience to start a
Yoga session while feeling fully refreshed and 100% clean; it can even
make you more confident in your abilities to perform a certain pose, as
it gives you a certain degree of extra mental calm.
Of course if it's all you can do to make it on time while running from the office or dropping the kids off at the babysitter, we're just happy to see you show up! But if time allows, do what you can. For more information on skin care and Bikram Yoga, click "here".
No matter
how flexible you are, or how deeply you are able to get into a pose, you are benefiting from every single pose you do. As a beginner, if you were able to perform each pose
perfectly from the get-go, you wouldn’t be improving your body or
focus at all. Do your best to embrace your inability to perfectly perform
each pose and learn to see it as a positive thing, as it means you have so much more room for improvement and self-fulfillment.
Beginners will often attempt to push their body far beyond what it is capable of, which usually means:
- They risk injury.
- The slowly stop enjoying the
activity due to the mental and physical strain they are putting
themselves under, leading them to unconsciously begin to make up excuses
not to practice anymore.
- Due to the extra strain, they stop
breathing properly and make many mistakes during the pose, preventing
them from ever improving in the future.
Beginners sometimes feel the need to keep up with others in class (who are
often more experienced than them), leading them to over-reach and force
their body into things it is not capable of doing. Focus on yourself, the more you practice the more you will learn about your body and its limits. Start small, and work your way up
over many months or years. Just make sure that every time you perform a
pose it is somewhat (but not too much) challenging. This will force your
body to adapt and improve. It’s a very similar concept to lifting
weights at the gym – you don’t immediately start with what the
professional bodybuilders lift, do you?
Both the Standing Deep Breathing Pose
(Pranayama) as well as the Blowing-in Firm Pose
(Kapalbhati-in-Vajrasana) are critical to the whole routine, and yet
most beginners will somewhat neglect them starting their third or fourth
Bikram Yoga Session.
It’s of the utmost importance that you understand the following:
- Without a proper warm-up, you
have a MUCH harder time performing all of the subsequent poses. You’ll
be more likely to suffer a mild injury and less focused on the routine,
hence significantly reducing your enjoyment of the activity.
- Without a proper cool-down,
the routine is more likely to become a chore, as your last memory will
be that of the difficulties while doing the Head-to-Knee and Spine
Twisting poses. Doing a proper cool-down (Blowing in Firm) will not only
help you unwind, it will also help your muscles and central nervous
system relax, allowing you to return to your normal activities quicker.
Treat the first and last pose just as
seriously as you would any other pose, and you’ll be blessed with a
more fulfilling experience.
