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Rush Hour-Day Thirteen at Bikram Yoga Harlem

Posted by scalesonfire on July 28, 2011
Posted in: Yoga. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . Leave a Comment

"Time to fly, poorna salabhasana, don't worry, about touching your neighbor. Maybe today you'll make a new friend, or if your neighbor is struggling to lift their arms, you can help them up."

What’s worse than doing a type of yoga that requires a one hundred degree room with postures that continuously test your body’s physical and emotional stability, causes you to sweat like a marathoner and exposes ninety percent of your body to anyone who might want to look?   That’s right, fifty more people with you in the room.   That’s what a Sunday donation class at Bikram Yoga Harlem is-an uptown number four train during rush hour, but with bare midriffs and mirrors (if you can see any of yourself in them).  On the four train, getting on early means you get a seat, and by the time you hit Union Square you’re so cramped sitting that you feel like you’re being punished for getting on early.  In a Sunday donation class, getting there early means you get a spot, then by the time class starts you’re surrounded by late-comers who think it’s quite alright to be so close to you that there are postures where it seems you’re sharing your mat.

I know we’re all New Yorkers, but dealing with ten rush-hour commutes a week is enough human interaction to build a “Falling Down” type of insanity in the most centered yogis.  When that sort of overcrowding is brought into a yoga room, it feels unfair.  Bikram Yoga Harlem’s other donation class, at 12:30pm on Wednesday afternoon will get pretty crowded also, but that’s more because of the price.  That class is at a time when most New Yorkers are hard at work, and the class is more of a treat for the teacher or student on summer break or the worker playing hooky.  The Sunday 4:30pm class is at a time when it seems like everyone is free to do yoga, and everyone is even more eager to begin their week with the right sort of experience.  Unlike most of the world, I was coming from work, and thought the class fit nicely into my schedule.  I’ve made a huge mistake.

I was in the second row, to the right of the room.  The first row had about three inches of space between the tops of their mats and the mirror.  There was less space between them and the second row.  The makeshift third row had the back row similarly pressed to the wall, and nearly every posture of the twenty-six began with everyone making sure they weren’t about to hit someone or splash sweat in someone’s face.  In “balancing stick” one might have mistakenly stuck their big toe in someones mouth.  In “final spine twist,” “using your arm like a kickstand” meant putting a hand print in the middle of the person on your right’s sweaty towel.  Miss Megan didn’t even have her usual zest for holding the postures and scolding people who came out early because the class was uncomfortable enough, and for me, the entire class became a mission to be done and leave.  I know that as owners, Adam Roper and Erik Cummings love crowds, but I haven’t met a student who likes classes that look like the teacher training.  On crowded days, their studio may share many qualities with a packed subway train, but at least their business is much better managed than the MTA.

The Inferno Pt. 2-Day Ten at Bikram Yoga Harlem

Posted by scalesonfire on July 22, 2011
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Focus hard on the heat, or anything else, and you'll never have a good class

What was that about focus?  Well, this day was hotter than the day before, and the teacher, Derek Staranowski was one I hadn’t taken before.  I let myself be burdened with distractions, most too petty to discuss here, and if anything is stealing your peace or draining your focus, whether you think it’s good or bad, it’s unnecessary, and destroys your yoga.  Lately, I’ve been pretty good at destroying my own yoga, and on this day, a bonafide triple-digit temperature day, I ruined my own practice.

What I’m about to explain to you is a recipe for yoga disaster: I woke up in a poor mood, tired, and unhappy about the rest of my day after yoga.  I rushed down a coconut water and had to hurry to make my bus.  I got almost no regular water until I was at the studio but I’d worked up a pretty decent sweat.  Then the feeling that I’d forgotten something at home materialized (literally) when I realized that I didn’t bring a new set of clothes.  The twenty minutes before class were spent working hard to wash out the wet, bagged and positively funky getup from the previous day’s class.  Then I couldn’t decide on how strong I was feeling, and if it was a front, middle, or back row sort of day.  I decided to choose the front row and took my spot between two young ladies.  I left the room so I wouldn’t be completely drenched at the start of class and returned to find my mat right next to some big hairy dude who’d squeezed in between me and the young woman on my left (if you practice Bikram Yoga regularly, you know that if you’re not comfortable with the person on your left, you should change your spot).  Now, I know that this yoga is about releasing mental blocks, but I’m not one for huge guys in my mirror space (fat men in the hot room are also notorious heavy breathers, and that sort of thing from your neighbor can be quite annoying).  I far more enjoy a smiling, pretty face on either side of me. I’ve still got too much western heterosexual in me, and maybe a little Benny Hill.  All of this was a recipe for disaster, not because any of these things or people were out to ruin my class, but more because I allowed them the ability to do so.

So I had a bad class, not because it was hot, not because there was a sweaty, hairy man breathing on me after the first of each posture in the floor series, not because of the new teacher and new teaching style.  It was because I set myself up for a bad class.  My standing series was satisfactory, using muscle memory and overall strength, and my floor series was poor, mainly because I hadn’t applied any focus during the standing series.  I usually leave these classes where I struggle and sit out postures thinking that I need to better condition my body, but after hours of contemplation and removal from the extreme heat, I surmise that it’s all about focus.  Really, nothing should negatively or positively impact my yoga, no matter the type.  My inability to mark feelings, reactions, expectations, and mental comforts as extras in life has carried over into to yoga, and only a big bowl of focus will help me overcome it.

Yoga Hell Pt.2 with Danielle Rothman-Day Nine at Bikram Yoga Harlem

Posted by scalesonfire on July 22, 2011
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"Attention students, final savasana is over, the next class needs the room."

Danielle Rothman is the most unique yoga teacher I’ve ever seen.  If you love teachers who are soft-spoken, gentle, passive, and say things it sounds like they read on a Lululemon bag, then Ms. Rothman is not your teacher.   She’s got a voice that’s startling for a yoga teacher, and sounds like the voice of some lady yelling at her husband out of a Crown Heights tenement window and not a stoned California girl.   She’s not into create a great vibe.   Her jokes are off-color.   She regularly gives the impression that she’s saying the exact thing on her mind.   I’m also yet to mention that from conversations with her, the heat itself is her main reason for teaching and loving hot yoga.   She likes the room so hot that Satan would have to strip in her class to be comfortable.   I’ve taken classes next to her where as soon as the teacher opened the door she barked that it was cold.   She’s been all over me for a year for skipping her class at 10am on Wednesday, so I made it a point this week to get there and shut her up.

The only problem is that the temperature was going to approach one hundred degrees, so it was either brave Ms. Rothman’s windows-closed and door-closed torture chamber at 10am or muster up all the courage I had to brave the 12:30pm class at the apex of the heat.   Neither sounded appealing that morning when I woke up, and I’d already known that my legs tend to quit on hot days.   By the time the floor series arrived, I was hot, standing in a ridiculous pool of sweat (the Bikram world calls this a “juicy” class), and surprised that I’d made it an hour without a hiccup.   Then my legs stopped working.   The worst part of knowing a teacher is having to answer questions after class as to why you struggled and sat so much.   I’ve always felt that the hardest part of an athletes job is answering to the media after games where they’ve failed.   I commend guys who come out and say “they were better than us today,” or “they beat us,” or “we can’t play that way and expect to win.”   It takes a real pro to muster the composure to say those things.   Well imagine if the media knew every struggle and excuse you might give, and you were still equally as exhausted and frustrated with your own performance.   In those situations I generally don’t have the composure to say “the yoga kicked my ass today,” or “I was incredibly disappointed in my own focus.”   But as it happens, when I’ve struggled in a class, these are the things I take away from those classes later that evening.

In reality, I should be able to perform this yoga at the center of the earth wearing a parka.  I’ve taken this challenge with the intention of building a seamless and granite-strong focus that I want to apply to other elements of my life.  It will take conquering every teacher and temperature out there to do it, and failure should be an option I shun with great readiness.

Making Adjustments Work for Me-Day Eight at BIkram Yoga Harlem

Posted by scalesonfire on July 19, 2011
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No matter what your goal may be, adjustments are essential to success. You can't spell adjustment without baseball's king of plate adjustments: DJ

Just in time for mid-week, extreme heat has returned to New York City as if Spring is a season for the weekend.  My schedule while doing Bikram Yoga is much like a college student’s.  I rarely know which day of the week it is, or what the weather will bring, but I know when class is.  So I was shocked when I saw this week’s five-day forecast and it looked like a roster of defensive linemen (that’s all nineties if you forgot what football is).  Seriously, the hot room is always hot, and that’s the only temperature I’ve been concerning myself with, especially if I leave right away and my body never gets to cool down.  But the heat is back outside, and this week, a week into a daily Bikram Yoga practice, I’m far more prepared.

Erik Cummings taught this day’s class, and it was a serious change of pace, literally, from Miss Megan, although I was beginning to like Miss Megan’s style of teaching.  Differences in teaching styles may seem subtle if apparent at all to inexperienced practitioners, but they’re prevalent to those who practice regularly, and as important as it is to take different teachers, it’s equally as important to take teachers two and three and four times consecutively so that one teacher may monitor your improvements or struggles.  One constant I receive from the teachers at this studio is a strange understanding of my struggles-when I’m having a rough time, they mostly leave me alone.  It’s not because they see my body and trust that I’m in good enough shape to complete the class.  It’s not because they’re apprehensive about helping students get through class.  It’s not even because they’ve seen me excel at the yoga before.  It’s two reasons-I keep my body quiet when I’m sitting a posture out and I’m generally working hard for the yoga.  When students approach any yoga with a respect for the practice, teachers feel less of a need to coddle them.  When they’re not only struggling but reacting to their struggles, reacting to the heat, reacting to the dizziness, reacting to others, and most importantly disregarding stillness and breath, two hallmarks of yoga, then teachers have no choice but to focus attention on them.  The last thing a yogi should want is attention.

Unless of course they are one small step away from perfecting a posture and they don’t know.  For me, this sort of correction came during “bow” pose during the floor series.  I was rolling forward too much and not allowing my upper body to lift-a classic case of being literal with the dialogue (“roll forward onto the soft part of your belly” echoes in my head every time I set up for the posture).  It’s one of my greatest joys in class to make adjustments, and it gives me more pleasure to learn about the yoga I’m practicing than to actually practice it.  Rather than to simply be praised for executing a posture well, I’d rather do a posture, get a correction, and be praised for making the adjustments in the second set.  That’s how you work hard in the hot room.

A Full Schedule-Day Six at Bikram Harlem

Posted by scalesonfire on July 12, 2011
Posted in: running, Yoga. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , . Leave a Comment

Thank you, yoga...

I ran my first race on this day, and for a person with terrible knees and hamstrings that hate me, I have to thank yoga for a 23:51 5K race.  I’m not just talking about the five Bikram Yoga classes I took leading up to the race, but all the yoga I’ve done since I first stepped into Bikram Yoga Union Square in September of 2008.  Yoga has changed the way I approach physical activity, my body-internally and externally, and the way I feel about levels of strength-mental or physical.  If a person can gain deeper understandings of these things then of course they can apply them to their own lives and will themselves to do great things.

Great things like running a 5K at 9am then making Bikram Yoga at 4:30pm.  Oh, and let’s not forget the class is again led by Miss Megan (who at this point has no last name or background), the Clock Nazi.  She wants you to know that you came out of the posture early, that you’re destroying the cohesion of the class, and you are mentally weak because you can’t hold the postures in Bikram’s Beginning Yoga class.  Well she at last scolds students for coming out early and worrying about her holding the postures for too long, and when I first started practicing I couldn’t stand teachers who did those things.  Now, I find myself agreeing with teachers like Miss Megan.  Everyone should be moving together.  This is the essence of a debate I’m going to tackle in this thirty-day block of yoga: is this practice mine, or Bikram’s?  It’s a complicated question, especially for individuals who have practiced styles of yoga with a set series of postures, like Ashtanga, Iyengar, or Bikram and are loyal to the guidelines.  It’s also complicated for yogis who practice vinyasa yoga or with free form, where the teacher or student may modify the postures and sequences at their discretion.  Really, it’s the first question an aspiring yogi should ask, should I be loyal to the teacher, the guru and their style, or my needs?

“Being Like Mike”-Day Three at Bikram Yoga Harlem

Posted by scalesonfire on July 5, 2011
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Namaste, you've just won the Super Bowl

Forget all that stuff I said about the conservative approach to hydration, all the water and coconut water in the world wasn’t going to get me into the next day’s class after my heat-induced debacle the day before.  Trust me, I left that class with everything short of a coconut water I.V. and a five-gallon drum of Poland Spring.  I told myself that if I woke up in the same cloud with the same dead legs I’d go artificial.  If you know me personally, I’d rather die than do something fake.

It’s difficult for me to admit that a woman with breast implants is pretty.  I will induce vomiting if I find out I’ve just eaten something containing high fructose corn syrup.  I won’t associate with people who are “into” things but not “about” them.  Long story short, I hate fakeness, and I think of dedication, determination, and discipline before I think of the fake quick fix.  I feel like a rare breed in this, the fakest of societies.  Before I get all Holden Caufield on everyone, I had to be a phony just to recover, and I’m happier for it.  Sixty-four ounces of Gatorade’s corn-concoction G2, an orange flavored FRS and a O.N.E. Acitve were enough to make me feel like the most unnatural of the phonies out there, and as I started to feel better, I so deeply wished I didn’t need anything for hydration or energy.  Especially anything made by Gatorade.

"Ok, it's 'party time,' the first and only official water break..."

It all helped me bounce right back though.  It was another class taught by Jon and it was an evening class, so getting over twenty-four hours of rest and knowing the teacher’s cadences helped a great deal.  I even took time during “camel” pose to ask a question about my breathing and if there’s any special technique, like “80/20″ breathing during the posture.  My Tuesday teacher, Nadia, who was taking class in the front row called this a “smart boy question” and then after class showed me a personal laminated Bikram dialogue where it said nothing about breath during “camel.”  Things like that, and many other things are why this is my favorite Bikram studio and why this isn’t merely a great place to practice, but a great place to improve your practice.

 

A little about the studio:

Bikram Yoga Harlem is owned by Adam Roper and Erik Cummings, two experienced Bikram Yoga teachers.  More importantly though, they are running a beautiful and spacious (for Bikram Yoga) second-floor studio on 145th Street between Amsterdam Avenue and Broadway in New York City.  For a style of yoga mired by a really corporate feel in some places, and a cultish feel in others, this is the ideal place to try Bikram Yoga and actually continue practicing.  They offer reasonable rates, a friendly atmosphere, and teachers who are all dedicated to helping students progress properly through each stage of their practice.

The Bikram Baby-Day Four at Bikram Yoga Lower East Side

Posted by scalesonfire on March 1, 2011
Posted in: Product Review/Endorsement, Yoga. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , . 3 comments

So I’d like to share a personal Bikram thought.  I have this feeling sometimes like certain teachers are practicing yoga witchcraft.  There are times when I struggle in class when I feel like the teacher is doing it.  You know, like they’re twisting the needle in the stomach of the voodoo doll and causing that nausea.  That was day four at Bikram Yoga Lower East Side, a continuous struggle with the Bikram elements, one that really made me want to sit down and examine my practice.

Jena Blackwood is a nice woman, and she took it upon herself to introduce herself to me as the 4pm teacher when I arrived in the lobby.  I was already sleepy, thirsty (even though I’d guzzled almost a gallon of water that day), and fatigued.  My legs felt like they were made of wet newspaper from the three days before.  After I saw how long she held postures during class, I no longer thought she was nice, I wanted to hurl the nothing I’d eaten in the four hours before all over the mat, and I simply couldn’t feel my legs.  Now instead of maybe working on the processes of things, maybe exploring what muscle-memory I had to get me through class, I threw my peace out onto Stanton Street where it was run over by a taxi.  I got angry.  I turned into a Bikram baby.  Of course man, she was holding the postures too long.  I was too hot.   Like, hotter than usual.  My fingers were burning in “half moon.”  I’m tall, hot air rises man!  Then I committed a real sin: I know when my water breaks come, and I take one after “balancing stick,” before the quarter-turn.  But I slipped, and forgot about balancing stick, and took water after “standing bow.”  Not a big deal to some, but for a person with a set routine, it was the first step to disaster.

The real nausea came then and in retrospect I know it was really the change in routine.  “Triangle” pose felt like it was nineteen minutes on each side, and I blamed Ms. Blackwood.  There were too many failures, ugly sit-downs, and a couple of lay-downs to come.  I started to get the crazy notion that she was doing it on purpose, like some weird Bikram spell she was casting.  Really, I was fatigued, most likely ill from something, and doing a terrible job of doing the two things key to executing yoga, focusing and breathing.  No matter what the situation, I should always execute.  This was an essential element of this project in the first place.  The fact that I reverted back to so much of the reactive behavior I’ve eliminated through practicing yoga really left me sad and disappointed with myself.  Its really not simply struggling.  Its struggling and placing external blame, and putting that blame before effort.  Ms. Blackwood was the first Bikram teacher I had who didn’t say “namaste” at the end of class, and maybe that put a perfect punctuation on a horrible class with a horrible vibe, where I gave a horrible effort.

Yoga Hell

Posted by scalesonfire on February 22, 2011
Posted in: Product Review/Endorsement. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , . Leave a Comment

"Welcome to Yoga Hell. My name is Sherman Morris. You may hang your soul at the door."

Maybe its just the soreness talking, but the last three days at YogaWorks were ten times as challenging as the first four.  On my seventh day, February 19, 2011, I went to Sherman Morris’ 6pm Power Yoga class at the Soho location, and it was so challenging that it really made me wish I was a member at YogaWorks, just to take that class every day and conquer it.  I already knew that the room would be slightly heated, maybe to eighty degrees, and I already knew that anything with the word “power” in front of it is simply relentless with things that you can’t do.  The combination of the two resulted in yoga hell for inexperienced practitioners-a yoga class where comfort is impossible.  Mr. Morris even expressed his disdain for comfort several times.  We were encouraged to feel discomfort.  This class had more level two and three yogis than I’d seen in any class at any YogaWorks location, and even though I look the part, I’m not one of these individuals.

So I basically fell on someone during an inversion.  I yelped out “Ahh that hurts my hip” while taking a correction in a twist.  I was the only one sweating buckets onto my mat and trying to manipulate towels so I didn’t slip.  But, I did every vinyasa.  Added the push-up variation for level two.  I did all thirty of the push-ups Mr. Morris asked for at the end.  Those weren’t the problems.  The tempo was insane, the twists, movements, variations, the multiple inversions, the jumps, the switches from our pace to his pace.  I loved it.  As I said, I wish I could become like those other yogis in the class and take that class as much as possible.  Even Mr. Morris’ tone, a just and scolding one, gave the class its unique feel.  I know that there are yoga championships, but I’d like to see sixty-four people taking Sherman Morris’ class in a ‘Simon Says’ elimination tournament: If you lose the pace, pick up your mat and leave.  If you fall, for any reason, don’t come back.  If you quit on a posture, go back to doing yoga with the old ladies on Thursday morning.  The winner gets to do one less push-up at the end.  Power Yoga with Sherman Morris is big boy yoga.

Only, the class ran over time.  As per the schedule, it was supposed to end at 7:15 but I walked out of there at 7:26 and he was still calling out postures.  I had to go meet with an important client, so I can’t comment on anything that happened at the very end.  I wasn’t necessarily upset that the class ran long, I was only disappointed that I didn’t get to complete it.  Mr. Morris worked so hard to make corrections and connect with every struggle in the class.  He worked so hard to put together a music program that started with a yelping Stevie Wonder and ended with a yelping Cee-Lo Green.  He worked so hard to find spots to demonstrate postures himself.  Even though I struggled, this final class at YogaWorks was perfect-a deathly challenging class, in their best location, that again proved to me that yoga comes in so many forms.

Hot Outside?

Posted by scalesonfire on August 18, 2009
Posted in: Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , . Leave a Comment

Warm days are exhausting. If you haven’t realized, August has arrived in New York City, bringing with it the stickiness that builds up in the most uncomfortable places and is the cause of more complaining than the cold winter. Personally, I love it. The city looks beautiful at this time of year when the weather is clear and you can see for tens of miles from any high point. August is a time to throw your sunglasses on and get outside. All that usually scares us is our complete and thorough fear of sweat, and what it does to gray or white shirts, and smelling like everyone else.
Which means that men and women have taken to prancing around like royalty, enjoying air conditioning and living their lives in the shade. City people are who they are-rats in a maze-because of their complete disdain for the outdoors, nature, and energizing the body. While the world takes advantage of space and weather by using their summer to naturally cleanse the body, to naturally sweat and breathe out toxins, we in the city lead our bodies onto a path of sure implosion from birth. We must all be active. Especially now. Especially at a time when it’s warm enough to give our metabolisms a head start. Your body works so hard just to cool itself, why not take this time to condition it? I doubt you’re going to want to get out in the winter anyway. Go. Walk. Jog. Sweat a little. Trust me, it’s good for you.
Do some push-ups on your knees today for speed. Tuck your elbows into your body and lower your face to the floor, controlling the bend in your elbow all the way to the floor. Extend your arms to the top, and that is one. Four sets of twenty-five, fast as possible, with ten seconds of rest between sets. Remember to always breathe normally and focus.