I’ve been practicing yoga for 45 minus 17 years, doing it for more of my life that I haven’t done it. Pretty much every day, even the day I gave birth and the day after I sliced the tendon in my thumb.
I’ve attended yoga workshops, studied the readings, encountered beautiful teachers, certified as an instructor, and I tend to do my own thing.
Does practice make perfect? Well, that’s the idea of yoga. But it’s easy to mistake perfect for no flaws. And Yoga actually teaches that the flaws are part of the perfect.
I’m back to Bikram after ten months away. When a teacher at the new studio asked me why I took such a long break, I replied, “Because it’s so hard.”
“Yeah,” he countered, his eyes lighting up. “It is hard!”
Well, for some people, it’s important to go hard. For me, it’s been important to go soft. To take it easier. Each of us has to determine that personally.
Bikram is as dogmatic as any religious zealot. His spiel is duly memorized by his teachers and repeated word for word in hundreds of hot studios around the globe while people practice his routine of 26 postures twice each. By the way, those rooms are very hot, kind of like hell…
Lying on the ground in my living room after doing—gasp!—one of those 26 that he forbids us to practice without paying him—honestly, it feels good to say that—I appreciate the benefits of Bikram: great energy, easy sleeping, a positive frame of mind, weight loss, improved flexibility, focus, stress release.
But it’s not a religion. It’s just another drug, like Vitamin I, that daily glass of wine, an orgasm, an early morning run.
Do it, enjoy it, and notice when it too becomes a habit. And then take a break.
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