Something For Everyone

About three years ago, I started doing hot yoga after my third Marine Corps Marathon.  I had fractured my pelvis ligaments five weeks before the marathon.  Although surgery was needed, my recovery was amazingly fast (the doctors thought I was a freak of nature),  and I ran the marathon with some pain, I felt I needed to strengthen/lengthen the muscles/tendons.  I knew that I needed a new and different challenge.

That's when a friend introduced me to Bikram Hot Yoga.  Before that, I'd never done yoga of any kind.  I LOVED it from day one and have been a regular ever since.  I was amazed at how mentally and physically challenging the practice was in a completely different way than any of my other sports endeavors. I have been a swimmer, runner, and cyclist for most of my life.   

I am continually amazed at the diversity of people I encounter in yoga: young, old, men, women.   Yoga has something for everyone which I find so inspiring.

Yoga has helped me tremendously, both physically and mentally. I have avoided injury while running when I had some significant ITB (illiotibial band) issues before practicing yoga.  Yoga has helped me with balance, discipline, and flexibility.  The practice has also taught me to relax and spend time focusing inward allowing my mind to chill out.  It’s my me time.

I have found that I enjoy the inner experience of doing yoga as much as the physical challenge.  While I have had great days and not so great days, I have NEVER had a bad day practicing.  Yoga has taught me how to enjoy and celebrate the best that I can be on any given day and not compare it to past days or anyone else’s ability.  In a yoga class, I don’t feel that I have to compete like I do when racing. Every practice is a learning experience, and I always feel satisfied and content after. 

A couple of weeks ago, I finally got dizzy doing camel pose and thought, "Oh, that’s what the instructors keep talking about."  Interestingly enough, I have experienced the feeling a few times since. Because I'm going deeper into my postures these days, I get thrown off balance sometimes.  Laughing, I just tell myself, "It's always a journey."

I LOVED Rebecca’s (Jordan) instruction and always attended her “Sunday Morning Yoga Church” at Bikram.  When she left, I tracked her down to Revolution Hot Yoga (RHY).  I love RHY.  I find the classes so much more challenging and interesting and have learned something different from each instructor there. The yogis at the studio are in tune with each other and are a supportive community.  I like the interaction in class and feel I have grown more in the last few months at RHY than I did in two plus years at the other studio.

This is Lori Stresemann's (right) yoga story.
Her and a friend after the 2012 Boston Marathon.

Go to RHY website

Yoga Is Seeing Life The Way It Is

In high school, I was on the cross country running team.  I loved being outside and the feeling of camaraderie and collective effort of a team sport.  Although I wasn't very good at it, I made the effort.  

In college, I started doing karate and advanced to mid-level belts in Shorin-ryu and then Wadoo ryu with a side venture into aikido.  Upon moving to Greensboro, I found that there was no Japanese karate system for me to plug into.  So, I started running again as my sole exercise.  At 6'1" and blah blah pounds, unfortunately, I'm like a Clydesdale.  Visions of running a marathon were always interrupted by some stress injury. 

A sport's physiologist diagnosed my problem as "running on streets" and suggested that I run on trails.  An easy fix! I stepped in a hole and broke my ankle.  

Soon after, I'm wandering Barnes and Nobles and come across the book, Power Yoga, by Beryl Bender Birch. Beryl PROMISED me that if I did ashtanga vinyasa yoga that, like the New York Road Runners Club members she teaches, I could run injury free.  Beryl didn't lie.  

My first attempt at yoga was to follow an ashtanga-like sequence in a Bryan Kest video. When I tried to get into some of the postures, I found my body stiff, and the poses impossible.  After 45 minutes, I was sweating bullets and exhausted as I laid down in rest pose, but I had this amazing endorphin rush.  I've been addicted to yoga ever since.  I've practiced and taken workshops by various ashtanga instructors since and eventually stopped running as I became more involved with yoga.

Today, my practice is still primarily ashtanga yoga modified for a 60 year-old body.  I practice each weekday at 6am at the Clubs in Greensboro with a core group of tribe members.  We practice for an hour and a half and then skip off to work which, in my case, is Medical Director of the Guilford County Department of Public Health.

I discovered Bikram yoga about 15 years ago when I would travel to Raleigh on business and stop at the Bikram studio on Wade Avenue.  When the Bikram studio opened on Market Street in Greensboro, I was grateful for the chance to attend on a morning each weekend.  

Rebecca (Jordan) was my favorite teacher at that studio.  I had her teaching schedule on my calendar with the intent that, when possible, I'd attend her class.  I was very disappointed when she disappeared from the teacher lineup, but happy to find her teaching at Revolution Hot Yoga (RHY) as well as many of my hot yoga friends. 

With the intentional modifications in their sequence, I find the RHY experience more enjoyable.  In Bikram yoga there is encouragement to feel pain.  You can't hurt yourself less by hurting yourself more.  There is enough suffering in the world.  You don't need to practice yoga to make yourself suffer more. Yoga should make you suffer less.  You should look forward to each day's practice, not dread it.  RHY takes what is best from the Bikram practice while leaving out the dangerous stuff.  The heat is more temperate which allows for safe stretching but avoids the vomit comet.

There's a video making the rounds entitled "Yoga will ruin your life" which is a tongue-in-cheek commentary on how yoga changes your life which I find pretty accurate.  David Williams, an esteemed ashtanga yoga teacher and friend, tells people just starting out, "You don't want to do yoga.  Yoga will change your life.  If you eat meat, you'll stop.  You'll start spending money on yoga clothes.   Your vacations will be spent in far away places doing yoga.  If your girlfriend doesn't do yoga, you'll leave her.  If your job interferes with your yoga practice, you'll quit. You'll want to teach yoga.  Don't do yoga."  Of course, he's right in many ways.  Yoga changes your life.

The best definition of yoga I've seen is a translation of Patanjali's yoga sutra 1:2 "Yoga chitta vrrti nirodha."  It's usually translated as "yoga is the cessation of the fluctuations of the mind."  Which usually takes about six pages of explanation to begin to understand.  A better definition is found in the stairwell of a dorm building at Kripalu: "Yoga is seeing life the way it is."  I love that.  Yoga leads you to see the world as it is, not as you want it to be, imagine it to be, or someone tells you it is.    

This is Edward Robinson Jr. MD's yoga story.

Go to RHY website

Sweaty Togetherness

Steve Young and Mona Olds, who are married, are familiar faces around the RHY studio.  Many of us have practiced with them for years, and they are a much loved part of our yoga family.

Seven years ago, Steve saw an ad in the newspaper for a Bikram yoga studio.  Although he had never done yoga before, the idea of hot yoga interested him.  With his first class, he was hooked and has had a regular practice since.

"I liked hot yoga right away and thought it was good for me.  As a full-time truck driver, I feel the need to take care of myself to maintain and ensure my physical health.  I've always enjoyed keeping fit.  My yoga practice has felt like the right thing to do towards that goal."

At 62, Steve continues to want to practice and feels that hot yoga helps him stay young.  Through yoga, he has learned to keep his back strong and address work-related back pain through non-medical means.

"I think one of the things I like the most about yoga is that I can be 'alone' in a room full of people," Steve said.

Within a few weeks of his first hot yoga class, Steve was able to convince Mona, who was a little apprehensive, to try it.  After realizing that she could make it through a whole class, she kept going as well.

At first, Mona found the heat mind blowing and would feel a little woozy during class, but after, she felt great and found that she slept better and her skin was healthier.

Surprisingly, the sweating is the part she both hates and loves the most. "It's hard to explain.  It's uncomfortable, but very cleansing at the same time."

During the seven years she has been practicing two or three times per week, Mona was treated for breast cancer.  She found that the deep breathing, stretching, and sweating helped her body cope with surgery and radiation.

Over the years, Mona has been able to find the right balance in poses more often and hold them longer.  Oddly enough, some of the poses she disliked the most in the beginning are now her favorites.

"The strangest thing for me has been realizing that I can hear a particular instruction dozens of times without really grasping it or giving it any importance.  Then all of a sudden one day, the same instruction will mean something completely new to me."

Steve and Mona saw a good thing in Rebecca's (Jordan) instruction and wanted to stay close to that.  So, they followed her to RHY.  "I like the teaching philosophy of Revolution Hot Yoga.  It's very hands-on and individualized even in a room full of people,"  said Mona.

Practicing yoga together provides a special activity they can share and gives them extra incentive to attend class.  "Our lives are pretty busy so we often go to class on separate days, but when we can go together, there's an additional dynamic that's very fulfilling.  On the ride home, we compare notes about what we discovered or accomplished and who we visited with before or after class.  Invariably we arrive home feeling a whole lot better than when we started out! "

This is Mona Olds' and Steve Young's yoga story.

Go to RHY website

Even If You Hate The Heat, Hot Yoga Heals

I hate the heat.  Let me be clear – I HATE THE HEAT!  There is nothing worse to me than sweating for no reason.  I’ve always said that I don’t want to sweat unless I’ve done something to cause it.  When my sister first told me about Bikram yoga and that the room was heated over 100 degrees, I thought she was crazy, but she swore by it.  I ignored her insistence that I try it for quite some time.

I’ve never really been athletic.  When my parents yelled at me to go outside and play, I was the kind of kid who grabbed a book and went out under the tree to read.  In addition to that, I don’t have your stereotypical yoga body.  Don’t get me wrong, my body is beautiful, but it won’t fit in no Lululemon, if you know what I mean. 

But after trying hot yoga, I was surprised to find that, in my heart, I AM a yogi.  The postures and the challenge of hot yoga spoke to my brain, and my stubbornness pushed me past the mental doubt.  And it didn’t take long for me to know that I loved what was happening to my physical body.  But the real breakthrough was in my emotional well-being. 

In January 2013, I was diagnosed with Binge Eating Disorder.  For months, I saw a counselor and dietitian who specialized in coaching people with eating disorders.  I dove in and worked hard to make progress.  I am fully in recovery now and didn't realize, until I stopped going to hot yoga for a while, how much the mental and physical elements of hot yoga helped in my recovery.

In June of 2013, I committed myself to Bikram yoga.  I had tried it two summers before but didn’t make it more than a week or two into the practice.  This past summer, I was in recovery, and the yoga really spoke to me this time around.  

At first, I enjoyed the predictability of the Bikram practice, knowing it was going to be the same 26 postures every class.  But over time, I felt like I wanted more than the physical challenge.  I needed to feel emotionally and spiritually safe, and that element was missing for me.  

Around the same time, my favorite teachers Jen (Schell) and Jane (Cable) were suddenly gone.  I couldn’t find them anywhere.  I overheard (and proceeded to eavesdrop!) on a classmate’s discussion about a new hot yoga studio in town.  I immediately went home, searched the Internet, and found that new studio - Revolution Hot Yoga.  Both Jen and Jane were on the schedule as teachers.  I couldn’t wait to check it out.

My work schedule got crazy in October 2013, and I took a couple of weeks off from yoga.  When my schedule lessened, I just couldn’t bring myself to return to my previous studio and instead took advantage of the introductory week at Revolution Hot Yoga.  I was instantly hooked because it was different, in a very good way.  I felt safe there, and I wasn’t just a customer.  I immediately felt like part of a community. 

Although I loved my experience during that first week, I had some financial difficulties that kept me from going for a while.  In total I was away from hot yoga for 6 weeks.  I had been struggling quite a bit during this time and one day, my fiancee said to me, “Love, you need to find a way to get back to yoga.”  It was then that I realized how meaningful it was to my life. 

So I emailed Rebecca (Jordan-Turner), explained my absence, and told her about my eating disorder.  I’m not sure why I told her, because I barely knew her and at this point, I'd only shared my diagnosis with a few close friends.  But I felt like I could trust her and that I needed to tell her, and she helped me find my way back to the RHY studio.  

Her loving, encouraging, and supportive words brought me mentally back where I needed to be, and now I am a regular.  I try to practice 4 or 5 days a week, if I can.  I don't think that it would be overstating it to say that hot yoga has been life changing for me.  I feel stronger mentally, emotionally, and physically with every class and more connected to my body and mind with every drop of sweat that hits the mat.  

Hot yoga is essential to my life in so many ways.  I may still hate the heat, but strangely enough, my body and soul crave it now.  Hot yoga is what keeps me on the path of recovery. 

This is Joanne's yoga story.

Go to RHY website