Sometimes You Just Have To Kiss The Giraffe

My yoga story begins about three years ago when I read an article in Oprah Magazine about someone’s experience completing a thirty day Bikram Yoga Challenge.  Being a person that hates sweating in the summer, I was fascinated yet also somewhat repulsed by the whole idea.  I'd driven past the Bikram studio several times, looked at the sign knowingly every time, but was reluctant to venture inside.

In September 2011, a friend and co-worker told me that he'd tried a new workout, Bikram Hot Yoga.  I was intrigued by his comments about the people and environment.  He said that it wasn't just for young, cute, skinny women and that there was people of all sizes, shapes, and ability levels.  I decided to try a class, but wanted to go by myself, almost undercover, to avoid embarrassment if it didn't go well. 

During my first class I had a mix of emotions, and, yes, I was the biggest person in the room, but no one seemed to notice or care, other than me.  I didn’t feel like anyone was paying any attention to what I could or couldn’t do.  In fact, everyone made me feel great for just coming to class.  When I called my husband on the way home, he asked if I enjoyed the class.  I said, “I don’t know.  I think, I was in too much shock about the heat to know whether I enjoyed it or not.  I'll have to go again to figure it out.”

And that was how it all started.  Before I knew it, I was hooked.  I knew the yoga was having a positive impact on me when, a few months later when I got stuck in an elevator at work by myself.  The elevator just stopped and, as I waited for help to arrive, it got quite hot and stuffy in there.  I began to sweat.  Rather than panicking, my immediate thought was, "If I’m sweating, I may as well do yoga."  I started with pranayama breathing and worked my way through the standing series.  No panic for me.  My co-workers that weren’t stuck were panicking while I was doing yoga!

I started looking forward to leaving work so that I could go to yoga and see my new yogi family.  A few months in, people started talking about a “30 Day Challenge.”  A new yogi friend, Carmen, was coming down the home stretch of her challenge and encouraged me to give it a try.  I wasn’t sure that I could do it, but with the support of my yoga friends, I decided to take the plunge. What a huge sense of accomplishment I felt as I made my way through each of the thirty classes.  

Not only did my practice improve tremendously, I really started to feel like a yogi.  When I finished my challenge, I was so proud.  Wow!  I was on top of the world.  I did it!  Before long, I could get all the way down in Fixed Firm, extend my leg in Standing Head to Knee, and see, not only my toes coming over my head in Standing Bow, but my ankle too!  Woohoo!!

As time and my practice progressed, I really enjoyed the specific feedback I would get from Rebecca.(Jordan-Turner, lead teacher at Revolution Hot Yoga)  Sometimes, I would hear a distinction she pointed out and think to myself, "I've never heard that before" and make an adjustment.  Of course, she probably said the same thing all the time, but I was just then ready to focus on the next step and hear it.

When Rebecca opened her home studio, I was excited to continue to grow my practice in a small, intimate environment.  I thought I was just going to continue the Bikram series, with more attention to detail.  But NO!  That wasn’t what Rebecca had in mind.  She exposed me to a whole new world of yoga with different opinions, approaches, and poses.  I must admit, my mind did a double take, at first, "What do you mean I don’t know what's coming next?  What do you mean we're going to try something different?  Oh heck no!  I'm comfortable right here." 

Well, a few classes later, I loved the new yoga series.  The variety, the experimenting, it was all good!  Then later, when I tried the standard 26 postures of Bikram, I found that my practice had improved!  Go figure?!

This transition in my yoga life came at a difficult time in my work life.  I found that my practice helped me cope with the stresses of changing jobs. When I was on the mat, I was only focused on my practice.  My “monkey mind” was forced to be quiet, and I just was.  I believe that yoga kept me sane during that difficult time.  

Unfortunately I've had a bit of a setback with a knee injury and surgery.  I had to stop my practice for a while and boy did I miss it!  I had no idea how addicted I was until my husband started giving me subtle hints and saying things like, “Honey, when can you go back to yoga?” or “I can tell how much you're missing your practice.” 

My recovery from knee surgery has been slow, but steady.  I've worked my way back up to practicing five days a week, and I know that with patience (something I am learning through yoga), some day I will be able to get all the way down in Fixed Firm with my arms over my head again.

The love, compassion, friendship, and family that I've found through yoga is a HUGE part of my life now.  A yoga class is my time to control my focus, BREATHE, and just be me.  The acceptance and openness of Revolution Hot Yoga makes the studio a very special place.  I feel honored to be a part of it.

Yoga has taught me that I have to get comfortable in my uncomfortableness, face my fears, be gentle with myself, and just keep going.  Sometimes, you just have to go ahead and kiss the giraffe!  ;) 

Namaste.

This is Tammi Thurm's yoga story.

Return to Revolution Hot Yoga website

Practice Growing Pains

I started practicing hot yoga over five years ago. At the time, I was recovering from a brain injury, and the practice helped me heal considerably, both mentally and physically. Because of the injury, I was socially isolated and in great need of kindness and encouragement. In the studio staff and regulars, I found both in abundance. The studio became one of the few places where I felt comfortable among people. I could exhale, relax, and just be me.

In the hot room on my mat, I wasn't brain injured. I wasn't socially awkward nor did I talk funny. Among the others dripping sweat and bending their bodies, I was a competent yogini, because, as the teachers said many times and I came to believe, "Whatever you can do today is perfect for you today."

Over time, my practice progressed from looking at the clock every five minutes, wondering how much longer I had, and wobbling while holding my foot for over a year to maybe looking at the clock once or twice and kicking out in standing head to knee pose. (I'm still working on getting my head to my knee. There's a reason why they say yoga is a life long practice!) I usually showed up for yoga class four times a week, sometimes more, but never less than three.

Hot yoga became one of the pillars upon which I built a new identity and life. But that doesn't even begin to adequately describe just how important yoga was to me. Yoga became part of my very essence. My breath. My being. If that makes any sense. I told people that I was addicted. Maybe I was. Yoga became so important, in my otherwise barren life, that, early on, I would experience anxiety and stress if I couldn't get to class as often as I wanted. I know. I know. Talk about attachment.  This is exactly the opposite of what yoga is supposed to be about.

In the last few years, while hot yoga was still a very important part of my life, I didn't go into withdrawal if I couldn't get to class. While, I continued practicing frequently, I lost my passion for the practice and found that doing the same 26 postures every time, over and over, just didn't excite or challenge me anymore.

About a year ago, one of the teachers, Rebecca Jordan-Turner, left the Bikram studio and began teaching her own sequence, The Revolution Series, of hot yoga drawing from other teachers and genres. Upon taking her class for the first time, I felt new life, a rush, a zing, breathed into my practice. Yoga became exhilarating again. I hadn't realized just how bored I was until I tried something different. However, even though I loved the new practice, my yoga life wasn't all rainbows and sunshine.

Because Bikram yoga had been crucial to helping me come back to normal after my brain injury, I found that I was hesitant to let go of it. I was sad that the same practice that had healed me and in which I had found so much peace was now stale and lacking to me. It was unsettling for it not to be good enough anymore. Others expressed similar sentiments after experiencing the new series and moving on. Like any other facet of life, I had to go through an uncomfortable transition period to grow my practice to the next level, but it was well worth it.  I love yoga again, and I love my yoga family at Revolution Hot Yoga (RHY).

I have nothing but the utmost respect for Bikram yoga and my original studio and will be forever grateful to them. Bikram yoga was a great starting point and welcomed me into the wonderful world of yoga. But it's just that - a starting point. My practice is growing up and has, at least, hit puberty. I'm excited see where I go on my yoga journey with RHY.

The yoga family before the Halloween class.  (Many are missing.  You know who you are!)

This is Debbie Hampton's yoga story.

Go to the Revolution Hot Yoga website

The Evolution of A Revolution

Hot yoga is HOT. 

It’s a growing trend within a growing trend. Nationally, yoga is growing explosively as people look for ways to be happy, healthy, calm, and relaxed and the benefits of the practice, for both mind and body, become scientifically validated. And hot yoga is the fastest growing segment of the yoga movement.

The name most identified with hot yoga is Bikram Choudary.  Bikram yoga is a precise sequence of postures and breathing exercises (26 postures/2 breathing exercises.)  To be an official Bikram class, the class has to be held at a Bikram studio, last for ninety minutes, mirrors on the wall, carpet on the floor, 105 degree temperature, 40% humidity, and use the specific script, known as “The Dialogue.”

The Bikram approach does have definite benefits. Worldwide, you can walk into any Bikram studio and get basically the same thing every time, with slight deviations here and there.  Bikram yoga is very popular, very effective, and generally very safe. It’s a solid introduction to and foundation for yoga which has changed the lives of millions of people for the better – including ours.

Lately, Bikram yoga has been in some hot water (pardon the pun). There have been legal battles because Bikram Choudary copyrighted his series and dialogue and sued countless hot yoga studios which weren’t official Bikram studios. In 2012, his copyright was revoked as it was decided that yoga postures are public domain and was ruled that any yoga studio can teach his series. That made it a bad enough year for Bikram, but things got worse with multiple claims of sexual misconduct, abuse, and even rape – against the guru himself.

But the Revolution began before the scandals. Our Studio Director, Rebecca Jordan-Turner, certified by Bikram in the summer of 2002, felt limited being locked in the series and dialogue, and began moving in and out of the Bikram world as early as 2003. She wanted more education for herself and to be able to incorporate additional postures and work directly with the people in the room.

For Rebecca, the yoga itself was never the problem. The heat was never the problem. The problem was always and only the restrictions placed on how it could be taught. For the rest of us, joining in the revolution, we were bored with the Bikram series and wanted more.  More challenge.  More growth.  More heart. 

On one hand, the thousands year old practice of yoga belongs to everyone. But, on the other hand, a specific yoga sequence is like a work of art, a combination of common elements put together in a way to create something new and beautiful. It never felt quite right to Rebecca to just go out and regurgitate Bikram’s sequence. It’s his. He made it, and it has changed lives. 

All the revolutionists at our studio have tremendous gratitude for Bikram because he taught us a great deal of what we know and fueled our love of yoga. Out of respect for Bikram, our studio will not teach the classic 26 posture series. What we do instead is use the series as a foundation for our own sequence, our own work of art, “The Revolution Series.”

The Revolution Series, developed by Rebecca over 10 years of teaching, is an extension and expansion of the classic 26 postures of Bikram yoga. Our series maintains the deep healing and slow pace of the Bikram series while incorporating additional postures, specifically twists, inversions, and some vinyasa (“flow”) elements. This allows for a well-rounded, invigorating practice which is still safe and simple enough for the beginner, yet can be made challenging enough for the most experienced and advanced practitioner.

We wanted a sequence of our own, that we could expand, contract, evolve, and develop with our own words and to move our bodies in the way that felt most powerful, beneficial, and natural to us. We wanted to fill in the missing colors where we felt the Bikram series fell short, take away redundancies, and add in new elements. Our teachers wanted to be able to respond to the people and happenings in the room without being confined to a script.

What was created was something that left us all kind of stunned. The Revolution Series isn’t just different than the old series, and it isn’t just moving things around for the sake of making something different. We feel that it is something truly better, more well-rounded, and more complete. Invigorating. Refreshing. Fun and easy, but able to be made challenging when you want it to be. In our studio, people are doing things with their bodies that they didn’t think was possible. The Revolution Series isn’t just different – it’s revolutionary.