There are excellent studies done on the benefits of practicing yoga in the heat, and I am hopeful that we will continue to learn more about the heat as a powerful tool for health and healing. Like many of you, I find practicing in the heat to be tremendously beneficial. I believe in the classic 40-degrees-and-40%-humidity-for-90-minutes Bikram Yoga prescription, and continue to practice it regularly.
However, I’d like to highlight another side of the conversation, while making it clear that I am not debating the value, science, and “magic” of practicing 26&2 in the heat. I simply wish to encourage that our community open-mindedly consider that practicing outside the heat could also be of great value to us.
Home practice, or practice while on a trip away from a studio, can be highly rewarding. There can sometimes be a deeper level of empowerment felt when we create a way to practice without studio conditions. It’s a way of saying to ourselves, “I prioritize my health.” Or, “I don’t need anything outside of myself to do this.”
I sometimes hear people say that they will not practice outside a hot studio, or that perhaps a specific a hot room experience wasn’t optimal because it wasn’t hot enough. In my opinion, this is a missed opportunity. I suggest that instead of a “worse than” experience, changing the temperature of the practice only changes the result on the body. This doesn’t have to be a better or worse result, but simply “different.”
We know that the human body thrives when asked to adapt to different conditions, to a point. Athletes, for example, will often train by practicing their sport in varied conditions in order to improve their physical resilience and mental adaptability.
In the same way, we learn about ourselves differently when practicing outside the hot room. For example, practicing without heat can give us the bandwidth to focus attention on sensations which might be missed in a hot class where more resources are put into simply “keeping going.” Once the mind has made new connections with the body outside the hot room environment, these new connections can be explored in the heat. I compare this to attending a posture technique workshop, where the information learned in the workshop can now be applied into your hot room practice.
Inside the hot room, we practice managing ourselves in a very uncomfortable situation. For 90 minutes, it become our purpose to meet ourselves at a deeper level than the voice that says “I can’t” or “I won’t.” We train ourselves to go to a place in our mind where external sensations do not control us.
We can apply this same mental training to practicing without the heat. Does the body feel different? Use your deep self-awareness to meet the sensations as they present themselves. Are there more distractions outside the studio? Use them as an opportunity to pull your attention more deeply inside. In reference to the mastery over ourselves that we seek in the hot room, I have often heard my mentor Esak say “learn to do it any way it can be done.” I strongly believe that this applies here.
Outside the hot room, we have to practice accepting “how it is now.” If one is used to practicing in the heat, outside of it they’ll typically notice that the body does not stretch as deeply, or that it takes longer to work into some areas. It’s important to remember that from a therapeutic perspective, it isn’t necessary to go as deep as possible every single time you practice. Coming to your end point and then holding still with breathing is all that is needed for a successful posture, even if you know that at another moment you were able to go deeper. Practice feeling completely satisfied with where you end up today.
I encourage anyone who has not become acquainted with their practice outside the heat to do so. Use the mind power that you have developed in hot classes, and apply it to practicing anywhere.
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I love to take groups on yoga travel adventures. Releasing the need for a hot room has opened up the possibility to take groups to exciting places where we might not otherwise get to explore and practice.
Upcoming unheated or “less heated” adventures:
Check out the e84 Virtual Studio as a tool to help you practice outside the hot room.