Love the results; h%$e the class

[clayw]

#2651

This is my third go-around starting Bikram. I always get six classes in and then give up.

I would really appreciate any help/comments with the below, because I think Bikram yoga is good for me, but I’m having several issues that keep knocking me out of the practice.

I LOVE HOW IT MAKES ME FEEL! I herniated a disc five years ago and have had chronic disc pain ever since. After one class, my neck pain is gone and I can look and sleep with my neck in any direction. Truly amazing! I’m very tall (over 6 and a half feet easy) and skinny and so it has greatly helped me with flexibility. I sleep better and I my energy level is smooth and high – and my body just feels good outside of class. It’s amazing!

SO WHAT’S THE PROBLEM – you ask – AND WHAT’S MY QUESTION!?

Unfortunately I dread the class for a number of reasons.

1)
[strong]I really do feel terrible when I’m in the class.[/strong] I sweat like a dog, which in it self isn’t that bad), but I feel so hot. I’ve never liked the sun or heat, but this feels hot hot hot. I find it extremely difficult to catch my breath and begin to fatigue as soon as we get into the first breathing pose. It’s bad enough that the poses are hard and I am unbalanced, but I feel so lethargic.

[strong]For the rest of class I am just trying to catch my breath, no matter how I breathe, and my heart is RACING.[/strong]

2) A few poses in to the class and I can barely stand up becomes I’m so fatigued, so I alternate between standing looking in the mirror, sitting Japanese style (that’s what they call it in class), or lying in svasana. And when I feel like it, I’ll get up and try again.

After awhile I get lightheaded. Note: My whole life I have always gotten light-headed if I stood up to fast from sitting for a long time. I have passed out a few times.

3) I thought all of this was in my mind, so I have pushed myself so hard in a number of classes that my vision starts to go spotty and black. One time I was so sick from pushing myself that it was all I could do to not pass out – I was buzzing and tingly all over and my left arm got really tight and crampy. The instructor noticed and got me a water.

4) By the end of each class I have always missed a number of poses and I am so tired. I have to drag myself out of class to the cooler air and sit for a while to recover.

5) For the rest of the day I am very thirsty.

I try to drink a couple liters of water before class, but I’m still thirsty.

THOUGHTS??

THANKS FOR ANY HELP!!!

[uohud]

#11075

I have felt the same way so many times. I found it got better when I started training for a triathlon. I think conditioning my cardiovascular system helped my body survive through bikram better. Just a thought.

[bunni]

#11076

Hi Clay,

What happens if you don’t push yourself so hard? Like if you were to keep your effort at around 25 or 50 % for a week or so? Aside from the heat, do you think you could make it through class more comfortably? If it is heat acclimation that is the problem then ramping up slowly may help–once you start feeling better you can push back to 110%!

Oh, and there have been alot of threads on this forum on how to avoid heat exhaustion that are worth reading too.

For me, I felt REALLY hot for about 6 months. Now after 4 years the only times I notice the heat are when I first enter the room, and again during savasana when entering the floor series. The hot sensation gradually just went away with time. It is a very liberating experience to be drenched with sweat and yet very comfortable, thermally speaking! I am sure you can make it there. Have you had any more developments in class?

[mzsocialworker1]

#11077

I think what happens a lot with this yoga, especially with people who are newer to the practice, is that they go in and really push themselves too hard and then end up exhausted and hating it.

The hardest thing to learn is going in with no expectations, not focusing on anyone else, and being comfortable with the fact that maybe the hardest work you will do that day is just getting through opening breathing.

I also know that what goes on outside of the room, can also deeply impact our practice….amount of sleep, stressful day, hydration level (and not just guzzling down water a few hours before class, what we ate, etc.).

I also think not every teacher always keeps the room at the right temps.

This can lead to early exhaustion as well.

[Robert Scanlon (Webmaster)]

#11080

Hello folks 🙂

Clay: How are you going now? Have you gone past your 6 classes? I hope so.

Here are some of my thoughts. Some of them won’t seem to directly relate to your words but are based on my experience and may or may not apply. I will pose some scenarios so you can see if things resonate for you! I ask you to examine not only your feelings but maybe even some pose techniques!

OK, so here goes …

Please know that there are indeed many people who love how they feel afterward but hate actually being in the room. My husband is one of those folk.

Allison is correct in suggesting you take a look at the threads that talk about heat exhaustion. It is entirely possible that you are in a very hot room and besides being in the throes of acclimatizing your body (and mind) to the conditions, it does take at least 2 weeks for your body to adapt its systems to the heat.

It is highly likely that the effort to do as you’re being instructed is working against you. I have to makes some educated guesses here: My best hunch is that you are bringing your arms up over your head and interlocking your fingers and crossing your thumbs as indicated and that would all be good. Where most practices suffer is with the command to squeeze the head with the arms.

You will find this seemingly small but crucially important detail written about many times on this forum. The problem with squeezing the head with the arms for MOST but not all students is that their bodies are not ready to do that in an efficient and ecological manner just yet.

If you have any tightness in your head, neck or shoulders or arms, or if you have any trouble at all with breathing, then squeezing arms to head sets up a whole cascade of physiological events that cause you to breathe with difficulty and create tension in the aforementioned upper areas of the body which in turn make it more difficult to breathe!!!! Yikes.

The best thing that anybody can do in the hot yoga class is to make sure that no tension is set up at all through the upper spine and shoulders. How? Always make sure the shoulders are down away from the ears in all poses. When the arms are raised high, if the chin drops at all, even a millimetre, it means that there is tension. So make a micro-bend in the arms to ensure the chin stays parallel to the ground and the neck stays L O N G.

I can direct you to a video that shows you how to use your arms. The other free videos will give you more help – to make your practice more satisfying, and help you apply generalised principles!

Men often try too hard in class. Do you think you could be muscling your way into poses? Once you have watched at least the first video (using that first live link in the paragraph above) you may find you have a more relaxed yet far more effective approach to your practice.

Do let me know if I am on the right track.

There really should be no time that you are feeling faint (at least not regularly) and your vision should stay fine. So another thing to do is to focus firstly on your breath. Smooth breathing is a cornerstone of your practice.

In fact the formula for best practice is: breathing first then alignment second then depth of pose last.

Set yourself up as well as you can in any pose. A great place to find many how-to details is right here on the forum (one pose at a time works well 😉 ) Sometimes what you hear in class (especially in scripted classes) doesn’t give sufficient detail for safe set up or entry and you may need some assistance. The way you work out whether you need help is to look at information all the poses where you feel tightness or tension in your body, or where you are losing your breath, or where your eyesight is affected.

Once you have set up, use the breath to guide you through your poses. If, in the pose you feel more tension or that your breath stops or is jagged, then move to a point where you can breathe and check your alignment. It does not matter how deep your poses are, but rather that you are focused and breathing and in alignment.

That’s really enough for starters.

I am looking forward to seeing your next post and hope that the above has been in some way helpful!

Namaste
Gabrielle 🙂

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