Tiny drops of sweat trickle down your back as you walk to your next class. With tissue in one hand and a fan in the other, you curse the school for not providing air conditioning in your classrooms. Living in a country that has only two seasons, you crave for anything that can lessen the unpleasant feeling that accompanies a hot day—ice cream, cold water, a cube of ice.

Yet despite this arguably nationwide heat annoyance, I was committed to going inside a sauna room. With strangers. And while contorting my body into poses that I never thought humanly possible. After all, the promise of an uplifting physical and spiritual experience was too good to pass up.

That’s hot

Bikram Yoga Manila, the first yoga studio of its kind in the country, opened in 2005. The practice of Bikram yoga was designed to systematically stimulate and restore health to every muscle, joint, and organ of the body. Founder Bikram Choudhury wanted to help people heal from different types of ill conditions, says Christina Stathis, an instructor of Bikram Yoga. She says that Bikram is the only type of yoga that has scientific backing.

The practice of Bikram yoga is a series of 26 postures, including two breathing exercises. These are all done over a 90-minute period in a room with temperature kept at 38°C and an average humidity of 60%.

When I was much younger, in an attempt to keep being good, I would scare myself by imagining what hell looked like. Fire would be burning everywhere while Satan would be whipping a stick at me to make me run faster. As if running was not hard enough, the heat from the fire made everything worse.

As I sat down, barefoot, on a wooden chair in the Bikram Yoga Manila’s reception area, I thought about my childhood description of hell. I then surveyed the pictures of yoga poses hanging on the wall at my right. I comforted myself by thinking that it was all going to be a matter of stretching. I thought, it wasn’t really going to be all that bad.

As sadistic as it may sound, a shot of adrenaline ran throughout my body as I was led into the heated studio.

Heat stroke

We started the class with what I would later find out to be the Pranayama series (standing deep breathing). As the people around me started breathing in their noses and out their mouths, the entire room was filled with noises I couldn’t seem to produce.

I tried mimicking it but as I put my head back, I knew I was doing it wrong because I quickly ran out of breath. As beads of sweat started forming on my forehead, it baffled me how breathing suddenly became so complicated.

“Have complete focus like a ballerina,” Stathis told the entire class as we balanced ourselves in what was called the Utkatasana (awkward pose). This required us to be standing on our toes with our hands stretched out front as we slowly bent our knees closer to the floor. As I turned on my focused ballerina mode, I found myself balancing with ease.

But my confidence was short-lived. I found myself gasping for air while my world started to become a blur by the ninth pose. “When you feel dizzy, simply sit down on your mat and breathe normally,” I remembered Stathis saying in a serious and reassuring tone. Feeling seriously sick, I sat down on my soaked yoga mat and quickly gulped down half the contents of my water bottle.

As I sat embarrassed for being a weakling, I watched the others perform the famous triangle pose. With a weak body but a strong mind, I stood up and did a poor attempt at it.

It took all of my strength and willpower to be able to get through my first day of class. Compliments on my flexibility did little to heal my confidence. I went home extremely tired and defeated.

Sound mind

As I researched more on Bikram Yoga, I realized that my nauseous experience was actually normal. As I found out, no matter how healthy one is, the heat is the most common problem new students encounter on their first days of classes. This also reveals that we do not drink enough water for daily living, let alone for exercising in a heated room.

So why the heat? Physiologically, the benefits of practicing yoga in a heated room are manifold. First, it helps blood and oxygen flow more easily throughout the body, which consequently aids the detoxification process. Second, heat allows greater elasticity and range of motion with fewer chances of injury. Third, it promotes weight loss.

Roberta Anonas (MA Psy), for example, says that, like her, most students get into the practice to lose weight. She has been doing yoga for more than three years and has also tried its different forms: Ashtanga, Mysor, and Bikram included.

“[My initial reason to do yoga was] to lose weight,” says Roberta. “But aside from that, I got stronger, like [in] my tummy and my arms. I suppose it corrects your posture as well.”

With a hydrated body and a first hand testimony of the benefits of Bikram yoga in mind, I headed back to the studio two days after my first defeat.

Marc Mead, my yoga instructor for the day, said that he would be taking a closer look at me.

Moksha

Though we did exactly the same set of postures, I found myself pushing my body to its limits. This was either caused by my ego trying to redeem itself, or by Mead’s constant reminder that we could always do more. No matter what the reason was, there I was in the middle of a hot room, in deep concentration of “finding my center.”

While my ballet background put me at an advantage in terms of focus, balance, and flexibility, I also had my fair share of drawbacks. I had to take particular attention in avoiding doing ballet-like positions my body was so accustomed to doing.

According to Ramil Iriola, a yoga instructor from the Physical Education Department, “The sole purpose of asanas (postures) is to teach the body to sit still for a long period of time. It’s not simply for one to gain a yoga butt or yoga abs.” He adds, “It’s to see, to know who you are.”

As Roberta would put it, “After [a session], you will really feel good. I don’t know, maybe that is why I also feel prettier after. It’s more of the psychological effect [for me], you are more at peace.”

As Mead inputted lectures on how important it is to have the right attitude, I struggled to lower expectations of myself. I told myself that maybe if I forget that I am a ballerina, then maybe, just maybe, the yoga postures would grow on me.

Satisfied with my efforts the previous day, I took my last class with an open mind and a determined spirit. Listening solely to my breath, little did I realize that the once gruesome 90-minute class was quickly coming to an end.