Bikram Yoga

 Two sandwiches, sesame tofu, pork potstickers and chicken rolls after Bikram Yoga. Hey, it's justified because I had fasted beforehand (didn't want to throw up) and you supposedly burn 900 calories.

What is it with girls dominating me in fitness classes?

Before, it was spin class; now, it's Bikram Yoga.

In case you don't know what Bikram Yoga is, it's "hot yoga." You do a bunch of standing and seated yoga poses in a room that's about 100º F and you sweat more than you've ever sweat in your entire life.

Being my first time doing yoga, I got a quick tutorial on proper breathing techniques from the instructor, Johnny. He took me into a small side room and had me inhale and then exhale loudly. I was horribly self-conscious.

When the class started everyone did the breathing exercises Johnny had showed me. It was kind of scaring hearing everyone exhale so loudly and passionately. It sounded like a sound a creepy dead person would make in a horror movie.

It was interesting observing the people that do yoga. More than 75% of the people were women. Lululemon Athletica definitely dominates the market for female athletic apparel. Those tight black yoga pants were everywhere and my friend only didn't wear her Lululemon headband because she was already wearing Lululemon shorts and shirt.

The few guys that were there, besides me, were in their late 30s or early 40s. They looked like dads trying to stay nimble as opposed to yoga masters. There was one younger guy though who was clearly a yoga regular. He wasn't wearing a shirt and had some sort of black speedo-esque shorts on. The spandex wouldn't have been my first choice of shorts, but they seemed to work for him just fine.

The class wasn't super tiring physically, but the heat got to me in the last half hour of the class. I'm really inflexible and some exercises were physically impossible for me, like the "one leg squat wrap the toes of your opposite foot around your leg exercise."

Parts of the Bikram Yoga class were embarrassing because I felt like Johnny was picking on me. I didn't know how to do a lot of exercises and it seemed like whenever Johnny forcefully repeated the instructions they were directed at me. Not to mention the atmosphere of extreme concentration. You'd think that people would want to talk to distract themselves from the difficulty of the "crouching warrior" pose, but talking was frowned upon. So I was left on my own to endure agonizing stretches and the pools of my own sweat on the yoga mat.

Probably the worst two exercises were the "nut crusher" (my personal name for it) and camel pose. The "nut crusher" was a pretty basic exercise; you lie on your back and hug your knees to your chest. Pretty basic, that is, for girls. I don't see how the other guys in the class do it; my friend hypothesized that Johnny had a testicle removed to improve his flexibility. It didn't help that Johnny was telling me to pull my knees harder toward my chest while I was weighing the options of my future offspring versus doing the exercise properly.

What's worse, the "nut crusher" (apanasana) or camel pose?

The camel pose was equally difficult though. It was at the end of the class that Johnny had us go into camel pose. To do camel pose, arch your back as far as you can, looking towards the wall behind you, and cup the heels of your feet with your hands. You aren't allowed to rest your hands on your feet; they are just supposed to touch lightly while you push your hips out as far as possible. The stretch was a huge contradiction to me; how was I supposed to arch backwards while thrusting my hips forward?

Besides my fatigue at the end of class and the impossibility of the stretch was that Johnny decided it was a good time to help me out. He urged me (against my will) to arch back farther and pushed my hips out for me. I'm pretty sure the grunts I made during camel pose sounded like a dying animal.

By the end of the class there was so much sweat on my yoga mat someone could have made it into a slip-n-slide. I realized that the towels weren't for wiping sweat off your face; you're supposed to put them down on the mat to absorb sweat so your feet don't slide around. I did one exercise on my side and it felt like my ear was underwater. When I changed my shirt it was as wet as if I had jumped into a pool.

Just like spin class though, I felt amazing afterward. Bikram Yoga makes you focus in on the task at hand because of the heat and you leave feeling relaxed. Even better was gaining back all those calories by going to Sprout and eating through their whole kitchen.