Tuesday, August 05, 2008

Bikram Yoga!

Today I tried Bikram Yoga for the first time at the center in Harvard Square. It was really great!

Bikram yoga involves doing various stretches in a room heated at 105 degrees. The heat is amazing because it really loosens up your muscles. I think it also makes your body burn calorie at a much higher rate. (I looked this up, and doing 1.5 hours of Bikram yoga is supposed to burn 700+ calories as opposed to an hourish of running, which burns less than 600.) Anyway, you stretch like every muscle that you have a sweat a ton so you feel like you might die but also that you are "cleaning yourself out from the inside," as the instructor said. It's also as intense as you make it--you can get a great workout by really pushing yourself or an okay workout by doing moderate stretching.

(The demographics of the people who went to the noon session were a bunch of normal, healthy-looking people. There were no muscle-super-gods/goddesses and the people who were best at the "postures" were the normal to overweight ones. This is an exercise for the masses.)

If you do it, I recommend a lot of hydration beforehand.

1 comment:

Frank Hudson said...

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