I went to Portland, OR. this past weekend and did a Bikram Yoga class at a place called Bonfire Hot Yoga.
This was only my second time with Bikram Yoga. The first time was when I was just a baby yogi and thought all yoga was the same.
G and I were on vacation in the Bahamas that first time, and we passed a storefront that said “Hot BikramYoga. Drop-ins Welcome.”
I said, “Let’s go!”
And she, always up for an adventure, said, “Okay!”
So we went, and it was weird, but not in that “peculiar but interesting ”kind of weird, but more in that “psychologically sick and malignant” kind of weird.
We found ourselves trapped in a hot, mirrored box with an egotistical yoga Nazi who got all up in my face as I was inching my way back into Camel pose.
“What are you afraid of, huh?? Huh??? Huh???? I can still see his smirking, sweaty face hovering over me, mocking my timidity.
Jesus Christ, dude. Back off.
G rolled up her mat and slammed out of there, but I wasn’t going to give this shirtless prick the satisfaction, so I stayed.
After she left, he turned to me and said, “Your friend couldn’t take it, could she? Could she? Could she?
Real asshat, that one.
So, until this weekend, that was my one and only experience with Bikram Yoga. Later, I realized I had just gotten a lemon. That guy in the Bahamas wasn’t typical.
I understood that after I read Hell-Bent: Obsession, Pain, and the Search for Something Like Transcendence in Competitive Yoga by Benjamin Lorr
I was profoundly moved by Benjamin Lorr’s account of how this intense and challenging practice transformed his life. What an inspiring roller-coaster of a memoir! I devoured it and promised myself that I’d sign up for another class if the opportunity arose.
It turns out Emily has finally found a “yoga home” in her new neighborhood in Beaverton. Among the many offerings is a 26 by 2 Bikram class that she attends regularly, which she thought would be a good palate cleanser after my horrible experience in the Bahamas.
So the morning after my arrival, still jet-lagged, she stocked us both up with towels and washcloths and even insisted we pack a whole new set of clothes for afterward, including underwear, because we’d be soaked.
And we were. But it was great. I loved the hot room, the mirrored walls, and the reminder to keep my eyes OPEN and stay focused.
I knew within ten minutes that the teacher, a kind man named Ben Thompson, knew what he was doing, where he was going, and where he wanted everyone in the class to go: within.
Every time I tell this story about the yoga Nazi in the Bahamas, I always preface it by saying how stupid and naive I was to think that all yoga was the same.
But here’s the thing: while different styles of yoga may not look or feel the same, they all aim for the same goal: self-knowledge, self-awareness, and self-acceptance. So, I wasn’t naive to think that yoga is yoga.
That is why I can go into any yoga class, no matter the style, and be okay. I know how to practice yoga.
You can hara hara hara your way through a breathy Kundalini class, or chatauranga your way through ten thousand vinyasas in a flow class, or endure a five-minute hold in Pigeon pose in a Yin class, or sweat buckets in a Bikram hot box. Still, the destination is the same: Savasana.
Dead to the world.
Dead to the nonsense.
Dead to the self.
Inspiration Location 
I don’t know nothin’ from nothin’, as the saying goes. And I haven’t read Benjamin Lorr’s book. But two words stuck in my craw: “competitive yoga.” I think of yoga as relaxing, “centering,” meditative, inward-focused. The first two words in the book’s subtitle are “obsession” and “pain,” and the pose in the cover photograph certainly looks agonizing.
Competitive yoga makes as much sense to me as competitive sleeping. If the goal of yoga is “conscious union with the inexhaustibly blissful Spirit” (to quote one of many similar definitions), then how can yoga be competitive? How do you judge who is first to reach a state of bliss? How can this be yoga?
Why must everything be turned into a competition, for heaven’s sake? Cherry-stone spitting. Bog snorkeling. Toe-wrestling. (I am not making these up!) And now yoga. It seems as if our culture, or perhaps just male culture, is obsessed with competitiveness. To me it seems pointless, and at times toxic.
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