Bikram Yoga FAQ
• How does Bikram yoga work?
• What is happening in my body during Bikram's yoga?
• I feel nausous, dizzy during class and very tired after my first class. Is this normal? What should I do about it?
• How many times a week is it recommended to practice?
• Does Bikram yoga provides maximum fitness?
• Why are inversions not included in Bikram's series?
• Does Bikram Yoga help with balancing the emotions?
• Why is it important to learn from a Bikram Certified Instructor?
Is it safe to practice Bikram Yoga....
• When menstruating?
• When pregnant?
• With high blood pressure?
• With Asthma, Emphysema, Chronic Bronchitis?
• With Arthritis?
• With Back Problems?
How does Bikram yoga work?
By the tourniquet effect: stretching, balancing (using gravity), and creating pressure all at the same time. The blood supply in arteries and veins is being cut off, creating pressure. When released, a lock gate effect is created, causing blood to rush through veins and arteries, flushing them out. Also, pressure is applied to the heart by its relative position to the rest of the body.
What is happening in my body during Bikram's yoga?
Muscles are contracted and stretched at a cellular, biochemical level. Lipids and proteins reorganize optimally in such stretching, allowing for better circulation. Joint mobility and range of motion is increased, and strength is built by the use of gravity. Muscles and joints are balanced.
Blood and calcium are brought to the bones. Working against gravity strengthens the bones. The organs of the immune system within the bones (red marrow) are boosted.
The lymph nodes are massaged, lymph is pumped throughout the body, and white blood cells are distributed throughout the body as the lymphatic system works more efficiently.
There is compression and extension to the thymus, spleen, appendix and intestines; lungs are stretched and flushed out by increased blood circulation. The endocrine glands are encouraged to secrete appropriate hormones, and the communication between hormones and various glands and systems of the body is perfected. Toxins and waste are eliminated through the organs of elimination.
The nerves are stimulated by compression and extension, improving communication within the systems of the body and supplying fresh blood, oxygen and nutrients throughout. The brain is stimulated by improved circulation and by varying blood pressure.
I feel nausous, dizzy during class and very tired after my first class. Is this normal? What should I do about it?
It is not unusual to feel nauseous or dizzy during your first class. Practicing yoga in a heated room reveals to us our present condition, and inspires us take much better care of ourselves.
Usually the problem is that we do not drink enough water for daily living, let alone for exercising in a heated room. Nutritionists tell us that we need 64-80 ounces of water a day to help the body function properly.
In the heated yoga room, your body needs adequate fund of water to allow perspiration to release heat from the body as you practice. So we estimate you need another 64-80 ounces (sometime during the day) to allow for your 90 minutes in the room. Once you are drinking enough water your body will tolerate the heat better and you will actually enjoy the heat.
If you feel disoriented or like you need a good nap after your first few classes, this is likely because your body has begun to cleanse itself as a result of the yoga practice. Don't be scared. After the first few classes this sensation will pass. The more you can relax as you give your 110% honest effort during class, the more energized you will feel throughout the class and throughout the rest of your day.
How many times a week is it recommended to practice?
In the beginning, do the Full Class religiously each day for two months until you are performing all but the very difficult poses such as the Standing Bow Pulling and Stretching Pose eighty percent correctly. If you are restricted by any medical condition or have any chronic disease, you should continue daily until your condition is resolved. Even when your progress is measured in fractions of inches that add excellence to what is already good, rather than in bold strokes, like being able to balance on one leg for ten seconds, you should continue your Yoga practice daily.
When you are performing ninety percent of the postures ninety percent correctly, you should still not feel complacent about doing your Yoga. Doing this Hatha Yoga class every day is like everything else you do in your life that is good for maintaining life. You don't plan to give up doing those things because of the daily benefit you receive.
How good is this Yoga habit? Look at someone who has been doing this yoga for over twenty or thirty years. Don't ask their ages. They have become timeless.
Does Bikram yoga provides maximum fitness?
Maximum fitness occurs when each organ, system and limb of your body functions optimally. It is the prerequisite of health, productivity and mental peace. Maximum fitness is not a superficial cosmetic condition, but peak performance of the organ systems which metabolize food, ensure immunity, carry and purify blood, regulate hormone production, and control endocrine gland secretions. for this reason, exercises which develop maximum fitness target your organs and organ systems, not just your muscles or waistline.
Why are inversions not included in Bikram's series?
Bikram feels it is more important to do the postures outlined in his method first because it safely builds all the strength the body needs to be totally healthy--throughout all the systems. Most beginners do not have the strength to do traditional inverted postures safely.
Some of the benefits of inversions (blood flow to the brain, reduction of blood pressure, compression of the thyroid gland) are provided by separate leg stretching, separate leg forehead to knee, rabbit pose, and the whole series in general.
After several years of steady dedicated practice, your Bikram instructor may invite you to an advanced class in which inverted postures and more are practiced.
Does Bikram Yoga help with balancing the emotions?
Bikram Yoga helps balance the emotions in several ways.
Physiologically, regular practice harmonizes the nervous and endocrine systems, two systems which figure heavily in emotional well-being.
In addition, practicing Bikram Yoga cultivates the mental faculties of faith, self-control, concentration, determination, and patience. As we become more aware of our inner life, we notice how events, interactions, and even the atmospheric pressure effect us. When we are aware, we can exercise choice in our response. This helps us balance our emotional life.
Why is it important to learn from a Bikram Certified Instructor?
It takes more than a hot room and a list of postures to make your Bikram Method Yoga practice a safe, rewarding experience. Bikram Method Yoga is a specialized form of yoga, requiring appropriate training and knowledge to teach it effectively.
Bikram Choudhury, the creator of Bikram Method Yoga, personally trains and certifies his instructors to ensure that his methods and philosophy are preserved and properly taught. To be certified as an instructor in the Bikram Method of Yoga, an instructor must complete an intensive nine-week training requiring over 500 hours of study. A studio guided by a Certified Instructor provides the best possible instruction in the Bikram Method. Certified Instructors have a continuing connection to Bikram Choudhury and his training staff, allowing the Certified Studio to draw from all of the resources Bikram's training center has to offer. This includes special seminars, posture clinics, guest instructors, and answers to questions which may arise in a particular student's practice.
Anyone can claim they teach "Bikram Yoga," but unless there is a Certified Instructor supervising how and what is taught at that studio, you are not getting true Bikram Method Yoga.
Is it safe to practice Bikram Yoga....
When menstruating?
It is perfectly safe to do Bikram's yoga when menstruating. Inverted postures are normally the postures contraindicated for menstruation. But there are no inverted postures in Bikram's yoga.
So in fact, Bikram's yoga is very good for toning the reproductive system as it directly affects the reproductive organs and the endocrine glands--pituitary, pineal and thyroid gland in particular. The women's cycle becomes regular; complaints of irregularity and PMS decrease.
When pregnant?
Talk to your teacher.
If you have been doing yoga regularly just prior to your pregnancy, then you may continue with the yoga exercises until your third month, or up until the time you are no longer able to lie on your abdomen.
If you are new to yoga or have not been doing Yoga just prior to your pregnancy, you should wait three months until you start.
With high blood pressure?
Unstable high blood pressure responds so quickly to diligent Yoga practice that doctors sometimes doubt their instruments. (This quick response of the blood pressure is one of the most telling demonstrations of Yoga's ability to regulate and synchronize body systems.) If you are tested about a week after starting Yoga, you may see a slight rise in pressure. Don't be alarmed. By the second week, that pressure will be normal or close to normal and will stay there as long as you maintain your yoga regimen.
Consult your doctor, use common sense, and don't push hard in any of the poses the first three days. The poses in which high blood pressure patients must continue to exercise caution until their blood pressure checks out normally are these: the backward bending portion of Half Moon, the Standing Bow Pulling, Balancing Stick, Cobra, the third part of Locust, Full Locust and the Camel.
Depending on the severity of your condition, the above should be done for a count of no more than five at first, building to ten counts only after two weeks. If you are supple enough to do the Fixed Firm fully the first few days, limit that to five counts as well. Be absolutely sure to rest between each set. It is also essential for heart patients to breathe normally during the postures. As for the Bow Pose, (on the floor) a beginner with high blood pressure must never perform the pose without a qualified teacher present.
It is because these backward bending positions create pressure in the chest, and so on the heart, that high blood pressure patients must use caution. Do not eliminate them though--with the exception of Bow Pose. They are the very friends you need to control your ailment.
With Asthma, Emphysema, Chronic Bronchitis?
Without knowing the cause of your asthma, we can tell you that Bikram yoga will be good for you in several ways. It is done in a warm room which promotes relaxation of the muscles and nerves, and is the type of exercise that you can do with as little or as much intensity as appropriate for your needs. In other words, you can do each posture with less effort if you're concerned about overexertion triggering an attack, or you can sit down and rest whenever you need to during the class.
It will relax your mind and help let go of tensions, toxins and negativity. It also strengthens your heart and lungs, improving your lung function. You will breathe easier and deeper than you ever have before.
With Arthritis?
Talk to your teacher.
IHopeless-type maladies? Diseases of laziness are all they are. Yoga can "cure" arthritis. That is, it can relieve symptoms. This is not a miracle; it is common sense.
Many people think arthritis occurs because of an overabundance of calcium in the body. But there is really no overabundance. The problem is that the calcium is deposited as a form of calcium phosphate in the joint-tissue, including the spine. At that point, the calcium phosphate deposit begins to build layers in the joint--spiky crystal formations like a cactus--until no room is left for the joint to pivot smoothly in its socket. And these spiny needly irritate the surrounding muscles and nerves, and the agony of arthritis begins.
Rheumatism? It is closely related to arthritis, but is even more exclusively a lazy person's disease. You have only to do your Yoga and you will be free of rheumatism.
Gout is also a problem that attacks the joints. And again and again in my series of exercises, you find me addressing myself specifically to exercising the joints. If I seem to be reducing some of the oldest, most painful, and perplexing diseases to lack of exercise, you're right. But that is what they often seem to boil down to.
Sadly, the theory seems to be that with advancing "age" one should "slow down," "take it easy," don't exert oneself or do too much exercise. And if you get something like arthritis, take it even easier, don't move, except to open your mouth to swallow the latest pill being offered as a cure. This advice is simply more nails for an earlier coffin. Exercise--meaning daily Yoga--is the cure.
With Back Problems?
Picture your spine as a series of ball bearings (vertebrae) one on top of the other, each separated from the next by a cushion (a cartilege disc). When the spine in shiny and new, all the ball bearings are smooth and round, moving freely in all directions, and the cushions are strong and thick. Now picture your daily activities. In one position after another, probably ninety-five percent of the time, that spine is leaning forward.
What is happening, then, is that each vertebra of your back is compressing its cushion in a frontwise direction. This goes on year after year until there is no resiliancy left in the front of the cushions, while the two sides and back have grown weak and slack from disuse. In addition, lack of movement has made the bearings rusty and barnacles have developed. The result: backache, stiff neck, headache, and countless other complaints.
The cure: exercise! Make the spine work so that resiliency and strength are restored to each cushion, so that the rust and barnacles are worn off the ball bearings, so that an X ray would show them smoooth and round, sitting snugly on their fat, renewed cushions.
Beginning with Half Moon, my series of exercises is designed to make your shocked and shriveled spine work to both sides, to the back, and then to the front. Only by exercising in all directions can your spine be healthy; and only with a healthy spine can you have a healthy nervous system.
If your chronic problem is something such as sciatic pain, lumbago, sore back muscles, whiplash, vertebrae out of line, shoulder trouble, radiating pains down the arms, tension headaches, swayback, spinal curvature, pinched nerves, or "something not quite right that the doctor said I ought to watch," stop watching. Act! Get to work on these exercises. Even those who have had spinal surgery should get to work--with their doctor's okay and a qualified teacher who can lead them in my particular series of exercises.
People with slipped disc are often in such pain that Yoga seems further torture. However, in numerous slipped disc cases, determined Yoga can save the day. So endure the pain. But please ntoe that those with slipped disc should also work under the supervision of a qualified instructor using my exact series of exercises and the safety rules laid down in the body of this book.
As you can see, the best thing is to adopt a Yoga regimen before any of these troubles develop--for if you do, they probably won't develop.
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