Donna Carberry Memorial Fund

In 2011, the BYP community lost a very special member when Donna Carberry passed away after a hard-fought battle with cancer. Donna was loved by all who knew her. She loved life, her family, hiking, nature, running, music, and yoga. In her own words, Donna was “in love with love.” Her bright smile lit up every class she attended.

Throughout her fight, Donna continued to practice yoga with us. She’d enter the studio with a huge smile every day and always shared her gratitude for each day and each class, despite the effects of chemo or when the cancer degraded her bones.

Before her death, Donna made her husband, John, promise he’d continue to practice yoga after she was gone. This is a promise John has upheld above and beyond.

In Donna’s memory, John and I created the Donna Carberry Memorial fund with the motto, “No Yogi Left Behind.” The fund has been maintained by many donations from John Carberry, including gifts he anonymously bought for fellow yogis to brighten their day on Donna’s birthday.

We use these funds to offer support to fellow yogis when they fall on hard times. In Donna’s memory, we try to raise others up when they need yoga in their lives the most.

The Donna Carberry Memorial Fund has also been supported by gifts from Donna’s former co-workers and donations from generous yogis in our community. All donations to the fund are matched 100% by Blaze Yoga and Pilates.

Do you know a yogi in need? Or want to support this scholarship program? Reach out!

 

 

Welcome to Blaze Yoga and Pilates!

We are thrilled to welcome you to the studio and to our wonderful community. Here, I’m going to share some tips to help you get the most out of your time with us.

We offer the most effective hot yoga and Pilates techniques available in the world from the best trained teachers who can help you meet your goals and heal your body. Whatever your goal, whatever your challenge, whatever your limitation, we are confident we can help.

We are on a mission to help people take control of their health and wellness so they can feel great and have a positive impact on the world.

You may have heard some crazy stories about hot yoga and Pilates. We’ve made this short video to help you thrive through your first class: How To Survive Hot Yoga without Puking, Fainting, or Dying We’re just goofing on the title, but the video has some great tips to get ready for your first class.

In short:

• Come to class well hydrated. You don’t need to drink a gallon of water. A rough way to estimate is to take your body weight in pounds and cut that number in half. Try to drink at least that many ounces of water per day. For example, a 150-pound woman should drink at least 75 ounces of water each day, more when you’re working out.
• Fuel your body. Your body needs fuel to perform work. Even for a morning class, have something light to eat before you come in. No one likes to work out on a full stomach, so don’t have a big meal within 3 hours of your first class.
• Take it slowly. It will take your body a few classes to acclimate to the heat. Come to class in first gear and see what you can do. Each class you’ll hear and be able to do more. You won’t believe how amazing you feel after finishing your first class.
• Wear light, athletic clothing. We heat the room so you can workout with a greatly-reduced risk of injury and a greatly-increased positive impact on your mood. Because it’s hot, you don’t need a ton of clothes. Most people wear shorts and a sport top or tank.
• Get the right gear. All students need a yoga mat, a large towel, and a bottle of water during class. All are available for rent or purchase at the studio.

Make it a goal to take at least ten classes during your intro month. You will see an amazing transformation physically and mentally.

Got questions? Reach out! We’re here for you.

 

 

Top Tips for Getting and Staying Hydrated for Yoga and Pilates

Hydration is key to having a great class and good hydration is more than just pounding water.

Here are some quick tips to help you stay on top of your game.

1. Pregame

Most of your fluid absorption happens in your colon or large intestine. It takes about 60-70 minutes for fluids to get from your mouth to your blood vessels through your colon. Your body gets the water it uses for sweating from your bloodstream.

The water you drink way before you come to class is the water your body will use for cooling and to maintain your blood pressure in class. Coming to class dehydrated can even make you feel dizzy or nauseated.

Hydration for the class you’re going to take can even start the night before. Drink in the morning or throughout the day before you come to class and you’re sure to feel on top of your game.

2. Listen to your body

In our busy culture, we train ourselves to ignore our bodies’ signals. In a 2009 Purdue study published in Journal of the American Diabetes Association, researchers found that Americans rarely ate when they were hungry nor drank when they were thirsty. Instead, they ate when they usually ate and drank when they usually drank.

If you tune in, your body will tell you when it needs more fluids. Listen up and grab a drink. You may notice that you even crave fluid-dense foods when it’s warmer outside or you’ve been sweating.

3. Eat your fluids

Hydration isn’t just about drinking water. Many of the foods we eat contain high levels of water, often in combination with essential electrolytes. This includes foods like fresh fruit and vegetables, soups, smoothies, and juices. It also includes fluids contained in cooked, moist foods, too.

Whatever form you consume fluids, it all counts toward hydration.

Some drugs have diuretic effects and can spur a need for more fluids for your hot practice. Some foods have a similar diuretic effect like black cumin, ginger, parsley, dandelion, hibiscus, alcohol, and caffeine. Adjust your hydration accordingly.

4. Add in electrolytes

Your body requires electrolytes to maintain fluid balance. In fact, water can’t get into your cells without sodium-potassium pumps built right into your cell walls.

When you work hard and sweat, you not only lose salts through your sweat, your body also metabolizes electrolytes at a faster rate.

For the average yogi, you may notice you crave salty foods after class and that’s your body trying to replace these lost salts, but it’s not just sodium you need. Potassium, magnesium, calcium, manganese and more have been found to be excreted in sweat.

You can replace lost electrolytes like potassium by eating lots of whole foods, fruits, nuts, vegetables, and grains, adding sea salt to your diet for micronutrients, and eating ocean foods like seaweed.

Sports drinks are not recommended as they contain mostly sugar, dyes, and artificial flavorings. You can make your own sports drink or use a high-quality electrolyte replacement. We sell Superieur Electrolytes at the studio because they are the most natural, effective and sustainably-sourced product on the market.

5. Set a goal

Some research shows that eating a high-fat or high-sugar diet can weaken thirst sensitivity. If you’re not sure you can trust your craving for hydration yet, set a simple daily goal for hydration.

A simple place to start is with this common hydration equation. Start with your body weight in pounds and divide that number by two. Set a goal to drink that number of ounces of water per day.

Test it out. Does that feel like enough water to you? Too much? With a little practice, this goal can become a habit that leads to you trusting your body’s signals for thirst.

If you’re taking a hot yoga or Pilates class or it’s really hot out, add an additional liter of fluid to your daily goal.

How Yoga Enhances Recovery

As a culture, we have become very familiar with the suffering and loss associated with substance use disorders.  We are also quick to notice the psycho-biological symptoms associated with them. What we may not be as familiar with, and completely unprepared for, however, is the discomfort associated with Post Acute Withdrawal Syndrome or PAWS.  PAWS refers to abstinence-based biological changes that occur once an individual has made a decision for change and entered recovery. It is the abstinence-based biological symptoms of PAWS that makes early recovery so uncomfortable and hard to understand, and therefore extremely difficult to maintain.

Join us for a special lecture on Yoga and Sobriety Monday, October 8th at 5 pm.

Hot Yoga is a powerful tool for  recovery from substance use disorders. Some of its greatest potential lies in the practice’s ability to alleviate the symptoms of  Post Acute Withdrawal Syndrome.

PAWS is a cluster of symptoms that set in after a person stops using drugs or drinking and has completed detoxification. At this stage, the severe symptoms of acute withdrawal have passed and a person can begin to focus on their recovery on physical and emotional levels. PAWS can make this second phase extraordinarily difficult because it has a severe impact on a person’s thought processes, decision-making, ability to control emotion and ability to maintain physical coordination.

“Everyone said I would feel better and I feel worse. I feel like I am going             crazy.”      -Anonymous

Below, find common PAWS symptoms and how yoga can help:

Inability to Process & Organize Thoughts: Feeling unable to solve simple problems, maintain focus on a specified task, or reason in the abstract.

• Yoga increases focus, concentration, and attention through the practice of both concentration meditation and mindfulness meditation during postures.
• The practice of yoga improves circulation in the entire body, including the brain, potentially leading to improved neurological function.
• Yoga postures improve the movement of cerebrospinal fluid, bathing the brain with biochemicals and nutrition, and facilitating the removal of wastes.

“The presence of brain dysfunction has been documented in 75-95% of the recovering individuals tested. Recent research indicates that the symptoms of post-acute withdrawal associated with alcohol/drug-related damage to the brain may contribute to many cases of relapse.” ~ Terrence Gorski

Depression.  Inability to experience pleasure or joy (anhedonia), pessimistic and/or negative thinking, irritability, anger.

• Yoga promotes a positive attitude, improves mood, and helps decrease stress and tension.
• Massachusetts General Hospital is in the middle of a comprehensive study on the effects of hot yoga on clinical depression. Preliminary results show a statistically-significant negative correlation between number of classes taken and depression symptoms.
• In our preliminary Sober Yogis study at Bikram Yoga Portsmouth, participants saw a two-thirds reduction in depression symptoms.

Memory problems

• Yoga increases the movement of cerebrospinal fluid and increases blood flow to the brain.
• Practitioners engage in breathing exercises that require them to breathe in rhythm in a group. Clinical studies on rhythm therapy show that it causes improvements in short term memory and facial recognition.

Lack of initiative/motivation

• Yoga increases energy.
• Yoga causes a sense of wellness and self-acceptance.
• Participating in a challenging class that the yogi may not yet believe they can “do” and proving that inner voice wrong over and over again increases motivation, grit, drive, and sense of accomplishment.

Increased sensitivity to pain

• Yoga improves the practitioners self-awareness to what is happening in the present moment. This improves proprioception and helps to develop a realistic sense of pain and injury.
• Yoga reduces symptoms of arthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, fibromyalgia, and other autoimmune diseases, reducing pain.
• Studies on fibromyalgia and yoga have shown an over 50% reduction in perceived pain in patients after starting yoga.
• Yoga improves joint mobility, muscle strength and flexibility, skeletal alignment, and improves overall health, reducing pain.

Emotional overreactions or emotional numbing

• Yoga is the practice of being present within one’s body. As the practitioner begins to feel their body, part-by-part, they also learn to feel the emotions inside the body as well.
• Yoga trains the practitioner to breathe calmly, even when uncomfortable. This allows the yogi to experience uncomfortable thoughts and emotions without triggering a fight-or-flight response, diffusing the challenging feeling.
• Across the board, yoga students report a reduction in emotional overreaction that continues to grow the longer they continue the practice.
• For yogis who have long suppressed emotions, accessing them through the body is sometimes the only way to “metabolize” these “stuck” emotions.
• Therapists have found patients stuck in PTSD treatment move forward in leaps and bounds through the therapeutic practice of yoga.
• People talk about a “yoga glow” which is a deep feeling of wellness after practice. A body that feels good is much easier to “be present” inside.
• In our preliminary Sober Yogis study in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, the average participant saw a reduction in Emotional Overreaction and/or Numbness from Severe to Mild.

Anxiety

• Yoga increases feelings of wellness and decreases anxiety.
• Yoga trains the body, through focused breathwork, to activate the parasympathetic nervous system, circumventing anxiety.
• In our preliminary Sober Yogis study at Bikram Yoga Portsmouth, participants saw an average 67% reduction in anxiety symptoms.

Sleep disturbances (including using dreams) Sleep disturbances may range from insomnia to narcolepsy to sleep apnea, the most commonly reported problem is the inability to maintain a regular sleeping cycle.

• Yoga decreases tension and anxiety and improves the capacity for restful sleep.
• Yoga practices like deep breathing techniques, savasana, and restorative postures strengthen the vagus nerve and decrease activation of the sympathetic nervous system, allowing the practitioner to fall asleep more easily.
• Yoga helps to stabilize production of cortisol, a primary hormonal driver in sleep disturbance.
• Yogis practicing 45 minutes of yoga three times a week for twelve weeks saw an average 31% reduction in cortisol (the “stress” hormone).

Physical Coordination Problems: problems with balance, hand-to-eye coordination, fine motor skills, and impaired reflexes.

• Yoga seeks to bring the practitioner to mental and emotional wellness by moving through the door of the body.
• Each posture starts with direct awareness and attention to the body as a whole and as parts and allows the practitioner to slowly introduce movement and depth with control, regardless of health and wellness.
• Yoga improves the physicality and function of all who practice.
• Yoga is a therapeutic practice that improves coordination, balance, strength, flexibility, range of motion, joint health, strength, circulation, and fine and gross motor skills

Feeling unable to cope with stress:  overreaction to a situation that does not warrant it, or no reaction to a very grave situation. A person also might feel stressed all the time without being able to articulate why.

• Yoga decreases stress, tension, and anxiety.
• Yoga increases self-acceptance.
• Yoga encourages the development of a healthy ego, the ability to see one’s self through the lens of right now, an ever-changing person.
• Yoga provides community. Individuals with social connections are not only healthier, but also cope with stress more easily.

Cravings/Urges/Thoughts of Using

• Yoga strengthens the mind and the body.
• The practice of yoga teaches the yogi mental strength, discipline, self-control, determination, concentration, and will power.
• Yoga helps to regulate and stabilize blood sugar and blood pressure, two factors known to increase cravings.
• Yoga decreases depression, anxiety, and other PAWS symptoms, common causes for cravings.
• A regular yoga practice also decreases cholesterol, associated with sugar cravings and binge eating.
• Yoga allows the addict to experience euphoria by moving their body therapeutically, allowing the practitioner to develop a healthy relationship with “feeling good”.
• The therapeutic Bikram Yoga series is particularly effective at creating this feeling of euphoria because it improves circulation and function of the entire body in a heated room. The sweat-factor or heat therapy imparts a feeling of well-being that is unparalleled.

Why does it have to be hot?

Hot Yoga shows particular promise in improving health and enhancing recovery in three primary way. Learn why our classes are heated

Detoxification Detox is a popular buzz word in the wellness community. Many health gurus have over-stated the benefits of sweating and detox, but let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater.

The liver, kidneys, lungs, and excretory organs are the primary players in the detox game. They do the bulk of the body’s detoxification. The skin is the largest organ in the body and through that organ we excrete sweat primarily for cooling and scent purposes.

Our sweat is comprised of water and several important minerals, but studies have also shown sweat to contain heavy metals, fat-soluable toxins, and urea in the same concentrations found in human urine. While sweat is not a primary mover of wastes in the body, it does have the potential to reduce amount of detox required of the liver.

Each sweaty yoga class you take is like a mini vacation for your liver and kidneys.

Hyperthermia Hyperthermia has been studied since the 1970s for it’s positive effects on depression. Culturally, saunas have been used for centuries in Siberia and the Baltics to reduce the impact of seasonal depression. In study after study, results show a “significant reduction” in depressive symptoms.

If you want to feel better, get hot!

Vasodilation Exercising in a heated environment causes immediate and complete vasodilation throughout the body. This process improves the ease with which the body can transport blood, waste, nutrients, and biochemicals, which increases the speed of recovery and healing.

In addiction recovery, we talk often about the protracted healing time for the brain as it adapts to life without the substance of choice. During this painful process of neuroplasticity, if we support the body by increasing circulation, we simultaneously shorten this process and improve it’s efficacy.

For those new to exercise or recovering from a lifetime of illness or injury, practicing in a heated room allows for more movement with a drastically-reduced risk of injury. This makes the practice safe and effective for people of all levels of health and wellness.

Heat speeds healing.

If feels good to move your body. It feels good to sweat. Completing a full-body workout like we do in Hot Yoga lends a sense of accomplishment and pride. Through a regular practice, we can rebuild our fragile egos as a solid foundation on which to build a new and satisfying life.

We are very excited to announce a new group starting at a Portsmouth location this fall. We look forward to sharing more information with you at our upcoming lecture on Monday, October 8th at 5 pm. Preregister for this free lecture here.

Hot Reveal

New Name, New Look, New Schedule, Unlimited Possibilities

As individuals, it is our obligation to take responsibility for our own continued growth and development. Sometimes that growth involves changes that impact mostly our personal lives and sometimes those changes have a big impact on the world around us.

Since our 15-year anniversary last September, Jaylon and I have spent a lot of time reflecting on all of the transformation our studio and our community has gone through in the last decade and a half. Through our mutual commitment to self-improvement we have facilitated some amazing changes together both inside and outside the yoga room.

TEST OUT OUR CLASS OFFERINGS FOR FREE SEPTEMBER 8th

Save your spot in our Open House classes now!

Now we approach a new season of change for BYP. This summer, we started testing out additional healing modalities to supplement and compliment your Original Hot Yoga practice. The results have been nothing short of amazing.

As a community, our excitement about the new classes is super-charged. We have recommitted with new energy and enthusiasm to our practices and our health. Students with chronic pain and injuries are finding answers, solutions, inspiration, and resolving these problems.

We have carefully selected Barkan Vinyasa and Inferno Hot Pilates and our new 26+ classes because they have the same therapeutic focus, translate in to powerful results, and complement our traditional hot yoga practice of the Bikram Yoga method.

To celebrate these new changes in our offerings, we are so excited to bring a new name to our studio community that better represents all we have to offer here at BYP.

What’s the new name?!? You’re going to have to wait until the big Hot Reveal on Saturday, September 8^th.

Save the date for our Grand Reopening Open House and Hot Reveal on Saturday, September 8^th. We’ll have free classes all day and a pizza party from 1:30-4:30 pm.

Learn the new name. See the new schedule. Check out our new look. Bring your friends!

I can’t wait! Sign me up!

Bring your friends and family! Special intro offer pricing: One Day Only! New students can purchase the intro month for $20 at the Open House. For the price of a drop in, they get a whole month of unlimited yoga!

If your BFF out of town on the 8^th? They can buy online Saturday and Sunday the 8th & 9th and use coupon code HOTREVEAL.

You’re gonna love what we have up our sleeves!

Let’s sweat,
Sara

Hot Reveal/Special Deal!

Special Open House Pricing on Intro Special

We love what we do and we love sharing Yoga and Pilates with new students! To get you in the mix and pumped on our offerings, we offer special pricing for new students: $30 for your first 30 days of unlimited yoga.

Join us for free classes all day on Saturday, September 8th. Save your spot now! Formerly Bikram Yoga Portsmouth, Plaza 800, 800 Islington Street, Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

It takes 30 days to build a new habit. When you commit to yourself for your first month you’ll see changes in the way you look, feel, and live. This powerful practice spills over from the yoga room into everything you do in your daily life. We recommend practicing at least 2-3 times a week to see maximum benefit from your Yoga and Pilates practice.

To celebrate our new name, new logo, and new schedule, we are offering a Hot Reveal Grand Reopening Open House Special on Saturday and Sunday, September 8^th & 9^th of $20 for 30 days of unlimited yoga.

During our Open House weekend, for the price of a drop in you get a whole month of Hot Yoga, Pilates, and Vinyasa classes!

Sign up now and use coupon code HOTREVEAL so you can feel the best you’ve ever felt!

Pull up this video now to learn tips on surviving your first class!

What’s Hot Yoga?

What’s Hot Pilates?

Commit to 90

Our powerful Commit to 90 Whole Life Challenge is back and better than ever!

We’re so stoked to team up with Functional Nutritionist Erin Holt to bring you our new and improved Commit to 90 Whole Life Challenge.

Commit to 90 is a 90-day challenge that rewards you for taking care of yourself. Instead of blasting out classes every day for a month like we’ve always done in our September 30-day Challenge, we’ll focus on building a regular, steady practice. CT90 is designed to help you make informed decisions around nutrition, learn to fuel your body, heal your relationship with food, build community connections, and make time for activities that enhance your life.

Watch this video to learn more!

How does it work? From September 15-December 15th, you will be awarded points each week for taking Yoga and Pilates classes, meeting Erin’s nutrition goal of the week, and engaging in enrichment activities like special workshops and events at the studio. Yes, we still have gold stars!

At the end of the challenge, the individual with the most points will win our Commit to 90 basket, valued well over $900 with killer prizes like three months of unlimited yoga and Pilates and a $200 lululemon gift card.

What do I get? For the monthly fee of $250, you have access to:

• Unlimited Hot Yoga and Pilates
• Weekly Nutrition Education
• Weekly Facebook Live videos on nutrition and more
• Up to three total enrichment activities (choose from any workshops at our studio or our sister studio Steam House Hot Yoga)
• Online support group

These services have a retail value of over $379/month. This monthly fee is a wicked discount that represents our commitment to helping you kickstart your life.

But we love you, so we want to offer you a special deal.

You all know by now that we’re rebranding the studio this fall. We’re so excited to bring the new studio, new name, new logo, new name out of its chrysalis and into your lives. As a special gift to celebrate our reopening, we’re offering a deeply discounted price through September 8^th.

Sign up now and pay just $200/month for the Commit to 90 program.

Sign up before our rebrand on September 8^th and save $50 per month! Smash the I’m in button below if you’re ready to commit to a better life.

I’m in!

Wondering about what’s in the grand prize? Watch here.

Will My Kid Like Yoga??

Will I pass out in hot yoga?

The short answer to the question is: it’s highly unlikely.

Many new students have heard horror stories about yoga classes so hot that people were dropping like flies and being carried out of the room. Most of these are embellished or frankly fabricated. Like any tall tale, there’s always a kernel of truth: usually survival stories from teacher training where they try to burn you down metaphorically so you can rise like a phoenix from the ashes. You won’t find that in a general public yoga class.

I sat down this morning and tried to count how many times I’ve seen people pass out in yoga. I couldn’t even fill up one hand. I’ve heard stories of more than that, but in 17 years of practicing and teaching Bikram Yoga, I’ve only seen three people “go down” in a class.

Pre-existing conditions

Pre-existing health conditions make some people likely to pass out. I had a student in class one time who was born with an unusually narrow carotid artery. After half moon, she leaned back against the wall and slowly slumped to the floor. As she came-to in class, she smiled and said, “I pass out all of the time.”

Be sure to tell your teacher if you have any health concerns that might make you more likely to pass out. They’ll show you where to take it slowly and keep an extra eye on you during class. This includes, but is not limited to: heart conditions, arterial abnormalities, dwarfism, history of syncope, diabetes, dehydration, anorexia nervosa, and the use of some medications.

There’s a profile for that.

There actually is a stereotype for passing out in hot yoga. Our prime candidate is usually a very thin, tall woman, around the age of 19, who hasn’t had much (or anything) to eat. She comes up from a deep backward bend or forward fold, goes grey and collapses. This tends to happen due to low blood sugar or low blood pressure. The same can happen occasionally to people who consume very little water as they won’t have enough available water in their kidneys or blood volume to produce sweat without a dramatic drop in blood pressure.

You can prevent this from occurring by fueling your body with healthy, but easy-to-digest, foods before class and drinking plenty of water throughout the day. Your body is a precision machine that can’t function with out gas and oil.

Leaving the room

One of the primary places people pass out is in the lobby just outside the hot room doors. Here’s why:

In class, the air temperature is hotter than your body. All of your blood vessels dilate and blood rushes to the skin to cool your body and maintain a stable body temperature. That’s your body’s prime goal: maintain homeostasis. Your eccrine sweat glands kick in to high gear and start producing a lovely, cooling sweat.

If you feel hot or uncomfortable in class, your first instinct is to rush out of the room and take a quick break. This action is confusing to the body. Suddenly, the air is 30 degrees cooler, and significantly cooler than your body temperature. To add insult to injury, your body is now covered with moisture that is evaporating rapidly and dropping your internal temperature. Homeostasis alert! The status quo is not being maintained!

The body will quickly constrict the blood vessels and shut down the action of your eccrine glands to make you stop sweating and prevent your internal temperature from dropping below optimal. This quick vasoconstriction slows circulation all over the body, even up to the brain. If it happens rapidly enough, the student can temporarily lose vision or event pass out.

The problem with passing out outside the hot room is that the floor is hard and there’s no one there to catch you.

If you feel dizzy and think you might pass out, the best idea is to sit down right where you are standing. Take a few deep breaths and even a sip of water. If you don’t feel better in a matter of minutes, flag down your teacher and they’ll walk you out to sit on the bench and cool off.

Even if you don’t pass out when you leave the room for a “break”, you do shut down the cooling process of sweating. When you return to the room, it feels even hotter and your body has to start all over from scratch acclimating you to the new environment.

Leaving the room should be reserved for the five Ps: pee, poop, puke, period, pregnant.

One reason new students leave the room is fear that there’s not enough air in the room. That’s a by-product of nervousness and the fight-flight-freeze response to the new environment/activity. Our air quality is carefully maintained by an energy-recovery ventilator activated by carbon dioxide sensors in the room to bring in plenty of fresh air. If you start feeling like you can’t breathe, take the same precautions as you would if you were going to pass out. Sit down and breath slowly through your nose until you feel better.

The heat is a tool, not a weapon.

Bikram Yoga classes are heated to 105 degrees and 40% humidity. These conditions allow for complete vasodilation and allow students to stretch their muscles with a reduced risk of injury. The heat has additional benefits like improved mood, reduction in body fat percentage, and decreasing the day-to-day detoxification load on the liver.

The temperature is not intended for a dramatic increase in internal temperature. On average, body temp increases about one degree in most practitioners. The heat is a tool to facilitate the healing process, not a weapon with which to beat your body into submission.

Give yourself time to acclimate

We live in New England. It’s only Bikram Yoga temps outside for about two weeks in August. Around the world, people live in the very same heat index as a hot yoga class year-round, but we’re not used to it. We know the human body can live in these temperatures, we just have to give it time to get used to it. It takes the average new yogi 10-14 days of regular practice to get acclimated to the hot room.

Your sweat comes from fluids in your blood stream. If you haven’t sweat much since August, your body won’t be ready to dump a quart of water out of your pores the first time. It will take a few classes of going slowly and sipping water as you need it for your body to figure out you’re going to do this regularly. Your kidneys have to learn to hold water and dump it back into your bloodstream, rather than into your bladder, so your blood volume stays stable. You have to learn when and how much to drink and eat to fuel your practice. You may notice you crave more salts as you add this sweaty practice in to your life.

The great news is that in a couple of weeks, you won’t be worried about the heat any more. You’ll be too busy working out how to balance on one foot.

 

 

 

Sara Curry is a Bikram Yoga teacher from Southern Maine who has dedicated her life to helping people take control of their lives and their healing through the practice of yoga. She owns and operates Bikram Yoga Portsmouth with her husband, Jaylon.

 

Funk’tional Nutrition Podcast

I had the great pleasure of joining Kyle Maiorana and Erin Holt of the Funk’tional Nutrition podcast this week to talk about what role yoga can play in healing chronic pain and illness.

Both women are registered dieticians who work to help their clients develop personalized plans for health that cover all aspects of their lives. I have a tremendous amount of respect for the work they do and wait anxiously each week for the release of the next episode. Topics cover everything from healthy fats to good sources of animal protein, and from the benefits of CBD oil to understanding diet culture. They also host people in the fields of health and wellness to share their unique areas of expertise.

You’ll find the information in this podcast to be science-based and designed to help develop a life of health that supports all of the amazing things you love to do on a daily basis. In Erin’s words, “I don’t teach people how to diet. I teach people how to EAT.”

Our episode covers how this yoga works, back pain, chronic pain, yoga and autoimmune disorders, and much, much more. Take a listen here.