What’s Hot Now: The 30 Day Hot Yoga Challenge

Hot 26 Yoga, also called Bikram מורת יוגה, is based on a sequence of yoga poses popularized by Bikram Choudhury of India and brought to the US in the early 1970s. In this invigorating yoga class, the room is heated to over 100 degrees to allow the body to move deeper into postures, with less possibility for injury. The yoga sequence is carefully chosen from among the many poses and their variations that belong to the 5000 year old yoga lineage of India.

These yoga poses are derived from traditional hatha yoga postures, known as “asanas.” What makes Hot 26 Yoga different is the sweat and even tears it has been known to evoke from practitioners…and the huge files of anecdotal evidence of healing in all directions.

The legendary figure of hot yoga is Bikram Choudury, a yoga Champion and award winning body builder, who accidentally dropped barbels on his legs during one competition and was told by his doctors that he would not walk again.

This yoga was actually developed for Bikram by his Guru, Bishnu Ghosh, who created the sequence and set the heat and humidity specifically to heal Bikram. Needless to say, today Bikram is not just walking – he is strutting, the picture of youth at well over 60 years old. Bikram is the flamboyant yoga Guru who is anything but shy about the miracles of this yoga.

The yoga postures use proper alignment and holding of the poses for particular time periods to create a “tourniquet” effect, a damming up of blood and bodily fluids followed by a release and rush of those fluids through particular body parts. The series works against gravity to strengthen the bones, and is actually said to work every muscle, bone, system, and cell of the body from bones to skin, in just 90 minutes,

Thousands worldwide have taken on the 30 Day Hot Yoga Challenge. Many talk and blog openly about the healing they personally experienced. Migraines are cured. Lupus is under control. Sciatica magically disappeared. Back pain is eased. Bum knees are healed. Eyesight is reported to be improved. Sex drive has increased (this may have something to do with the skimpy outfits, sweaty bodies, and bending in hot yoga class).

No western medical doctor will confirm hot 26 yoga as a cure, and the advice often offered before each hot yoga class is to leave your complaints, excuses and ailments at the front door and enter the yoga room with an open mind.

This is a day-by-day commitment you must remake daily, as the first thing that happens for most is that all the excuses to not continue start to come to mind. I am always too busy. I can always be doing something more productive. I have too much work and too little time. I am tired. And I am not sick; I don’t have any ailments to heal or broken body parts to mend. I won’t get any of those miraculous healing – so what’s the point really?