Why I trained as a Hot Yoga Teacher
When I first trained as a yoga teacher, I chose a school of hot yoga. Yoga in a heated room was popularised by Bikram Choudhry in the 1970s as an attempt to recreate the hot, humid conditions of India, the birthplace of yoga. For me, it was a way of going back to source.
Working with the incredible Dylan Ayaloo in 2019, I joined other trainees in long early morning classes, often spending over four hours on the mat, in the hot room, before breakfast. I loved its deeply immersive and meditative effects. When you surrender to heat and sink into the practice of yoga, something very profound happens. Not just on the physical level, but also for the mind. After a month of teacher training and over a hundred hours of expertly guided hot yoga practice, I had gained strength, stamina, flexibility and, most remarkably, an intense feeling of mental clarity. I later added more Hot Yoga teacher training hours with the Spiralling Crow school in Oxford. Suffice to say, I was hooked.
While it’s not everyone’s steaming cup of hot yogi tea, here are just some of the exciting research-based benefits that are reported with Hot Yoga:
Flexibility: warmed muscles, joints and connective tissues get to experience deeper stretches in the hot room. As the mind adapts to these new bodily achievements, we become ‘re-wired’ to repeat them, improving range and flexibility.
Deep cleaning: not just the obvious sweat detox but self-cleaning at the cellular level. There’s an increasing body of research on the impact of heat on our health – processes like ‘autophagy’ which, when triggered by high temperatures, clears out debris and unwanted or damaged proteins from tissues and cells.
Anxiety and mood: apart from the psychological impact of facing and overcoming the challenge of the heated room, there are profound brain chemistry changes that happen in heat. Apparently, uncomfortable heat gets registered in the brain with the release of dynorphin, a neuro messenger that says ‘ouch – stop’ but dynorphin also increases the sensitivity of the brain to its ‘nice twin’ endorphin (a pleasure messenger). So, when you leave the studio feelings of pleasure are enhanced, hence that floaty, euphoric, post class high.
If you are serious about your yoga, do give Hot Yoga a try. You may just find it’s the new level you were looking for.
You can join me in the hot room at Prana Yoga Oxford every Monday morning at 10.30am. Book HERE