YOU HAVE NO KNEE (Bikram Yoga)

I see her surveying the hot sauces at the grocery store. Mary janes, tight black pants, pea coat, long neck, and cropped blonde hair.  I recognize that long neck, but her face is only as familiar as a footprint in gathering snow. Still I am certain: I know this woman from somewhere.

We meet eyes. She looks me down and up and down. 

“I know you from somewhere,” I say.

“Yeah,” she says. “Bikram?”

“That must be it.” And I say it: “I almost didn’t recognize you with your clothes on.”

She laughs. “It’s a funny thing, isn’t it?”   

And you know you do Bikram (Hot Yoga) more than anything else within the community when you recognize a woman better when she’s almost naked than you do when she’s fully clothed.

Now, in “half a second” (as long as the teachers say it should take to “use your 100% strength”), I mentally pair her long neck with the purple bikini–top covering boobs the size of nectarines. And then I place her as the yogi who practices in the back left corner of the room Mondays 4pm and who I’ve never seen drink water or wipe her sweat when you’re not supposed to. 

I’m unfamiliar with this woman’s face because, in the grocery store, she’s smiling; she isn’t suffering. In Bikram, everybody suffers to some degree –– even the women who never drink water or move when they’re not supposed to.  Even the ones who always lock their knees when they’re told to.  We’re all red and with sweat forking from the crowns of our heads to the tips of our toes in the humid, 105-degree room for the duration of the “90-minute moving meditation” that doesn’t usually feel like meditation but rather torture/ masochism. (Once you enter the room, you’re not allowed to leave until it’s over. Unless something other than sweat is coming out of your body, which is what one instructor conceded after I vomited a little into my towel during the spine–strengthening series).

I mentioned “locking the knee . . .”

LOCK YOUR KNEE is a phrase with which Bikram instructors direct yogis in many of the 26 total postures in the sequence. “Locking you knee” means contracting your quadricep and lifting your kneecap. The most popular school of thought is that this is dangerous and you shouldn’t do it. But, based on its distortion of the English language, Hot Yoga never went to school itself (and yet the certification costs $10,000). The teachers recite a memorized script written by a man named Bikram who says things like “touch your exactly forehead to your knee.” This is the knee that “doesn’t exist” even though you’re supposed be locking and touching your forehead to it:

Focus one point on your standing, locked-out knee in the mirror. Your leg is solid, one piece, unbroken, lamppost, YOU HAVE NO KNEE. Lock your knee, lock your knee, LAST CHANCE: LOCK YOUR KNEE.

Then they tell you that, in addition to having “no knee,” you also have “no mind.” You’re meant to simply breathe, move with the dialogue, and stand in stillness between postures. But how can a writer like myself quit thinking in the presence of such crude syntactical and "semantical" errors?  My college degree is in English and my own teacher training in “normal yoga,” and, yet, here I balance on one leg with a locked-out knee taking orders from instructors who say things like “from the side, your body looks like a perfect Japanese Ham Sandwich –– no gaps for light or air.” My boyfriend has been to Japan; there are no Japanese Ham Sandwiches let alone perfect ones. This pose is one of the first in the series, and so, with my forehead pressed against my shins, I’m not yet miserable enough to smirk.

Like my shins conceal my smirk, my sweat later conceals my tears. I’ve silently cried my fair share in between poses during floor series.  Bikram teachers attribute this to a release of emotions stored in the spine. But really I think it’s just that it’s hotter on the floor and extremely uncomfortable lying on your stomach with your mouth pressed into the mat and palms faced down underneath your torso as you bring your heels to touch and lift your legs to a minimum 45-degree angle (with locked-out knees, of course). Yes, I cried the most between February and May during my breakup, but I ascribe this to the belly–down suffering compounding with the suffering in my relationship (which I at least never experienced on my stomach, since I am not a stomach sleeper and never will be and even resent men who are because they don’t cuddle enough . . . ).

So why have I spent the past eight months showing up to Hot Yoga 4–6 X/week? It’s not because I enjoy hanging out with almost naked women and elderly men (I forgot to mention that the classes are sprinkled with old men in banana-hammocks). It’s no longer because I’m an exercise addict and this type of yoga burns 600 –– 1,000 calories if you’re pushing it to your “maximum,” which I always am in each set of every posture (unless I am dehydrated and seeing stars). I don’t have theories about what the heat does or doesn’t do or enjoy debating the issue.

To start, I practice because I resonate with at least one thing Bikram says: “If you can, you must.” I can do it physically and mentally and “schedually,” and so I do it. And I feel lighter and a little euphoric afterwards. I feel energized and ready.  So why not?

Hot Yoga has also taught me to live in accordance with what one of my favorite teachers says: “Hard way, right way.” Practicing this in the studio has been empowering.  No matter how uncomfortable, I show up and then stay in the room for the whole 90 minutes –– moving my body according to some gobbledygook that makes me feel fantastic afterwards. This cultivates discipline. It would be easier to chill the fuck out with a beer and some version of a real Japanese Ham Sandwich, wouldn’t it? And when you keep falling out of a pose or sweat stings your eyes, it would be easier to escape to the bathroom even though you don’t actually have to go.  Yes, I suffer in class –– some days more than others depending on how well I have hydrated or eaten (nothing like Bikram to force you to confront how you’re taking care of yourself). I suffer depending on how willing I am to allow the uncomfortable sensations to exist without attaching negative emotions to them.

But, like everybody else, I also struggle outside of class. And I find myself struggling less and less in both places as I learn how to respond to situations that might otherwise generate suffering –– a choice. (After all, practicing and emotionally resisting sensations that arise are choices). Because of Bikram, I have a greater ability to sit and have difficult conversations when it would be easier to avoid them. To confront and discuss my issues while remaining authentic. To help friends and to follow through and to recycle (I’ll be honest and say that, in the past, I didn’t always recycle when it was inconvenient).  I can be uncomfortable and know it’s okay –– that it will pass. I can look myself in the eye.  I can better listen, wait, and be patient.  A big component and outcome of the practice is patience. I understand that my best is different each day and that sometimes I have to back off and sit on my mat waiting for the change that always comes. For me –– a perfectionist –– backing off can be more uncomfortable than staying in the pose. 

BUT REAL LIFE ISN’T COMFORTABLE.  It isn’t always bringing you palms faced– down underneath your torso and then pressing your mouth into a mat as you lift your locked-out legs to a 45-degree angle. But we lose people we love, get too hot and too cold, struggle with finances, deal with difficult co-workers and family members, sit in traffic, wait in lines, get sick, get rejected, and age. We try not to focus on such things in staying positive, but they are present and we might as well acknowledge and deal with them with as much grace and as little resistance as possible.  And with or without locked-out knees. Doesn’t really matter. For me, in the end, Hot Yoga isn’t about the knees.  I laugh whenever I tell my boyfriend I’m going to yoga, and he says: “REMEMBER: YOU HAVE NO KNEE.” He has been to class with me and enjoys it; as a former firefighter and a welder, he can take the heat. 

Back to the fellow yogi surveying the hot sauces in the grocery store. Maybe she’s picking it up for her husband or maybe for herself (given her tolerance for discomfort, I wouldn’t be surprised). By the way, I know some men who openly measure their manliness according to the grade of hot sauce they consume. I wonder how they’d do in Hot Yoga . . .

 P.S: I’ll soon be teaching Power Yoga in five places around town, which means I’ll be more involved in the community. But the yoga I teach is unheated and people aren’t as good as naked so I will start recognizing people for more than isolated body parts