Last night we went to Bikram Yoga Brisbane - “Brisbane’s Hot Spot”.

I’m on a two week break from the yoga teacher training so I’m at a loose end with my led classes, and someone at work told me that Bikram Hot Yoga was in Bardon, near Red Hill, and that they heat the room up to 37 degrees and lock the doors.

Well, you know that that got my interest. I checked out the website and saw the offer that Laxmivan in Newcastle told me he copied to get his yoga school up and running last year - $17 for unlimited classes over 10 days, which carries me over to term 2 of my teacher training.

Elliott and I rocked up at 6:15 pm last night and joined the queue filing past reception. When we got up to the reception desk we signed the disclaimers and were issued our membership cards. They have a flat panel LCD with some customer management software running. We have discussed using a bar code scanner and membership cards at Atma Yoga, and I’ll keep looking into that. With few students it’s more organic and personal to not have it, but when we start dealing with hundreds a day we’re going to need it.

The mood outside was part gym, part cult - or maybe that was just my imagination. The brochure carries the advisory: “Warning: Seriously Addictive!”

The website, the brochure, and the studio itself are pink and gold.

You have to take your own mat, a towel to put over it, and a bottle of water. You can hire mats and towels at $2 each, and you can buy water.

A board in the reception area had the names of students who are doing the “60 day challenge” - come every day for 60 days and you get a free month. You also get the benefit of 60 days of practice, obviously.

There are lockers where you lock up your gear and take the key into the class with you.

The Class

If the outside mood was part gym, part cult, the inside was pure S&M dungeon. Afterwards I joked with Elliott - “Hey man, I can fire my dominatrix and start coming here. All I need to do is imagine the ‘You’ve been a baaaad boy’.”

First of all when we went in it was like going into a sauna, like Mensana. Dimly lit and hot. We laid our mats out with the other students (who eventually reached 30 in number), and laid down on our towels over them.

One wall was taken up with a mirror that ran the entire length of the classroom.

The teacher was Jan, who I later learned was half German, half French, which probably contributed to the dominatrix mood. When she came into the room she cranked the lights up to full, blinding me, and then it was all on.

Having watched some videos of Power Yoga classes, after going to this class I have to say that Atma Power Yoga’s lineage has Bikram in its family tree somewhere very close by.

Talking continuously, cajoling and urging us on, Jan ran us through the 26 posture Bikram Yoga sequence in sets of two, all precisely timed and expertly described.

Now I can see how Atma Power Yoga can succeed here at Atma Yoga Brisbane.

Number 1: Talk continuously. Don’t let people internalize and space out. Keep the pace fast.

Number 2: Punish the people. Some people are not going to like Power Yoga. They just won’t like it. Don’t try to accomodate them. Here is what you say: “If this pose is a little too hard, then try…. coming to a different class!”

Of course you encourage everyone, but this is not for the “Gentle Hatha” crowd. This is pure passion, unadulterated with any tinge of goodness or ignorance

Encourage the people who come, and make it POWER Yoga. I think that this might be my calling here. “Sitapati’s 90 minute Hour of Power”. Our heating system at Atma Yoga goes up to 30 degrees (I checked it after the Bikram class last night), but as Andy suggested, we can throw in some free standing heaters. Maybe ones with naked flames. “Brisbane’s Independently Verified Hottest Yoga”. Longer, hotter, pinker, golder… Anyway, let’s see what a year of teacher training brings.

The Bikram class was intense. I have a pitta body - high in the fire element, so I was sweating like anything in no time. As the class progressed my heart rate climbed. Elliott, who is recovering from bronchitis, flaked out for a while on his mat.

I also felt like I needed a rest, but I also felt that if I dropped out of the flow of the class I wouldn’t be able to get back up again. As I lay there in one brief resting posture, looking up at the ceiling and feeling my heart pounding in my chest, I thought: “Man, people could die in this class.”

That’s very inspirational.

Anyway, I was back there this morning at 6 am for another round, like any true believer with another potential convert in tow. This stuff is good. Today I got up at 4 am feeling energized and not at all sore. I’ll be pushing to do a class a day over the eight remaining days, and I’ll probably switch to a class a week after that.

Do One Thing - Do It Well

Bikram Yoga - the sequence and the business model - is based on doing one thing and doing it well. All the schools whose websites I’ve looked at, look tight. Their facilities are purpose built and streamlined to what they do. Everything is low fat, high efficiency. The only way to make the registration processing faster would have been to have bar code scanning, or a dedicated receptionist (that would be fat).

The sequence is tight. It is suspiciously similar to the Atma Power Yoga sequence, but it was delivered with more authority than any Atma Power Yoga class I’ve been to, which may affect my perception of it. After my eight days on this I’ll try the Atma Power Yoga sequence again and see how it stacks up. The Bikram sequence feels right. It hits all the areas of the body. There is no minute alignment adjustment, but amazingly, like Prabhupada’s books, it is accessible to beginners and advantageous to the more experienced.

The main thing is to make your body strong and flexible, and the sequence does this. There is no discussion at the level that we get at our “Alignment in Practice” classes on the training course - but it’s not necessary. This is not the thinking man’s dance floor - it’s pure gabba. It’s not Dream Theater - it’s Motorhead. This is Everyman’s Yoga. It’s a tool that people can use for specific outcomes. It’s a drop of nectar brought back from the ocean.

Yeah man, for the next 8 days, I’m drinking the Bikram Kool-Aid.

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Here are some links to the Bikram Yoga websites:

Bikram Yoga Brisbane
Bikram Yoga Wellington
Bikram Yoga Auckland