It’s been a while since Bikram has done an interview so if you haven’t got an opinion about the man this new one, with the Chicago Tribune in advance of his workshop there next weekend, should help. There’s not much he hasn’t said before including the usual reference to “American circus yoga” but aside from saying there is “no crime” in India the shock-inducing rhetoric is minimal. My favorite quote is his response when asked why he’s so strict with his teachers,

In India we say an empty barn is much better than one full of naughty cows. I control my kingdom like a gangster.

I guess I should start calling him ‘Don’ instead of ‘Boss.’

Talking with “hot” yoga founder Bikram Choudhury

Friend –

I’m about to take the stage in St. Paul and announce that we have won the Democratic nomination for President of the United States.

It’s been a long journey, and we should all pause to thank Hillary Clinton, who made history in this campaign. Our party and our country are better off because of her.

I want to make sure you understand what’s ahead of us. Earlier tonight, John McCain outlined a vision of America that’s very different from ours — a vision that continues the disastrous policies of George W. Bush.

But this is our moment. This is our time. Our time to turn the page on the policies of the past and bring new energy and new ideas to the challenges we face. Our time to offer a new direction for the country we love.

It’s going to take hard work, but thanks to you and millions of other donors and volunteers, no one has ever been more prepared for such a challenge.

Thank you for everything you’ve done to get us here. Let’s keep making history.

Barack

When I was in the Bikram Yoga teacher training program Bikram talked a lot about celebrities and athletes who practiced at his studio, one of whom, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, brought his whole family to the studio. I’ve heard that Jabbar’s son went so far as to become a certified instructor and later won second place in the International Yoga Asana Championship (no link because I can’t find any). Abdul-Jabbar is inarguably one of the most well-known and respected athletes of all time. He’s in his fifties and retired as a professional athlete but he still practices yoga daily. And he blogs for the LA Times. And in a recent blog entry he has some inspiring words about yoga, including Bikram Yoga. I’ve pulled an excerpt below in which he offers some encouraging advice for those just getting started. The article is titled, “Fit after 50: Staying flexible with yoga,” but his suggestions are appropriate for any age.

1. Be consistent. Any new endeavor requires a period of commitment. At first, you may feel awkward or self-conscious, but promise yourself that you’ll stick with it for two months. At the same time, to receive the most benefits, you’ll need to practice yoga at least three times a week.

2. It’s not a competition. As a beginner, your body needs a period of adjustment as it adapts to new demands. Don’t push yourself beyond your limits just because you see others able to do what you can’t. We don’t throw the teen that just got his driver’s license into the Indy 500. Take your time.

3. Practice with a friend. It’s easier to keep motivated if you have someone you work out with. So, if you intend to take a yoga class at your fitness club, or practice at home with a DVD, see if you can get a friend to practice with you.

With all our talk of mindfulness I thought some of you would appreciate this video. I passed the test and and then laughed at myself for missing the obvious. It’s also a worthy public service announcement.

…we can.

I don’t usually link to articles not specifically related to yoga and you may initially think this is such an article but if you think about it, yoga = peace.

What the anti-war community needs to do is convince the majority of Americans that simply being forced to engage in a war—any war—is a defeat. One need not count bodies or measure areas of land occupied by troops to determine “victory”. The fact that the U.S. is forced to expend lives and treasure in violent conflict with others should be viewed as a failure—a failure of American ideology or policy or diplomacy or execution. If the U.S. were really doing everything the right way, we would not need to engage in military action against others—at least we would not be the ones initiating that action. Acts of violence are more likely to cause problems than to solve them, in addition to being far more costly than any other means of resolving a problem.

The article is simply titled, Peace.

The 630 muscles in my body have turned to jelly, enough sweat is pouring off my skin to fill Lake Lanier, and my heart, which could earn guest work in a Poe story at this point, is about to explode.

Everyone else is chanting “Ommmmmmm” or “Namaste.” But the only mantra racing through my head is four monosyllabic words: Must… get… to… door.

The article is in The Emory Wheel but the guy must not have attended our studio which is directly across the street from Emory’s Clairmont Campus… we don’t chant and our clientele look more like your typical omnivore. The rest of it sounds about right for a first time Bikram Yoga experience but don’t worry — the first class is always the hardest.

When you read it, look carefully the illustration.

Someone alerted me to the MSNBC article, Moved to tears: Workouts and waterworks. It’s not specifically about Bikram Yoga but I’ve had my own emotional moments in class and I’ve witnessed first hand the emotional release that can occur during practice for many people. It’s why our mission statement begins, “To provide a safe and supportive environment…”. The articles talks about some of the reasons why such strong feelings can sometimes arise during movement work.

“We use our bodies to physically tense up against pain or negative experiences,” says Karol Ward, a therapist in private practice in New York City. “Then someone is in a movement class… and that emotion can come to the surface,” she says.

…

In the field of “body psychotherapy,” Ward and other therapists maintain that the body holds on to feelings, even if it seems the mind has dealt with them. “So if a person has the opportunity to relax that area, whatever has been held there can come to the surface,” Ward says. “The body wants to complete the emotional experience.”

Moved to tears: Workouts and waterworks

This is early warning. Starting sometime in the near future we are going to stop selling bottled water at our studio. I have always been uncomfortable selling bottled water but have considered it a necessity. I no longer believe that. Municipal tap water is actually more highly regulated than bottled water and much bottled water turns out to be nothing more than filtered tap water. Bottled water has become a gigantic industry with many harmful effects on the environment.

Americans went through about 50 billion plastic water bottles last year, 167 for each person. Durable, lightweight containers manufactured just to be discarded. Water bottles are made of totally recyclable polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic, so we share responsibility for their impact: Our recycling rate for PET is only 23%, which means we pitch into landfills 38 billion water bottles a year–more than $1 billion worth of plastic.

If you’re like me, you started drinking bottled water largely due to health concerns about the quality of tap water but those fears are unfounded. Bottled water isn’t usually any different or better than tap water.

We buy bottled water because we think it’s healthy. Which it is, of course: Every 12-year-old who buys a bottle of water from a vending machine instead of a 16-ounce Coke is inarguably making a healthier choice. But bottled water isn’t healthier, or safer, than tap water. Indeed, while the United States is the single biggest consumer in the world’s $50 billion bottled-water market, it is the only one of the top four–the others are Brazil, China, and Mexico–that has universally reliable tap water. Tap water in this country, with rare exceptions, is impressively safe. It is monitored constantly, and the test results made public.

Also consider

24% of the bottled water we buy is tap water repackaged by Coke and Pepsi.

Bottled water may seem relatively inexpensive compared to other bottled drinks like juice and soda but it’s outrageously expensive compared to tap.

And for this healthy convenience, we’re paying what amounts to an unbelievable premium. You can buy a half- liter Evian for $1.35–17 ounces of water imported from France for pocket change. That water seems cheap, but only because we aren’t paying attention.

In San Francisco, the municipal water comes from inside Yosemite National Park. It’s so good the EPA doesn’t require San Francisco to filter it. If you bought and drank a bottle of Evian, you could refill that bottle once a day for 10 years, 5 months, and 21 days with San Francisco tap water before that water would cost $1.35. Put another way, if the water we use at home cost what even cheap bottled water costs, our monthly water bills would run $9,000.

These quotes are taken from a lengthy Fast Company article called Message in a Bottle. It largely looks at the issue in economic terms but it also highlights some of the human costs of the bottled water industry.

…in Fiji, a state-of-the-art factory spins out more than a million bottles a day of the hippest bottled water on the U.S. market today, while more than half the people in Fiji do not have safe, reliable drinking water. Which means it is easier for the typical American in Beverly Hills or Baltimore to get a drink of safe, pure, refreshing Fiji water than it is for most people in Fiji.

The author almost sounds like he’s writing for an environmental magazine instead of a business magazine.

Bottled water is not a sin. But it is a choice.

Before we discontinue the sale of bottled water we need to do two things. First is to find an inexpensive source for reusable bottles to accommodate people who come unprepared. The SIGG bottles we sell are great but we don’t want to make you purchase a $15 product just because you were running late and may have left your reusable bottle at home or in the car. I’m looking for something that we will be able to sell for only a couple bucks. The second thing we need to do is replace at least one of the bathroom faucets with something that will allow you to easily refill your bottles. Until then, please don’t purchase bottled water from us unless you absolutely have to and, if you do, please reuse and recycle your disposable water bottles.

[update - we have a filtered water fountain in the yoga room, we found a source for inexpensive re-usable bottles and changed the faucet in one of the bathrooms (not filtered). Cheers.]

Craig Villani is one of Bikram’s senior instructors and the Director of Education for the Bikram Yoga Teacher Training Program. He’s got an article posted on a site called, Find Bliss, that provides a concise overview of the philosophy behind Bikram Yoga. Like the Bikram Series itself, the article is well suited for beginners — i.e. those with little or no knowledge of or experience with yoga — but it also contains some insights for current practitioners who wish to deepen their understanding of the Bikram method.

One of the most misunderstood and sometimes controversial aspects of Bikram Yoga is the emphasis on discipline. If you’ve ever been to a Bikram studio, including ours, you will be familiar with the frequent admonitions to, “be on your mat and ready to practice on time,” “don’t leave the room,” “don’t drink water during the first four postures,” “be still in between the postures,” and so on. These are not arbitrary directives and they speak to the primacy of the mental aspects of a hatha yoga practice. In his article Craig illustrates this by citing “five steps [that] are woven into the fabric of the classroom experience:

1. Faith
2. Self-control or moral discipline
3. Determination or will-power
4. Concentration
5. Patience”

He also describes the intentions behind a classical hatha yoga practice:

Classical yoga asanas were originally developed with the intention of holistic integration, affecting positive change in all bodily systems by addressing their energetic roots. Hatha yoga, when practiced properly, should not damage the body. The primary focus of true hatha yoga is to heal and maintain the physical body through balancing the latent potential for strength and flexibility, ultimately leading to the experience of a happier, healthier life. After all, the motivation underlying the practice of asana is for the aspirant to receive the unique physical, mental and emotional benefits associated with the expression of each posture. Those who insist upon seeing the posture as the object of their practice may needlessly continue to injure their bodies for the sake of performance. In Bikram Yoga, the emphasis is placed upon the healing benefits attained through maintaining depth of expression relative to proper application of form. Thus, the posture is never seen as the object – the body is the object.

It is from this background that Bikram Yoga was developed and it is with this in mind that we are always saying, “anybody can do it.” Those who continue to think of hatha yoga as only a measure of physical ability (flexibility, strength, balance) are missing the forest for the trees. Yes, we focus on postures, and specifically on our own ability to perform the postures, but the real benefits come from the insights we gain into the nature of our bodies as well as a deeper understanding of how our mind relates to the body.

Read the full article at findbliss.com.

PS - I was taken aback when Craig wrote that Bikram has been, “professionally teaching hatha yoga from the age of six” but I’m pretty certain that’s a typo. I assume it should read “sixteen”.

A tip of the water bottle to Shasta for pointing me to the article.