Something for Everybody- Shattered Paradigms in Yoga Class

Last Spring I began to expand my Yogic horizons by exploring new classes. I was attracted to Bikram Yoga first of all because it is a style of yoga and secondly, because it is done in a heated room- ahhh.

I went a couple of times to a great studio called Bikram Yoga Bloomington in Minnesota. At that time I was in my second and last year of 500-hour yoga teacher training, so I was already getting my daily dose of yoga.

Well, in December the teacher training program came to a bitter-sweet end and although I am continuing advanced classes with my insightful teacher Laura Erdman-Luntz, I had a desire to go back to Bikram Yoga.

It's like a mini tropical vacation when I step into the hot studio. My body becomes languid in the heat. For me, at first, it was an almost masochistic experience moving through strenuous poses, holding, pushing further while my muscles quivered from exertion and my body poured sweet. But, this is what I wanted, to be challenged further in yoga, and get a good detox.

I had done all of the 26 postures that are done sequentially in a Bikram class many times before (it's a very ingenious routine in combination with the heat, I must say), but some of the instructions were a bit different from how I had learned. In my first couple of classes I secretly insisted (since I'm an educated yogini, haha ;-)) to do the poses as I knew how. For, at that point I had been in advanced teacher yoga training for nearly three years straight not including other classes I had attended!

It wasn't until I returned this winter that I allowed myself to listen to and trust these experienced teachers and I listed to how they knew how to do the poses. Much to my surprise and pleasure, I could do the poses with more ease and less painful aftermath. Granted, in my several months of absence, my body may have strengthened, but I feel that the poses changed for me because I changed the way I looked at and approached the poses.

Everything in life has it's purpose and place. Just because something is different, or taught differently doesn't make it any less significant or wrong (in my case). It's just different and sometimes it is so for a very good reason. There are people in this class to whom I would not even think of teaching such poses - and my paradigms were shattered when I began to hear stories of accomplishment in fitness and health they directly correlated to the Bikram class.

There is a little something for everyone. That is why there are so many kinds of vehicles, styles of jeans, houses, yoga- and dare I say- religions. They serve a purpose for each of us!

When the student is ready, the teacher appears, or the student appears at the teacher's doorstep! A teacher does not choose the student- the student finds what is right for them at that time! Everything and everyone has their purpose!