LIFESTYLE

Can 90 minutes striking poses in a sauna really give Anna Britten an energy boost?

It’s Saturday morning, in an upstairs studio in the St Nicholas Market district. I am flushed bright red, on all fours, and my nose is inches away from the dripping crotch of a man in swimming trunks. I’m in an Eric Prydz video on slo-mo. To think that someone, somewhere, I think, does this regularly with Ryan Giggs.

Giggsy, Prince Harry, Andy Murray and Goldie all swear by this. In New York you can, apparently, do it on every street corner. It’s Bikram yoga – and it’s unlike any other fitness class you’ve ever taken.

You thought the half marathon was sweaty? That’s nothing. Here, sweat is biblically proportioned. No pore is left undrained. So much perspiration is produced, in fact, that Health & Safety legislation dictates the floors are carpeted not laminated, to avoid slippage. Some people’s towels are wringing wet. The dehumidifying unit sloshes like a water mill.

Bikram yoga takes 26 postures of traditional Hatha yoga and performs them for 90 minutes in 105 degrees fahrenheit. Controversial inventor Bikram Choudhury, who set up the first Bikram yoga centre in San Francisco in the 1970s (and today charges followers a fee to use his name), believed Western yoga had gone soft – that the ancient discipline could only be carried out effectively in a similarly hot and humid climate to that in which it was forged. A warm body, explains Bikram Yoga Bristol co-owner and former TV executive Georgina Gray, is a flexible body. “Like putting metal in a furnace,” adds her partner, Yorkshireman and ex-graphic designer Carl.

There are reportedly several other medical benefits too – Carl talks much of thyroids, calcium and “high-speed blood” during his class. But I suspect much of the appeal for the students – equally split between the sexes – is the quasi-masochistic element. Carl’s great at cheerleading us through the tougher sections (“The strength of the Bengal tiger and the determination of the British bulldog!”). Bikram yoga’s detractors complain it neglects the spiritual element of yoga. Georgina and Carl argue – and I fervently agree – that many people simply don’t want to have Buddhist philosophies poured down their throats to enjoy a good stretch. That doesn’t mean they’re in any way soulless – friendships and love affairs have flourished here, I’m told.

Friday nights are for ‘donation classes’, which raise funds for local charities (Feb was St Paul’s’ One25; March is Bedminster’s Dance Voice). “Bristol’s sense of community is so strong,” says Georgina. “We can’t give classes for free, but with the donation classes we can give something back.”

Having spent the first quarter of my class thinking “this is mental” (“It’s very unEnglish,” admits Polish-born Georgina), I relax and begin to marvel at the flexibility of some of my fellow perspirers. By the end, I have stretched and twisted so much I feel an inch taller. I sleep like a log that night and the next day feel so energized I get up hours earlier than I normally would on a Sunday, and delay breakfast to go running. This is pretty much what Carl and Georgina predicted. After three classes, they promise, even the heaviest, stiffest person will feel transformed. And under no obligation to buy incense and prayer flags on the way home.

BIKRAM YOGA BRISTOL FIRST FLOOR, 38 HIGH ST (BETWEEN OFFICE ANGELS & ST NICHOLAS MARKET ENTRANCE), BRISTOL, BS1 2AW. FFI: 0117 9300 454 OR WWW.BIKRAMYOGABRISTOL.COM INTRODUCTORY OFFER (UNTIL END APRIL): £20 FOR TWO WEEKS’ UNLIMITED CLASSES. THEN TWO MONTHS’ UNLIMITED CLASSES FOR THE PRICE OF ONE, OR 20% DISCOUNT. CONCS AVAILABLE.
 

Copyright Anna Britten 2011

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