28/07/2025
Ninety minutes it is !
It takes 90 minutes to do 2 sets of 26 postures and 2 breathing exercises. Nobody has time for things, you have to make time, you have to make changes and sometimes rearrange and prioritize things that are important.
Bikram Yoga is important. Why? Because you are.
No yoga practice, no fitness regime, no toughmudder or ironman experience gives you what Bikram Yoga has to offer. What is that offer? It’s LIFE! The life of every single muscle, bone, joint, ligament, tissue, organ, gland, including all the systems in your body. The practice starts with pranayama breathing exercise which introduces you to your lungs. Then in half moon pose you say hello to your spine by moving it to its full range of motion. In awkward pose you warm up the big muscles and in eagle pose you exercise all the major joints, 6 on each side of your body. Then comes the cardio series and the extension and the compression which collectively, after having done two sets of each posture in the standing series, warms up the spine and takes 50-55 mins. At the hour you must have performed your first sit-up and you’re setting up cobra pose. Then you do four backbending compression postures on the floor and that’s called the spine strengthening series. Added bonus on top of all that, fixed firm pose is also a backbend compression for the spine. That’s 5 backbend poses, 2 sets each makes it 10 postures, back to back. But you’re able to do it because you invested the time and energy in the first 50-55 mins of your Bikram Yoga practice. Bikram would say, “that was the warm up, the yoga begins now.” 🙂 So students practicing a 60 mins class in a mildly warm room come out and say wow that was hard, Lisa Simpson has some bad news for you. You paid for a “Bikram Hot Yoga” class but you got everything but Bikram Yoga.
The first 60 mins of a Bikram Yoga class is warming up for the last 30 mins of the yoga. If you leave after 60 mins, you warmed up but you left before the yoga even began.
Practicing Bikram Yoga is challenging, teaching Bikram Yoga is even more challenging than that but the most difficult thing to do is to convince the world that the 90 mins is the right way because it’s the hard way. In a world of instant coffee, instant messaging, instant results, how can you convince the ultra sensitive people of the world that the longer duration class is better for you regardless of how fast you get your coffee and how quick you communicate and get things done. It’s important to know that no pain means no gain. Unfortunately there is no such thing as instant yoga and Bikram Yoga is only 90 minutes.
