Bikram Yoga Almost K*illed Me

Why no one tells you your body isn't made for western yoga practice

The Simpsons, 33 ep 5, ‘Lisa’s Belly’. Lisa Simpsons following a yoga meditation by body inclusive yoga teacher and influencer Jessamyn Stanley.

I went to a hot yoga class with my mother when I was still living in South Africa. This was before wide spread condemnation of Bikram yoga and its founder. We just wanted to try something new. The yoga studio was coded in bright white and grass green. I’m sure this was intended evoke a naturalistic vibe for the studio but instead the stark contrast and astroturf flashback green was rather unsettling. There were the usual slots for putting your shoes, a trickle of thin white women - muscle so tightly strung that breathing seemed impossible - and the faint smell of hot bodies covered by artificial sent as alluring as that golf course green blocks painted on the walls. We were not experienced yogis. I had tried to get into it multiple times but my body inevitably stopped working as soon as I made any progress. Anyone with a chronic illness has had the phrase, ‘Have you tried yoga?’ shoved down their throats. It has become a joke amongst the community. The Disability Services at the University of Oxford even had pins saying, ‘Yes, I’ve tried yoga’ at the welcome day event I attended in my first year. I regret not getting it, the pins I took were less antagonistic. The Bikram yoga trial was many years before when I was still trying to be an active sports bunny to fit in with all the gym experts I had in my friends group (I am not that person anymore thankfully). I had been told that the hot room was great for people with chronic pain because it allowed the muscle to be stretched in a safer environment. I don’t know who came up with that marketing but it worked on me. And so I found myself in the acidic yoga studio, anxious because of the negative experiences I had had with exercise to that point, but insistent that this would be the new way to lose weight without hurting my muscle and joints. Oh how wrong I was.

I don’t actually remember that much from the class. The haze of suffocating heat, unstoppable rivers of sweat and a very aggressive yoga instructor all fuzed into a rather traumatic experience. I couldn’t do most of the poses as a newby, which I thought would be expected. But the instructor got more and more frustrated with my inability to contort myself and as usual I was by far the worst in the class. Halfway through the class she opened a door at the back of the room to let in a breeze. I couldn’t feel anything from where I was surrendering my dignity in childs pose. The open door was the most welcome sight I have ever experienced, the promise of relief and fresh air to fill my aching lungs. I immediately moved to the door. The instructor had said that you can take the class as slow and easy as you wanted to. I didn’t think twice about going to cool down slightly. But just as soon as I reached the door the instructor screeched at me, her face now as red as mine, for me to return to my mat. A part of me felt angry and indignant that she thought she could act this way to her clients and stop me from looking for a break during the class, I wasn’t disturbing anyones practice. There were at least 15 people in that room consumed in the Bikram process. I trudged back to my mat, immediately feeling the heat takeover my normal bodily functions and tried not to cry during the rest of the class.

When it was over my mother and I left immediately, not staying to chatter with the gleaming bodies of seasoned pros and drink room temperature water from the water cooler. As soon as we made it home I began to feel slightly ill. I had followed the rules about when to ingest food and water before class to a ‘T’. I couldn’t understand why I was slightly nauseous and why the heat hadn’t left my body. Over the next twenty-four hours I mostly likely experienced some form of heat stroke. My body couldn’t handle the trial I had put it through. A heat that seemed to spring from inside my body wouldn’t give me a respite from the suffocating experience I had had in that yoga studio. My usual headache was replaced by a feverish fog that cold compresses could not relieve. And the feeling of being on the edge of vomiting did not go away. It took me a few days to recover and for my body temperature to return to normal. My mother had had similar symptoms and she is one of the healthiest people I knew. We were never going back no matter how many times we were told that we felt sick because we hadn’t followed the rules of pre- and post care. I wasn’t made for Bikram yoga. It was back to attempting the room temperature ones to find a practice that wasn’t painful and helped me to prove that I was just as fit and skinny as everyone around me.

Well I never found that practice. For a time when I was living in Stellenbosch I did have regular group classes which I attended with my friend. The instructor was a kind wandering soul who wore flowing bright clothes instead of leggings and a tight top. But my pain and sickness returned within a few months of starting this practice and I was not able to go back. I turned to pilates, the exercise made for those who are injured (apparently). However, here again I could never find a steady practice amongst my worsening physical and mental health. I did little sessions of yoga and pilates at home using the new exercise apps that had started to pop up on the App store. My inability to make a form of exercise stick had become an issue in my life and to some around me. It was a sign of my weakness and laziness. God I hate gym culture. It has taken me years to give myself the grace to rest, sleep, and listen to my body instead of others. And through this I found the culture of chronically ill and fat women (I still don’t feel comfortable using that term even if it is what these women use as a reclamation of power in a weight loss obsessed world) who post images and reels of themselves doing yoga. They would use blocks, bands, and pillows in a way that made yoga work for them and their unique bodies. This was so different to what I had always been told about using these items as aids for newcomers. The women I saw on Instagrams were expert yogis, able to lift their bodies and hold poses with smiles and comfy clothes that didn’t try to hide their bodies. Many of these women are black - it is true that much social change is built on the bodies of black women, something we don’t often acknowledge. In South Africa the yoga scene was painfully white middle class thin women. I hope this has changed now but when I started to search for these inclusive forms of yoga it was refreshing to see the diversity of women’s bodies creating inclusive and kind spaces.

I was still not able to get into my own steady practice. And as my pain got worse and my hands became too damaged to successfully hold even the simplest pose I had to admit to myself that yoga was not going to cure my pain. Maybe it even made it worse. As I gained more weight, my body changing completely from the young women who tried to pass as a fitness junky. I also felt less able to do poses that asked me to lift my own body weight. Even as I saw other women achieve this online I couldn’t help but feel that I was getting too big to do yoga even if I wanted to. And then I saw a reel on Instagram from one of these empowered yogis that changed the way I viewed yoga forever. In her reel, with the caption ‘LETS TALK MATHS SHALL WE?’, yoga teacher Lucy Bishop was discussing how you need to work more on your strength if you are taller or bigger than regular small yogis to complement your practice. She said that yoga is much harder for women who aren’t naturaly thin or small because you are lifting more weight then they are. It takes a greater amount of strength to get to the same proficiency as a smaller person. This was something most women were not told when they started yoga which is why she was making this reel, to give advice on what sort of strength training helps you to be progress in your yoga practice.

I felt betrayed.

My entire experience of yoga was based around me being too lazy to reach proficiency. If I tried harder I would become thin and supple. The goal of yoga had been sold as achieving the appearance of the trainers. TV shows would make remarks about yoga bodies and men’s desirability of women who fit this image. And there were also the underlying tones that women who did not achieve this were failures and unattractive. But here was a women, just as proficient as the trainers I had come across over the years, breaking down all this rhetoric, and my own lingering shame at my failure to attain this level of attraction and fitness.

Why aren’t we told that different body sizes will need more or less work to progress in yoga? Why is the prevailing image of the yoga instructor one rhetorically assumed to be white, thin, and small in tight clothes? And why is success at yoga viewed as valuable achievement rewarded by the immediately crowning of a person as successful and steadfast? It is infuriating how much being visually ‘fit’ has become the measuring stick for all genders attractiveness. And how the ‘fit’ body for women keeps changing from emaciated to tight curves. I wish I could say that people who fit into ‘fit’ don’t exist and that we all struggle but that has not been my experience. People naturally disposed to easy weightless, muscle gain and cardiovascular exercise are a genetic reality. As are people who are the exact opposite. Yet we give the former a free pass to ‘inherent’ perfection while vilifying the latter. Western yoga practice is the epitome of this problem. You take a cultural specific form of movement, based more in meditation than mediocre spandex legging, and monetise the sh*t out of it by making it desirable and largely unattainable. And whose bodies are cursed from entering this privileged club? Well largely bodies that aren’t white and are rooted outside of the West. This is colonial capital at its best. And I fell for it for years. Which is ironic for someone who spends most of their time critiquing and working against colonialism and colonial tropes. This is the power of colonialism, a state of unnatural control over identity that harms everyone in one way or another.

So where does this leave me? Should I go back to yoga with the filters removed and follow the amazing women making it inclusive? Or should I remove myself entirely from a problematic and harmful industry? Decolonising is not just something I research but a central part of who I am as a person. How can I work around these questions and still get enjoyment from yoga when it is done safely for a body like mine? I have often been told that I overthink every situation. I am that viral video of the person you don’t take on holiday because they’ll be harking on about colonisation when they are supposed to be posing for a family photo in front of Buckingham Palace. And this way of being has lost me connections and friendships. But it has also led me to inspiring people who welcome the complexity of the world like an architect of the afterlife at the end of ‘The Good Place’. In all honesty I’d rather stress over the ethics of yoga than go back to the person that tried so damn hard to make a broken system work for her. I am much happier knowing that bodies like mine can succeed and thrive with a yoga practice based in diversity and empathy. So If I get to a place where my health can handle a bit of hardy stretching I might just pop online to find like-minded souls for a yoga session, no green walls in sight.

*I have decided to put the personal updates I often share in my articles in a dedicated end section from now on. My chronic pain has been kicking my butt lately which is why I haven’t been getting as much writing done to send you lovely readers. It is taking my two weeks to write one article at the moment. And when I have the energy to write I should really be writing chapters for my PhD. But you are not forgotten my dears. There will be more coming your way soon.*