The Hot Yoga Balancing Act: Heat and Humidity

Yes, it's hot in the hot yoga room - so it's cool to read how your hot little body cools down to keep you safe and strong in your 90 minute hot box called hot yoga class.

Cool to the Core

Your body maintains its core temperature at 98.6º F (37º C) by balancing the rate of internal heat production with heat loss to the environment. This little balancing act is called thermoregulation.

Thermoregulation is challenging in any heated environment, especially if the air temperature is greater than the skin temperature. During moderate exercise, core body temperature rises and the additional heat must be moved from the core to the skin.

Heat is removed from the body to the environment in four ways: radiation, conduction, convection, and evaporation. The first three occur in environments where air temperature is cooler than skin temperature or where cooler air blows over the skin. The hot yoga room is typically heated to 105º F which exceeds skin temperature, and possibly above core temperature when you're practicing.

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Hot Yoga and Hydration: how much water to drink for a 90 minute hot yoga class?

In hot yoga, we instruct you to come to class well-hydrated. take care to remain hydrated through the class and rehydrate after class.

If you wait until your body is completely dehydrated before you drink something or completely emaciated before you eat something, your body can get far out of balance. While it is possible to eventually bring your body back to a state of well-being—it is much easier to maintain a healthy physical balance than to recover it after losing it.

In the same way that it is a good idea to drink when you feel the indication of thirst—and therefore maintain your Well-Being long before dehydration is experienced—it is equally important to change the thought and release resistance at the first indication of negative emotion. For while it is certainly possible to withstand negative emotion for long periods of time, it is not the optimal experience for the cells of your physical body.

When you learn to release resistance in the early, subtle stages, your physical body must thrive. Thriving is what is natural to you.

--- Abraham



What is good health, exactly, and where can I get me some?

Is it in your body? Is it all in your mind? I love what this writer has to say about achieving good health:

While it is obvious that a good-feeling body makes for a more pleasant physical experience, we want you to understand that finding pleasant things to focus upon also makes for a good-feeling body.

However, most humans are approaching the subject of their physical well-being in a backward manner. Most people who are experiencing physical ailments let their physical condition dictate their mental attitude. In other words, their emotions are responsive to their physical condition. When they are in pain, they offer emotions of frustration, worry, anger, or fear. They want the condition to improve so that their emotional state can improve.

Any illness, or departure from physical well-being, begins at a cellular level—but the overwhelming propensity of your cells is that of thriving. All day, every day, your cells are reclaiming balance at such refined and subtle levels that most people are completely unaware of the power and intelligence of their cellular bodies.

Focusing upon good-feeling objects of attention is the most effective way of providing the optimum environment for allowing unhindered cellular communication and the ultimate thriving of your physical body.

--- Abraham

The Genius that is hot yoga

I'm going to say it: hot yoga is genius.

Yoga itself is already a little miracle.  Add heat and humidity to the push and pull of yoga and find a whole new twist on this ancient practice.

What's with the heat and humidity? Some say it's about making muscles stretch safely. Some talk about the cooling effect of sweating. Others say it's about transcending the obstacles to reach the pinnacle of human endurance.

They're all right.  And more.

Try hot yoga without high heat, and you just feel clammy. Try it without humidity and it's gasp-city. The perfect combination of both is perfect genius.

And what about the tourniquet effect?  Think about kinking up a garden hose and turning on the water full blast, holding it for a while, and then letting it go. All that energy wooshing through the hose pushes out more built-up dirt, gunk, and debris. It's just like that with hot yoga; the holding of the poses while you are pressing on body parts and then the letting go...bam. You're cleaner instantly.

Hot yoga isn't soft and gentle, it isn't New Age, and it isn't always pretty. Except that it is. It's not a story you can fully explain. You have be there.

Now get in the room, turn up the heat, and keep your eyes open.

In Hot Yoga, Silence is Cool

The golden rule is silence in the hot yoga room...and after yoga class as you depart from the yoga room.

What's all the hubub about staying quiet?

When I taught Radiant Child Yoga, I used to tell my 5 and 6 year olds that when you do yoga, you awaken the magic inside you...and magic has a way of escaping through your mouth and your eyes. You close your eyes in Savasana to keep the magic from leaving, and you close your mouth during class to let it keep building up inside you.

They got it.

I could tell you that you staying quiet in the yoga room in consideration of your fellow yogis, so that others can lie down and relax in the silent room. I could explain that the more you talk, the more you get heated up yourself (and not in a good way...think about how much talking is really subtle complaining). You need to conserve your energy for class.  And it would all be true.

But the deeper truth lies in that made-up children's yoga fable. Magic is something that words can't describe and you can only connect with it when your words fail you.

So leave your voice outside the yoga room. Then it will be your choice as to whether you want words or silence to control the rest of your day.