IT'S A MANZ WORLD

VERY HOT YOGA - Note: Most of my Manz World stories are fictionalized accounts of how the painting shown here came to be. However, some of the stories are rooted in truth.

I used to be a member of a nudist camp. Being a yoga teacher, and wanting to ‘give back’ to my community, I held free yoga sessions at the camp for several years. Those free sessions were held every other Saturday morning from late spring to early fall. If the day was a good one—warm, clear sky, no rain—I led a session of about 45 minutes on the lawn in front of the recreation center. If it was cool or rainy I held the session indoors.

Several years ago one of my very good friends, Susan, a local yoga instructor, had just added hot yoga to her line up of offerings at her yoga studio in a nearby city. While not attending hot yoga sessions on a regular basis, I was there often, maybe two to three times a month. It was mostly for the purpose of ‘cleansing.’ Since the room where the sessions were held was very hot, sometimes up to 110 degrees, the yoga routine brought forth a sweat in minutes. Although feeling rather ‘wiped out’ at the end of a session, I also felt very refreshed, even a feeling of lightness in my body.

Hot yoga was introduced to America by a man named Bikram Choudhury in the early 1970s. Classes consisted of a fixed sequence of postures, practiced in a heated room with a humidity of 40%. That was intended to replicate the hot, humid climate of India, Choudhury’s home country. Named after him, Bikram Hot Yoga spread rapidly across America and the world, eventually reaching a peak of over 1,500 studios in over 40 countries.

Bikram Hot Yoga emphasized the heath benefits from doing yoga in such a hot, humid environment, claiming it improved body strength, joint range of motion and balance. Bikram also claimed his system of yoga improved glucose tolerance, bone density as well as reducing stress levels. For me, it was the latter that was noticed immediately after my first hot yoga session. The other improvements came as a result of my attending additional sessions.

Susan and I had been friends for a number of years. In fact, after getting my yoga certificate, she allowed me to hold a class of my own in her studio one evening a week. Knowing her as well as I did—she knew I was a nudist—I asked her if she would be interested in holding a nude session of hot yoga. Maybe once a month. She thought about it and asked if she would have to be naked when teaching. I said she didn’t have to be naked as long as everyone coming to the session was comfortable with her being clothed. She agreed to leading such a session, repeating with emphasis, “As long as I don’t have to be naked.”

Over the next month I advertised Susan’s session both at the nude camp and online. It was surprising to both Susan and me that ten people signed up for an introductory session. When starting that first class I could tell Susan was a bit nervous. It wasn’t that she hadn’t seen people naked—she told me she had visited a couple of nude beaches over the years—but having this new experience was a bit challenging. However, after a few minutes, I recognized Susan’s nude students were not having any affects on her or her teaching.

After that first class, after everyone left the building, Susan turned to me and, with a smile, said, “That was incredible! I think we should do that again.” And she did. For the next many months, there was a nude session added to her class schedule. Interestingly, as time went by, the class size grew to an average of 12 to 15 people a session. For some of the students it was the first time they had every been naked with a group of others. In fact, some of those ‘nude newbies’ interests were peeked to the point they actually came out to the nude camp to attend some of my Saturday sessions.

My painting here is one that burned in my memory of one of the men who came to Susan’s nude sessions, one that I was able to lead when Susan couldn’t make it one night. He was one of the ‘newbies’ who took quite well to the hot yoga routine even though he had never done yoga before. He enjoyed those naked classes at Susan's center so much that he later attended some of my free sessions at the camp, a place he eventually joined and was a ‘regular’ on the weekends.