Feeling the heat

Young Chang

You know that nice, cool feeling you get walking into a gym? That

crisp, almost chilly air that envelops you both before and after you

sweat?

Forget that.

With hot yoga, it’s all about heat. Enter a room blasting out about 90

to 100 degrees Fahrenheit of stuffy, hot air and simmer in it. Stretch

and do yoga for more than an hour and sweat like it’s summer in a class

of about a dozen others also raining perspiration.

That’s right -- a class.

Doing yoga in heat has, over the years, become an organized activity

with an instructor at the front and students sitting on mats in rows. And

the heat wave’s caught international as well as local momentum.

“This hot yoga is definitely gaining popularity because it works,”

said Kim Schreiber Morrison, co-owner of Yoga Studio in Costa Mesa, which

has offered hot yoga classes for about 8 years. “If you really give it

that honest chance, ten classes a month, it works. You start to feel

differently about your life, your body, your soul, your spirit. You

become happy.”

Hot yoga is a concept that was culled together by Bikram Choudhury,

who created a 26-posture routine about 30 years ago. The yogi was once

known as the “Guru to the Stars,” with a clientele that included Jeff

Bridges and Raquel Welch, Morrison said.

Choudhury has been churning out about 400 certified yoga teachers

trained in hot yoga annually from his Los Angeles base, and studios

offering the fitness regimen have sprouted everywhere from Japan to good

ole Costa Mesa, according to Morrison.

The effect is part science, part spiritual.

Heat warms up the muscles and helps the body sweat out toxins, stretch

better, lower blood pressure, metabolize body fat, realign posture and

strengthen the spine, said Lisamarie Livigni-Myers, an instructor at TUF

Productions in Newport Beach. The studio offers a form of hot hatha yoga

different from “Bikram-style.”

“The eyes start to clear, due to detoxification,” Morrison said. “The

body is like a piece of metal -- to shape the metal you need heat to bend

and become pliable, and heat is a great way to accomplish that.”

In Livigni-Myers’ opinion, it’s the best and most universal form of

fitness.

“No-one’s too young or too old or too fat or too thin. More people are

getting into hot yoga,” she said.

Karena Rumbaugh, a hot yoga student at TUF Productions, says the

environment may have something to do with this.

“Yoga’s been here for centuries,” she said. “It’s just never been

brought into the gym environment.”

Livigni-Myers, 33, added: “And there’s no longer religion brought in.”

But it contains a spirituality of its own. Hot yoga calls for quiet

concentration, which often results not only in clearer skin and eyes, but

in a peaceful mind.

For Livigni-Myers, it’s what brought her life back together after

undergoing a full mastectomy four years ago. Livigni-Myers said her

cancer was in part caused by leaking breast implants.

She had horrible posture due to the size of her implants and walked

around hunched over. After the mastectomy, the instructor started doing

hot yoga. Today she has a perfectly straight back and the cancer is gone.

“Yoga has pieced my life back together,” she said. “Yoga has brought

back my posture.”

Sharon Fairborn, a first-grade teacher at Newport Elementary School in

Newport Beach, understands how good it feels to straighten up. She says

she’s hunched over little children all day, which can be straining after

awhile.

So Fairborn, 57, started practicing hot yoga about two weeks ago. She

said that so far it has strengthened her muscles and improved her sense

of balance.

“I feel like I’m taller,” she said.