First Impressions of Hot Yoga

This past week, I went to a new Moksha yoga studio that opened in my neighbourhood to try my hand at hot yoga. While I find I get plenty hot in my regular yoga classes, I had yet to attend a bona fide hot yoga session and was curious. And, I'm here to tell you, I got hot. But not entirely for those reasons you might think.

It was an insanely frigid day and I was craving a hit of heat like salvation. So I bounced up the stairs to the second-floor studio, which spreads itself handsomely above a tattered variety store, and sallied into a classroom almost too late for admittance (there's a strictly observed 15-minutes-before-class arrival expectation here).

Most of the 14 or 15 other participants were already there, lying corpse on their mats, no doubt enjoying the unfamiliar sensation of physical warmth. Everybody here was female, save one lone male, a middle-aged guy who positioned his bright green mat at the front centre of the studio.

The instructor, a lithe and smiling presence, wafted into the room and marked the start of the class with the tinkling of a bell. Relax, she said, and then took us through the exercises that would physically remind our bodies how to do so.

It was wonderful. The heat in that space was like a hug, and the poses we worked through inside its embrace felt deeper, more intentional than the same ones playing out in a regular class. At one point early on, I realized I'd made a mistake by not tying my hair up. "There's a tub of hair clips back there," whispered a woman beside me when she noticed my struggles. But the instructor shushed us and indicated that my oversight would have to go untreated. My tripping off to the back of the classroom for a hair tie would be "too disruptive." And so I sat tight.

But here's where temperatures really took a spike in this west-Toronto yoga studio on this otherwise glacial day.

Enter the lone male, an obvious go-getter with an admirable facility for hyperextension. Bearing in mind that my hair reparations were deemed "too disruptive" to warrant attention, muse with me if you will on how my testosterone-blessed classmate got away with his, um, disruption.

It was early in the class when I looked up, sweating profusely inside a forward lunge, and was confronted with this man's, er, assets, hanging from beneath his gym shorts. Ack, I thought, and shifted my eyes. But it was no use. Pose after pose, I found this guy's dangling bits in my line of vision. Distraction, I thought, trying in vain to restrain a head of hair that had transformed into a style worthy of early OJ Simpson? You don't know distraction.

There are lessons in this story and they are critical. For one, tie your hair back before entering yoga class. For another, secure yourself a spot for your mat that affords the most advantageous view. And, finally, if you happen to be of the masculine persuasion and you fancy public yoga activities, get yourself some shorts with a built-in liner.

The class ended and the instructor thanked her students graciously. "I hope you'll take with you all that we learned just now and apply it throughout your day," she bid. The glance I shot at my oblivious male contemporary, through streaming eyes and dripping tendrils, went mercilessly unnoticed.