Stretch your twist with hot yoga. By:Andrea Nagel Published:Mar 27, 2008

If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the yoga studio, because this is one form of exercise that gets you sweating.

Bikram is yoga with a difference. It is conducted in a heated room, which is quite a disconcerting experience for the uninitiated.

On a freezing winter morning the sensation can be enjoyably cosy, but in the heat of summer when the outside temperature is sweltering and the inside temperature is even hotter, practitioners have been known to keel over and faint.

Any instructor will reiterate that it’s very important to keep drinking liquids throughout the 40-minute session and to keep movements slow and controlled.

Contrary to popular belief the heated room temperature prevents the body from overheating, while protecting the muscles to allow for deeper stretching.

Increased heating opens the pores, which aids the detoxification of the body.

The heat also increases the heart rate for a better cardiovascular workout . Straining muscles under these conditions increases strength .

The long and short of it is that if you can stand to exercise in hot and humid conditions you will slowly become acclimatised to the heat and will reap the many benefits.

Bikram yoga is a demanding series of 26 posture (asanas) and two breathing exercises (pranayamas), which is designed to work the whole body from the inside out. The internal organs are stimulated as fresh oxygenated blood is moved through them .

It’s like a massage from the inside.

You stretch and move your body into various positions, some quite simple and others more complicated, and the range of motion of the joints is increased and gravity is used to build muscle strength.

If done carefully and under the guidance of a qualified Bikram yoga teacher the muscles and joints in the body will not be strained in any way.

The repeated compression and extension inherent in the poses stretch the thymus, spleen, appendix, intestines and lungs .

The sweating also helps the body to rid itself of toxins.

Bikram yoga was started by Yogiraj Bikram Choudhury who trained from the age of four with one of India’s renowned physical culturists , Bishnu Ghosh.

My reaction:
Wow! Honestly this is a very good news to all of my followers in Yoga class and maybe to Aerobic group classes. Those who usually complain, the moment they arrived in the studio, they would say. Oh! why so "Hot" do you have aircon? Now i have a very valid reason at last! Thanks for these article..