MY FIRST EXPERIENCE OF HOT YOGA

ABBIE JS
Sep 26, 2017
3 min read

Hot Yoga is something I’ve always wanted to try out but I’ve always been a little scared that I might pass out/die after I've heard mixed reviews. So when I was invited to try out Hot Yoga at the studio in the Queen Mother Leisure Centre in Victoria I thought I would give it a go.

The centre itself is a few minutes walk from Victoria and when I arrived I realised it also had a pool which I will deffinatley be taking advantage of when I return to London next year (they are so hard to find locally!)

I've done Yoga a few times but only Vinyasa at a very small studio in Clapham Junction and another at the gym I'm a member of. London tends to a lot of deals where you can do unlimtied classes for a fixed price. These are great for if you want to try out yoga but I do find that these classes are also in teeny studios - and because of this deal they are also cramped full of people. I have a lot of back and hip problems from being sat at a desk a lot and like most people in their twenties yoga & stretching should be something to prioritise but it never happens.

So anyway, back to what i thought of the class. I went to the 7.30am-8.30am class. In hindsight I actually think I would prefer to do Yoga in the evening as I find it calming and always want to nap after! The studio itself was absolutley amazing, it was a large rectangular room with mirrored walls with calming lighting (below is a picture before the class started, the room had low lighting during the class!).

The instructor was great at talking everyone through and also very impressed she called all 6 of us in the class by our first name (great memory!). She spoke through each movement and made variations. She would often stop and talk us through the breathing as you can imagine its quite difficult in a 37 degree room! I've been to classes before where you're doing a simple downward dog and next thing you're trying to flip up into a handstand, this was a lot more slow paced and I didn't feel pressured to try anything too extreme. I also didn't push myself too much as I was a little scared about passing out but the sequence was spot on and I didn't find myself clock watching like I have done in Yoga.

If you've read my previous posts you know I'm a little bit of a stress head and been told to try Yoga numerous times. I do enjoy Vinyasa but I've struggled to find a class I get on with (and a studio). However after trying this class I feel like a hot yoga convert. Because you are focusing so much on your breathing and you feel yourself being very aware of how hot you are I found it easier to clear my mind. I wasn't worrying about what I had to do that day or any other first world problems I worry about. I was just there working through the sequence and being very aware of what my body was doing.

Top tips for first timers:

Wear minimal clothing without looking like a hoe
Stand in front of the mirror so you can see how aligned, or in my case miss-alisnged when in the poses
Take two towels – they say you’re not meant to wipe the sweat off as your body just produces more but when it starts burning your eyes you gotta wipe that shit away.
Don’t take a metal lid water bottle. My Gymshark two litre bottle lid heated up so much it smelt like it was burning and made the water I was drinking very warm. I feel like if I took up hot yoga I would deffinitley splash out on a Swell bottle, a few of the girls in there had one and I can imagine was very refreshing!