Illustration by Michael Lorenzo | sxc.hu
Midway through my rigorous hour-and-a-half Bikram yoga session in a brightly lit, mirrored, 105-degree room with 25 other freely perspiring participants half my age, I had a flashback to my arthroscopic knee surgery six years earlier. I had insisted on remaining conscious throughout the operation so I could write a magazine article about it. But there was a moment when, as the surgeon sliced a hole in my ineptly anesthetized leg, I asked myself, “What the hell was I thinking?”
Now I asked the same question, feeling I was getting a preview of the eternal flames of hell, where there’s also, I assume, no clock.
No, Bikram yoga is not for everyone. But with scores of yoga, Pilates and fitness options throughout St. Louis, most everyone can find a regimen, class or instructor to help ease chronic pain, promote health, reduce stress, improve flexibility and clear the mind. I recently sampled three workout regimens.
Bikram Yoga
Jeff Keane, a 41-year-old Webster Groves video producer, was among my fellow masochists during a brief descent to the seeming netherworld. He participates in two to three sessions a week at Bikram Yoga St. Louis, which has facilities in Chesterfield and Richmond Heights. “It’s very addictive, a great workout, good cardiovascular,” says Keane, who plays competitive ice hockey. “I’ve increased flexibility, reduced back pain, and my weight has leveled off.”
Co-owner and instructor Erin Stack, who may have missed her calling as an army drill instructor or perhaps an auctioneer, underscores those results. “Flexibility, strengthening and cardiovascular” advantages accrue to Bikram practitioners, says Stack, 32. “Some come for weight loss, others for the mental benefits.”
Stack describes Bikram as “yoga on steroids,” best suited for Type A personalities—which explains why Type B baby boomers like me might balk. It consists of a series of 26 postures, or asanas in Sanskrit, conducted in a heated environment with 40 to 60 percent humidity to stimulate circulation and “sweat out any toxins,” says Stack. (In fact, I felt so toxin-free after my session that I rushed home to correct the imbalance.) The heat’s also “the safest environment to stretch in,” she adds.
The regimen was developed by former India yoga champion Bikram Choudhury, who now runs Bikram’s Yoga College of India from its world headquarters in Los Angeles. He claims it can effectively treat disc problems, arthritis and more. You can find depictions of his 26 recommended asanas on his website, bikramyoga.com.
Stack runs the $18 sessions with strict discipline: no latecomers, no water except at appointed times, no perfume or cologne, no talking. The no-talking policy seemed to extend to the men’s locker room, where after class hardly a word was uttered. Perhaps some, like me, were in shock.
Stack—one of several instructors—cajoles her charges to do more, to not think about the pain, and keeps up a running commentary with phrases like “not bad—meaning not good” and “that sucked.” But her business partner, Carol Stocks, says Stack isn’t the disciplinarian that some instructors are. Authoritarianism is seemingly what many participants crave. “People are attracted by the discipline and structure,” says Stocks, and benefit no matter how good they are at assuming the asanas. “There is always more to do, even if you can’t do splits.”
Visit yogastlouis.com for a schedule of classes, rates, testimonials and more.
Hatha Yoga
As my Flying Pigeon—an asana with one leg pretzeled beneath me, the other stretched behind me and my arms held winglike—crashed to the mat, I thought, “Now I know why they call it ‘Big Bend’ Yoga Center.”
If my Bikram session was boot camp, then my hatha yoga class in Webster Groves was balm: a dimly lit room with the scent of incense and soft, Himalayan toning in the air. No pressure, no stress, no mirrors. “If you’re not smiling,” says instructor Mike Elliff, “it’s not yoga. This should be pleasurable.”
And pleasurable it was, with a dearth of pain, sweat and admonishment.
“It’s only yoga,” says Elliff. “Don’t take it too seriously.” Yoga has helped Elliff, 43, take things more lightly. After six months of chemotherapy for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 2002, he went into yoga training at the Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health in Stockbridge, Mass., to help his recovery. He’s been a loyal yoga adherent ever since. “I used to be hard-wired and stressed to the max,” says Elliff. “Now I don’t take stuff as personally.”
He successfully imparts his peacefulness to his students with smiles, calming aphorisms and sly humor. His class consists of hatha asanas designed to stretch, tone and improve balance. Widely practiced in the Western world, hatha (meaning “sun and moon”) yoga (meaning “union”) is the form of yoga most of us recognize. It uses some 200 asanas and numerous variations to limber up the spine, improve circulation and enhance balance and flexibility. It also emphasizes breathing techniques (pranayama) and meditation (dhyana) to promote health and a clear, peaceful mind. “I’m guiding people back to themselves,” says Elliff. “It’s an hour and 15 minutes to allow them to experience their body in a totally different way.”
Part of that experience is to slow down, relax and work out the tension. “Stress,” says Elliff, “is the biggest epidemic in Western culture. It’s overwhelming what we do to ourselves when we strap ourselves into the car and take off down Highway 40. Hatha yoga takes stress out of the muscles and thus takes stress off joints. It helps physically, mentally, spiritually. But it’s up to the person who comes to class to decide whether it’s a stretching class, a stress-reduction class or spiritual—or just a way to get away from the kids.”
Fellow boomer Nancy Rodney, a Crestwood architect, originally came for hip pain caused by hours at a computer, discomfort the yoga has alleviated. But she got more than she bargained for. “I was not expecting the mental side,” says Rodney, who attends classes at Big Bend Yoga Center twice a week. “It’s decidedly calming; you leave your day outside. It’s totally rejuvenating.”
Another benefit has been improved concentration, which helps her golf game and skeet shooting—Rodney is the 2008 Missouri State Ladies Skeet Champion. “Both golf and skeet are focus-driven sports. Yoga teaches you how to be calm and how to breathe,”
says Rodney.
A team of 16 instructors at Big Bend Yoga Center offers a variety of day and night classes throughout the week for $12 per session. Elliff, however, conducts his Wednesday evening and Sunday afternoon classes without charge for members of The Wellness Community of Greater St. Louis, a nonprofit organization providing free emotional support and education for those affected by cancer. Check out bigbendyoga.com for a schedule of classes.
Pilates
Pilates now engages some 10 million Americans in a regimen designed to strengthen core muscles. Instructor Mary Zorich says developing those muscles—the abdominals, pelvic floor, diaphragm and deep spinal muscles—can provide a range of health benefits.
The 53-year-old should know. Ten years ago, as a May Company executive jetting around the world to vet suppliers, Zorich suffered from chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia and psoriatic arthritis. “I was full of steroid drugs and extremely overweight, and I started Pilates for pain management,” she says. “Now I take no medication, and I’m pain-free.”
She’s also free of the stressful corporate job, having landed in “job heaven” as a Pilates instructor after gaining certification from The Pilates Center in Boulder, Colo. I took a class with her on the “Pilates Reformer” (a Pilates-specific machine) at The Pilates & Yoga Center of Saint Louis on McCausland Avenue, adjacent to the Hi-Pointe Theater.
Fortunately, the Reformer session isn’t nearly as daunting as it sounds—or looks.
Joseph Pilates, a German-born circus performer and boxer living in England, first invented the workout regimen during the early
20th century. Working with other detainees who were injured or ill at the outset of World War I, he developed floor exercises and resistance equipment reportedly fashioned from bedsprings and beer-keg rings. Today’s Reformer features a gliding platform with a series of springs that adjust resistance for exercises designed to work and tone deep-core muscles.
Reformer and mat exercises give “precise, deep, fast results for energy, strength and flexibility,” says Zorich. “Learning to breathe properly to oxygenate the body and slow and precise movements allow you to work the deeper muscles instead of the more superficial ones.”
Zorich’s clients range from Rams and Blues players rehabbing after injuries to dancers, women toning up after childbirth to high-school French teacher Teresa Connolly, who likes Pilates because, she says, “It makes me feel taller.” Connolly takes both Reformer and mat classes at The Pilates & Yoga Center. “It’s beneficial for my lower back pain and balance,” she says. “As I’ve gotten older, my balance is more important. It’s terrific, awesome body conditioning.”
The Reformer class I took alongside Connolly consisted of varied movements on the device that worked the abs and back, as promised, with controlled breathing and focus on the process. “I see myself as a tour guide who reintroduces people to their body,” says Zorich, “to have mind and body work together.”
Drop-in classes cost $15, though there are package discounts. Classes are also held at the center’s Ladue branch. Learn more
at pilatescenterstl.com.
You can also find yoga and Pilates classes and instruction at the YMCA, JCC, community centers and fitness centers throughout St. Louis.
At any of these places, you’ll hopefully find—as I did—that the journey to hell and back can be well worth the trip.
This is the first of three “Healthy Living” features St. Louis Magazine will publish in 2009. Have feedback about this one or suggestions for future ones? If so, email us at feedback@stlmag.com.
