Hot Yoga Hell

A couple weeks ago I got a Living Social email for a hot deal. Living Social, like Groupon, sends out daily emails with great deals in your area (restaurants, spas, stores, etc). This email was for 10 classes of hot yoga for $20. Usually yoga classes are at least $10 a class so I had give it a try. I've done regular yoga before but never hot yoga which is pretty much the same except in a room heated to 104 degrees.

But wait, it was NOT the same thing at all. It was 90 minutes of pure, unadulterated, unmitigated (there are not enough adjectives to describe it) HELL.

As soon as the class started the small room started to heat up from 65 to 104 degrees. Not only was the heat bad, but the humidity made it incredibly unpleasant to breathe.

I started sweating immediately as we began the 26 different Birkham poses. And I felt miserable. I knew I might die that night.

I made it through about 45 minutes before I realized that I felt light headed and dizzy and black spots started to cloud my vision. I sat down to take a break and after a few minutes stood up and rejoined the class. A few minutes later I felt like passing out again. At then end of an hour I couldn't even stand up without feeling like I would faint, actually sitting up was difficult at that point too.

The instructor kept telling us to breathe breathe breathe, but every time I took a breath all I got was the hot, humid air. Though I know breathing was the only thing that kept me conscious, I was delirious and beyond reason at that point and felt like the air was slowly smothering me.

For some reason the instructor opened the door for 10 seconds and it was absolute bliss to breathe cool air. It reminded me what I have to live for. But the relief was over in a second. She shut the door again and said "It isn't hot enough in here. I'll turn up the heat"

NOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooooOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

How I got through the next 30 minutes I do not know. By that time everyone was sitting on their mats doing the floor exercises. I couldn't even do those since sitting up had become too difficult, so I just lay on the floor trying to pretend it was a sauna and not Hades. There were about 2 other people who were having the same experience as me but the other 27 were happily bending and stretching. These people were not human.

I wanted to scream and run out of there but we were not allowed to leave. Yes, I was trapped in a hot yoga torture chamber. They said were weren't allowed to leave because temperature change is too drastic. But I think they are just malicious. I barely held it together until class was over. I felt dizzy, light headed, overheated and miserable. Why do people love this so much? Why do they subject themselves to this torture voluntarily? If I had a worst enemy I would give them the rest of my classes for free.