Hot Yoga - Burn Calories Like Crazy With Bikram Yoga!

A few weeks ago I decided to try out the “Bikram Yoga” (named after its founder Bikram Choudhury) center near my house. I’ve seen countless people come out of that facility red-faced and absolutely drenched in sweat. So I figured, hey maybe this is a cool new exercise method to try.

What I didn’t know prior to my first class is that Bikram Yoga is also known as Hot Yoga. The studio is heated to around 105 degrees with a humidity index of 40%. During class, you go through 26 different yoga positions. Each Bikram Yoga class is the same every where in the world. You go through the same positions each time. Class lasts for 90 minutes.

On my first visit, the instructor told me that my goal is to simply stay in the heated room for the entire 90 minutes. The series involves 12 standing postures and 14 floor postures. In my experience, the standing postures are significantly more difficult than the floor series. They require more balance, strength, and stamina. Once you make it over “the hump” of the standing series and move onto the floor series, the class becomes somewhat more managable (but still a very challenging exercise).

Most of the postures, in some way or another, are aimed at increasing the flexibility of your spine. Bikram’s philosophy is that a healthy spine is the foundation for a healthy life. The instructors seem to impart a lot of psuedo-science that was taught to them in their Bikram teaching course. Whether or not the class actually helps improve digestive function, strengthen your spine, release fresh blood to your brain (or any of the other things I’ve heard instructors claim it does), one thing is for sure: it sure does burn a lot of calories!

Based on my sex and body weight (I’m a male who weighs about 200 pounds), I burn about 1,350 calories in a Bikram Yoga class. This is roughly equivelant to the amount of calories I would burn from jogging 9 miles in 90 minutes!

I can certainly speak for myself when I say that I would rather do Bikram Yoga for 90 minutes than jog for 90 minutes. For burning the same amount of calories, not only is it much healthier for your joints, but it is also much more fun!

I have seen people of all age groups, ethnicities, and walks of life in my local Bikram Yoga studio. One thing that made me hesitant to try it for so long was the bad rap that yoga had in my mind. I thought it was only something that hippies did or that it was so feminine only women or gay guys did it. In my experience, those things are at least partially true… but who cares?! The class is such a grueling (but enjoyable!) exercise that you don’t have enough energy to think about everyone else around you.

Hot yoga is quite simply an amazing exercise. Without changing your diet at all, you could lose about one pound of body weight per week by going to three Bikram Yoga sessions.