Angry Hot Yoga!
What to do when you feel angry in your hot yoga class?
Isn't yoga supposed to make you feel calm and serene?
Not if you've got some surpressed anger. Hot yoga is sure to bring up whatever you've been keeping down. And that's a good thing: because when those emotions are finally ready to come up, they're ready to be done.
Hot yoga is a science of letting go: a set sequence of 26 poses done in a very heated room with specific instructions offered to keep you safe in the heat, to occupy your mind so it doesn't wander, to take you into a deeper place beyond the body.
Your hot yoga teacher is your guide through your hot yoga journey. Our teachers don't demonstrate poses or do them with you; they have to be everywhere all at once, watching and interacting with each student individually and the entire class as a whole.
But sometimes in hot yoga class, you get more than you bargained for.
Take tonight, for example. One new student insisted on walking around the room, ignoring instructions, glaring so angrily at our teacher that other students in the room felt his negativity and anger and were truly concerned.
To those students, we say, thank you for your concern. And relax - we've got you covered. Everything that happens in the hot yoga room is a lesson; tonight's lesson was about how to stay the course despite the presence of negative energy around you. And that one angry person need not control your feelings and reactions.
Yoga teaches that you are not at the mercy of outside events. How you react is always your choice.
My own initial reaction was upset. So how do I stay positive in the presence of all this negativity?
Hot Yoga. I am not just the owner of Riverflow Yoga Lambertville; I am a client. So my answer is always; come to hot yoga class. Let it go.
Hot Yoga tends to get to the root of your internal turmoil and bring it bubbling to the surface. That is both the beauty and the challenge of hot yoga.
Life is a series of exciting challenges. Relax; you're in hot yoga now. What will come up for you in hot yoga? That's for you to sweat out.
That makes hot yoga a lot like life: unpredictable, exciting, surprising, and always something valuable to learn...about yourself.
Rhonda Uretzky, E-RYT
Reader Comments (1)
Time to be honest: sometimes I feel like throwing in the hot, sweaty wet towel. I am personally enrolled in the benefits hot yoga, and want to share it with everyone. Recently someone posted a review of our little studio on Yelp calling it "filthy and outdated" and the owner "mean and annoying." It's like hearing someone slam your child. Now I know that people with an agenda are more likely to speak out than those who are blissed out and happy...but I can't deny that hearing this hurts a great deal and just makes me want to say, what's this all about?