Vinyasa and Moksha and Bikram, Oh My! Or: How to stop worrying and enjoy hot yoga.

Is Riverflow Yoga the same path as Vinyasa Flow, Moksha or Bikram Yoga?

Nope, nope, and not quite.

What to do about the many forms of hot yoga? Dig in. Do you limit yourself to just one spice? If you enjoy garlic, are you forever banned from allspice?  Maybe not in the same recipe, but there's a delicious place for both, whenever you want. 

Do you have to swear loyalty to one hot yoga style or teacher?

Each hot yoga class, I say, "This was the best." Next class, I say it again. That's because I use hot yoga as my object of appreciation in that moment; my reason to feel good right now and my momentum for feeling better. I don't sweat it, and that's my wish for you: to savor your hot yoga and let it warm you from inside.

So - what can you expect to love about Riverflow hot yoga? CLICK HERE

Will the real Hot Yoga please stand up?

Hot yoga is challenging old ideas about yoga.

And you can't spell Challenge without Change.

Back in 1971 when I started doing yoga, people thought I was weird. Few people had heard of yoga and even fewer had ever practiced it. I got turned onto yoga when I heard a Zen Buddhist monk speak at a NY college. He spoke no English; his wife was translating his words. I don't recall what yoga he spoke about, but it was his demeanor that impressed me; he was at once shy and retiring, but exuded a strength and inner power that reached me in the back row of a huge college auditorium.

From there I found my own yoga access on an obscure cable TV station, mornings at 6AM, evenings at 11.

Fast forward 40 years, and yoga is a lot more flexible.

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A heart for hot yoga this Valentine's Day

There's no better day than Valentine's Day to thank that little miracle muscle known as your heart.

Resilient and strong, yet sensitive, registering everything you feel.

Thanks to Amy Accardo, who created the above video presentation on Hot Yoga and the Heart (Amy is also our newest hot yoga teacher at Riverflow Yoga), you can take a look into your heart, and how hot yoga heals that little powerhouse.

Look again and you'll see how hot yoga gets to the heart of you.

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Up Against the Wall, Hot Yogi

Have you hit a wall in hot yoga?

How will you get to the other side?

There is a particular volatile variety of hot yoga practitioners who prepare for the Yoga Asana Championships by joining what is unofficially called, The Backbending Club.

These backbenders not only do 2 or more hot yoga classes daily, they engage in the practice of Wall Walking: bending over backwards walking their hands down the wall until their faces hit the ground between their feet. The pain is intense, for hours on end, as much as 60 times a day.

What's the agonizing point?

For the wall walkers, pain is the point; to push themselves through the spasms and seizures that result from extreme backbending, and arrive at a singularly focused moment when all else disappears and are witness to a moment of their own limitlessness.

Is pushing against an obstacle the only way to break through?

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The Hot Yoga Pain Game

"Oy, this pain in my shoulder is so bad I can't lift my arms for three weeks already."

I grew up in Jewish household where the name of the game was Who's Got Worse Troubles. If the trouble was painful, it was particularly holy. You wore your injury til you wore it out. Then, someone with a more death-defying ailment always stepped in.

In my house, this kind of talk was called "conversation."

As I grew up and engaged in outside conversations, I slowly realized that this was not normal; to focus on pain, to stir it up like stew and chew on it again and again. When I moved out at nineteen, I closed the door on painful talk.

Then, some twenty two years later,  I took up hot yoga.

Now, thinking back to my family fascination with pain, I'm beginning to wonder if maybe they were onto something...

Does pain make you a hero?

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