The Dangers of Bikram Yoga | Bikram vs. Other Styles of Yoga

Transcript

Okay so crease uhh.. (laughs) Crease.. I am. I'm, um, um.. I'm curious about your main 
distinction of the approach to Bikram style Yoga   versus other own styles. Okay, so there's obvious 
differences in their ethos when they talk   about it, like they would bicker practitioners 
and teachers, talk a lot about this is just the   physicality of it we're not getting into chanting 
and meditation and pranayama. There's a couple   pranayamas in the thing but they don't have a 
separate pranayama practice and so it's very   much oriented to come to the studio and do your 
practice here. And in some of his books he'll talk   about you can do a home practice if you turn up 
the temperature and and you, you can vary it somewhat   but basically you stick to these postures and, 
there is also an advanced sequence that you need   to be invited to.. Tony Sanchez came out with, was 
one of his original students, and came out with   all of this these poses from that lineage. It's the Ghosh lineage. If you ever read Autobiography of   a Yogi, um, that's the Ghosh lineage. It's from there. 
And then when it comes to like how we were doing   applied anatomy and in yoga postures, and I 
was talking a lot about active flexibility   and keeping engagement of a particular muscle as 
you elongate it and go into the pose. And so when   I do Bikram classes and the cues that they give, 
it's a lot of hanging on ligaments. Not hanging   on the muscle tissue. A lot of which is a way to 
stretch. It's called the myotatic stretch reflex.  Basically when you, the sensation of the stretch 
is a contraction. Why you feel the stretch is   because the muscle is contracting while you're 
stretching it, and so it's kind of traumatizing   a little bit, but that's just kind of what it is. 
And do that, hold that for about 20-30 seconds and   there'll be a reflex where it'll give. It'll let 
go. It's not anything other.. there.. there are some   things maybe with fashio or whatever, but it's 
basically the nervous system is signaling like,   "hey you're not in danger you can release." It was 
contracting because it was the body was fearing   something. And so, Bikram seems to rely, the method 
seems to rely a lot on that and, uh, I think a lot of   Yoga is approaching it similarly and then when 
you do like apply the heat and all of the soft   tissues, is, is softening. The thing I don't like about 
that is when you leave the hot room and your body   cools down, like most things, uh, when it gets colder, 
it shrinks, it contracts and your body will not   contract symmetrically because you have different 
tension patterns, and so it's very easy after the   Bikram class to maybe pull something or injure something. Which I've done several times, uh, and so   in particular, when I said Bikram people don't do 
it like this, when they do the camel pose, the cues,   which is a script. So it doesn't deviate from 
that. The script is hips forward. Push the hips   forward. Hips forward, and so you'll have the hips 
far in front of the knees and people doing these   back bends. I don't know if their method is getting 
people as flexible or if they're just attracting   very flexible people. They seem to attract a lot of 
ex-dancers for example. So you get these dancers   that have tremendous back bends, um, but they're kind 
of wiggly noodles outside of like Yoga.. That is..   There's not.. And I don't want to be rigid but I want to 
be firm and stable like as I move through the   world.. Yeah, I understand. So I haven't met very many longtime Yoga.. uh.. Bikram practitioners and those that I do, um, just.. it's, it's just hard to relate with them. There's 
just a.. we're not so personable. And I don't know if it   has to do with the method or if it's just the method 
attracted those kinds of people. I'm sure it's a combination of both. So that's   just kind of how I think about it. Like when they 
do things like the standing boat pulling posture,   there's a great danger to overstretching the Iliacus, 
like we were toning Iliacus there, and I have felt   that. But pushing as they say, just following their 
cues precisely, as I do it and then it feels good   in the moment and I feel very loose and open, but 
then eight days later I have inflammation   in like my hip capsules and things like that. 
And maybe that can be resolved if I just keep   going back every day and then I don't have to 
deal with the two day after effect. *laughs* But at some   point maybe I'll miss a day because of something, life! 
Life happens *yeah* or I get injured, some other reason   or whatever, and so I just, uh, I prefer my methods. 
I like the heat because of what it does to my   heart rate and so gaining control of my heart 
rate, I really like being exposed to that. But   you can just do Yoga outside. Mmm. Uh, I mean Florida's 
really hot. So Bikram is really just the brand   right. It's the trademark right? Look he's, like he, 
his theory, there's no such a thing as Bikram Yoga   coming from like India right? Or what from ancient traditions.
It's American version, or.. Well Bikram is Indian.. It is.. He is Indian.. Okay.. It's the guy's name.. Okay.. His name 
is Bikram. Okay.. Bikram Chaudhary. And it comes from   the Ghosh lineage. Okay.. So his teacher is the younger 
brother of the guy who wrote Autobiography of   a Yogi' Okay.. Whose, um, I mean this is the most famous book 
on Yoga in the world. And you know the guy   apparently performed miracles and things like 
his Grandmaster. So his teacher was Vishnu who   is the younger brother of Yogananda and so he 
subscribes to that a lot and.. there.. you know, like there's   all kinds of like controversy around him and.. you 
know, there's things that I don't like about his   method, but it's undeniable that, uh, he's exposed Yoga 
to just hundreds of millions of people. You know a   lot of people have gained benefit from his 
thing. Yeah.. And so, you know, for all the downsides...