What is Hot Yoga?
At Ignite Yoga, our hot yoga classes are known as Power yoga and are the bread and butter of all our yoga classes. Hot yoga can refer to many styles of yoga, including Bikram yoga, hot vinyasa yoga, gentle yoga classes taught in a hot room, or Power yoga. If you’re on this page, one thing is for certain—you’re interested in practicing yoga in a heated or hot room. The style you’ll learn about here is the most powerful form of hot yoga available, power yoga. And if you’re curious about the other styles mentioned above, read our blog, “The many faces of hot yoga.”
Power Yoga
Power yoga is a rigorous form of yoga that strengthens and tones your whole body. It’s taught in a room heated to about 95 degrees with enough humidity that allows your body to cool by sweating optimally. The heat of the room warms your muscles and moves you deeper into your practice more quickly. If you’ve ever sat in a sauna or steam room, youknow the benefit heat can have on your muscles and the rejuvenating effect you feel following a good sweat session. Take that feeling and add movement, you have a practice that integrates every tissue and cell to create a transformational yoga practice.
There are hot yoga studios across the world that regularly offer power yoga classes. Not all are created equal, however. There are a few things we have mastered at Ignite Yoga to make our Power yoga classes the best hot yoga in Centerville.
The Hot Yoga Room
Our bodies are extraordinary in many ways, including regulating our body temperature. Many individuals have reservations about attending a heated power class because they believe they won’t do well in the heat. This may be true, but for many that try a heated yoga class at Ignite Yoga, they find their body works optimally to cool down because the heating and cooling components are well balanced in the room.
Creating balanced conditions is no easy feat. It includes tempering the room to the desired heat, infusing the right level of humidity, maintaining those conditions throughout the whole class, and ensuring proper ventilation so that the air you breathe is always the best quality. All of these, at the right level, allows your body to sweat and cool.
Some common mistakes that hot yoga studios make in their hot yoga rooms are:
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- Having the heat too high and not enough humidity – this creates the potential to overheat and dehydrate. You actually may have trouble breathing because the low humidity dries out mucous membranes in your respiratory tract and your skin and eyes will feel dry. You’ll know there’s not enough humidity if you really aren’t sweating that much in your hot yoga class.
- Having too much heat and too much humidity – when the hot yoga room has too much humidity, your body sweats profusely but the sweat doesn’t evaporate fast enough, leaving you simply feeling hot. In order to cool down, your body begins to work harder. While this is beneficial in some situations, it’s not ideal when you are moving your body in a hot yoga practice. You’re already working hard, and you don’t need the body to work harder. You’ll know the heat and humidity are too high when you have a difficult time being mindful and you find you need to take breaks often because you simply feel hot.
- Not having enough heat or humidity – there is a sweet spot to creating a hot yoga room. It’s certainly not for everyone, and so many yoga studios try to find a happy middle by simply turning up their HVAC system. The standard HVAC system is not conducive to creating a hot yoga room with proper heat and humidity. As a result, the room is luke warm to about 80 degrees and has no infused humidity. Students that seek out hot yoga or heated yoga attend class and leave feeling disappointed because they didn’t receive that feel good sweat and cathartic feeling that comes with a true hot yoga class.
Tempering the hot yoga room is crucial to the health of students and to the validity of a hot yoga practice. It includes
- a room heated to 90-95 degrees using supplemental heat such as a souped-up HVAC, heat panels, or infrared heat
- an infusion of humidity to allow your body to sweat and cool
- state-of-the-art air ventilation system that aims to maintain CO2 levels that match outdoor air quality
- the same system cycles and filters air many more times than a standard system, so you’re always breathing the best quality air
The Movement
Power yoga is a modern form of yoga built from traditional practices such as Ashtanga, Bikram, Hatha, and Iyengar yoga. It’s a style of vinyasa yoga that typically begins with Sun Salutation A and B and gradually moves into more dynamic sequencing that may include lunging, twisting, squatting, and building core strength–all movement that we need and use in every day life. In addition, you may find more challenging components, such as arm balancing or inverting, to encourage curiosity in the way you move. Infuse all of that with powerful Ujjayi breath, and you have a practice that leaves you feeling powerful in your body.
The Transformation
When you feel powerful in your body, it frees you up to explore your mind. Thought leader Tony Robbins says, “The higher your energy level, the more efficient your body. The more efficient your body, the better you feel and the more you will use your talent to produce outstanding results.”
This is the belief of Power yoga. When you stimulate yourself physically, it creates an immediate mental shift that has the potential to generate amazing results in any area of your life.
Our lives change not in one choice, but in our commitment to that choice over and over again. To show up on your yoga mat is a matter of choice and discipline. The individuals that see the most powerful results from their hot yoga and power yoga practices are the ones that show-up again and again and use what’s happening on their mat as an avenue of transformation. If you’re ready to start practicing with Ignite Yoga today, click below.
