In hatha yoga, pranayama is often divorced from the movement. You don’t do your alternate nostril breathing while doing down dog. Sure, you might coordinate your inhale and exhale with your hatha flow, but that’s not quite the same thing as doing a breath of fire that coincides with your movement as in kundalini yoga.

Hatha yoga definitely makes my body feel good, but there is a definite endorphin rush you get when doing a lot of breath of fire in kundalini yoga (er, well, I hope it’s endorphins and not lack of oxygen to my brain!). That breath of fire, when done in conjunction with movement, seems to relieve stress and frustration in a way that hatha does not. I simply feel mentally better after doing kundalini yoga in a way I do not when just doing hatha.

I like both disciplines, and feel that both have their strengths and weaknesses. I wouldn’t want to give up one for the other. But if you want to really relieve your mental stress, try a little bit of kundalini yoga every day. It’s fabulous.

I’ve also been learning a great 10-minute Qigong (Chi Kung) routine as well. I find the gentle nature of Qigong to be a good antidote to the sometimes harsh workouts you can do in a strenuous yoga flow set or in kundalini yoga. I’ve decided to study Qigong more this year, so I’ll be covering that in this blog as well.

It’s funny how once you stop, it’s so much harder to get going again.

Miracle upon miracles! I could almost reach my knees with my forehead!

This is something that is easy for a lot of yogis, but it has been impossible for me. I am not quite sure what happened. My home yoga practice has not been stellar recently due to a heat wave last week, but all of a sudden, I’ve broken through a major, lifelong barrier!

I still have to bend my knees slightly to go that deep, but I am almost there! Wow!

I guess it just goes to show you – regular practice can make a huge difference.

And I feel it too…I feel like my body is turning to mush. But perhaps that’s just partial heat exhaustion.

I spent the day at the beach today cooling off. Finally, this evening, the ocean breeze kicked in and there’s cool air coming through my windows. Hurrah! It will get back down to a normal high 70s this week. Phew. Hey, that’s crucial when you live in a home that has central air.

Once you get out of the habit of doing daily home yoga, it’s hard to get back into it sometimes. So this is timely: Gaiam contacted me about a new online home yoga program with Rodney Yee, called the Gaiam Yoga Club…so I’m checking it out and will be reviewing it here. I’ve just logged in this evening to take a peek, and so far it looks pretty comprehensive and yet not too overwhelming. I really need something to get me motivated now…I don’t want to lose all the progress I made during my teacher training.

(CFS sufferers have a tendency towards orthostatic hypotension, which means we have thin blood and/or low blood pressure that can cause dizziness or even fainting when standing up quickly. Working out in an overheated room causes the blood to thin…thus, it stands to reason, if you already have a problem with low blood pressure or low blood volume, working out in high heat is probably a bad idea.)

But I’m curious about the different yoga styles and wanted to see what all the fuss was about Bikram. So I got his beginning yoga book and learned about his series (a separate review of the book will be posted later). Bikram created a specific sequence of 26 postures (plus two breathing exercises) that he claims works out the entire body in a way no other yoga series does. I wanted to find out if there was truth to the hype.

I finally did the full series yesterday, probably not properly, and I cheated and didn’t do everything twice as indicated. (Mostly, I did, however.) Still, I got a good workout, and it took me an hour to get through everything (though, I did add restorative supported bridge pose at the end).

Bikram has two sections to his series. First, a standing series, and then a floor series. Most of the poses were doable (even, surprisingly, standing head to knee), but the two that got me were the toe balance and the “fixed firm” (his name for reclining hero). I can’t even sit upright in hero without a block underneath me, so fixed firm is a long way off.

His standing series was a bit heavy on balance poses and a bit light on hip openers (no warriors here). The floor series reminded me a lot of the Sivananda series…lots of backbends that move the spine one way and then the other. A few parts are practically identical to Sivananda (cobra -> locust -> bow).

Two major elements missing from Bikram are poses that work on the upper body and inversions. Heck, I think even just the addition of plow would be helpful here, and even Sivananda, which is light on the arm stuff, has an arm balance (crow) at the end.

Overall, I really like this series because it works a lot on the spine in the same way the Sivananda series does. This is why I am not too keen on doing vinyasa flow or power yoga classes all the time – they don’t do jack for your back unless the teacher actively decides to add backbends at the end (something other than just bridge pose).

With that in mind, I think I would happily incorporate the Bikram series into my home practice, and perhaps add shoulderstand and plow at the end when I want some inversions. I don’t think I’d make this my sole yoga practice, and I won’t ever do it in full heat, but it’s a good series to know.

As I’ve stated in an earlier blog post on Bikram, I just can’t see how I’d enjoy an overheated room while doing yoga. I’ve been taking some classes in 90 degree weather recently and I found myself staying towards the back where the a/c was. The heat just makes me feel a bit sick, actually.

But then I thought, hmm, if Bikram uses heat to loosen up the muscles, perhaps I could use applied heat to various locations to do the same thing. Notably, my tight hamstrings.

When I was in my 20s, I could not touch my toes. My hands would hover above my shins. Doing staff pose was downright torture. Then in my 30s I was finally able to reach my toes after a Sivananda teacher pushed my lower back during seated forward bend. Hurrah! But I’ve felt stuck since then. The best I could do in a standing forward fold was to barely get the tips of my fingers on the mat.

Today I tried my seated forward bend with a heating pad directly underneath my knees. I also did some leg stretches on my back, with the heating pad under my back.

I was very careful…I certainly do not want to sprain myself. But lo and behold…after one session with the heating pad I was not only able to get my fingers down on the mat but I could place my palms flat on the mat in front of my feet! A MIRACLE! HURRAH!

As the day has progressed I have stiffened up slightly, but most of the amazing progress I made this morning is still intact…and my legs do not hurt whatsoever.

I’m going to keep this up daily and see where I get. I’m feeling hopeful about my hamstrings for the first time in a long while!

You don’t get “name” teachers at Sivananda, and heck, they don’t even put the names of the teachers on the schedule, but I have yet to take a class with a bad teacher there. The classes are so small (sometimes only a few people) that you always get individual attention and some nice adjustments.

Last night, the teacher gave me a nice push in plow until I got a bit nervous; she came back and set me up with pillows for my feet. Try getting that in a class of 50 people. I went farther and deeper in a bunch of poses thanks to the adjustments.

I guess for some these classes are not strenuous enough, but really, I consider headstand and any number of classical poses to be tough enough without the variations. Once you master them, then you get to try all the alternative versions. Unless you can go into full lotus while doing a headstand, I don’t think you can say that headstand isn’t challenging enough.

Best part? You get to do sivasana between poses. I love that.

I’m familiar with Gurmukh because I have an old video of hers stuck in my big pile of yoga videos. I got it years ago and I have to admit it didn’t do much for me, but all I was looking for was exercise at the time. Kundalini Yoga really isn’t about exercise so much as moving your energy. As such, it just wasn’t something that I was looking for in my 20s.

Gurmukh’s class last night was quite beautiful, however. Not for the exercise, but for the beautiful energy. She started off with a half-hour discussion, then we did some of those semi-painful repetitive exercises (squatting for what seemed like forever, ouch!), and then finally we had a healing circle.

We all had a chance to either be inside or outside the healing circle, sending healing to the people within. I did both. After I got out of the center and sat back to chant with the circle, I was struck by all the people laying on the floor, opening themselves up to the healing energies. It was extremely touching and made me cry.

But that’s what seems to happen when you go to certain events at Golden Bridge. A new friend I met there told me she’s ended up crying the few times she’s gone as well.

Gurmukh has a sweet, gentle energy and it’s not surprising so many people are fond of her. While I’m not giving up my Hatha Yoga anytime soon, I am definitely open to trying more of the offerings at Golden Bridge. For me, Kundalini Yoga is the best when you are following it with some sort of meditation or healing. For exercise, I prefer my forward bends and twists and inversions.