The Latest On Our Coronavirus Efforts

Dear BYN Family,

Classes are running as usual for the time being, however as a space for health and wellbeing let’s continue to look after one another.
We are monitoring the evolving status of the Covid-19 situation as it develops. In this situation it is very hard to assess what the real risks are and what balance we must strike between social distancing and the activities that keep us healthy and happy. Ultimately, this will have to be a choice you must come to yourselves but regardless we should remain calm and follow the best possible hygiene practices we can. We place your safety first and foremost and have put into place following measures and policies.

Steps we have taken to keep you safe:
1. We have a scheduled disinfectant cleaning of all surfaces before class, again during class and once again after class. This includes the floors, all counters, taps and fixtures, door knobs etc.
2. We have installed hand sanitisers at the entrance to the hot room, each changing room and the front desk.
3. We conducted a staff hygiene refresher training and our staff will sanitise their hands regularly and do a thorough hand washing every hour.
4. The hot room will continue to be thoroughly disinfected between each class.
5. Juice bar produce is thoroughly disinfected with a Bio Veggie wash and rinsed before being juiced. The juice bar attendants will continue to adhere to the highest level of food safety standards.
6. We are taking measures to ensure all staff working are in good health (no fever cough or any flu-like symptoms) as well as ensuring they have private transport to and from their homes to limit any exposure.

Steps we ask you to take to keep us all safe:
1. We ask that if you or anyone you live with have any flu like symptoms that you stay away from the studio and not be offended if we ask you to submit to a touch less thermometer reading to ensure you have no signs of fever.
2. We ask that you sanitise your hands on arrival at the studio when signing in at the front desk.
3. We ask that you bring your own mat, mat towel and shower towel (even if you are on a VIP membership) as we will no longer be renting or providing mats or towels.
This is to maintain safety for both yourselves and our staff.
4. We ask that you sanitise your hands before entering the hot room and use a paper towel to open the door.
5. We ask you that you cough into paper towels/tissues provided or in the worst case your elbow/shoulder and place all tissues first underneath your mat and finally in the bins provided before leaving the hot room.
6. We ask that you bring or purchase from reception a bag to place your used mat and towel and place your mat and towel into that bag before exiting the hot room. We will not allow any wet un-bagged mats and towels in the studio space or changing rooms.

➡️ Correction classes have also been postponed until further notice.

What Is The Purpose Of Pain?

Emmy Cleaves is an amazing woman.  She is the Principal of the Bikram Yoga College of India, she leads the advanced class at headquarters three times a week and her lecture on pain is one of the most memorable at teacher training.  Did we mention she’s in her mid-8o’s?  Listen up, she knows what she’s talking about!

Emmy talks about the gift of pain – without it we would destroy ourselves.  Think about it.  Pain is the message that something in the body is off (could be as extreme as your hand on a hot stove or as small as a splinter stuck in your finger).  If we ignored it, it could possibly turn into a much bigger problem (think about what would happen if you never took your hand off that hot stove)!

There is another level to pain, which is the pain that we reference in class.  Ever hear the instructor to tell you that your back is supposed to hurt?  Or that your elbows are supposed to hurt?  Our how about telling you to make sure your back hurts?  When we start improving and changing the body, there is a lot of sensation that goes on with that.  When the mind first experiences this, it often freaks out and reacts as if the body was on a hot stove as opposed to just getting a good stretch.  This is normal!  Think about the reaction your body probably had the first time you tried Camel pose.  Pretty dramatic, right?  The trick is to go slowly and breathe and slowly teach our body that it is not experiencing the agony of stretching, but the luxury of release!

This is especially important when dealing with injury.  It’s important to bring the body into the room to facilitate healing.  Heat + breath = increased circulation = faster healing time.  If you want to alleviate the pain from your bulging disc, come into the room.  If you want to get rid of the frozen shoulder, bring it in.  If you want to get your body in a better place for your next road race, do some yoga.  As you move through the series, the trick is to start to recognise what kind of pain you are dealing with.  The kind of pain that is telling you to stop?  Or the kind of pain that is experiencing something it hasn’t before?  You will learn this over time with consistent practice.  Go slowly.  Be mindful.  Practice yoga.  As Emmy says, “yoga without mindfulness is just calisthenics.”

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More about Emmy:
Emmy Cleaves took her first yoga class in 1950 from a Hindu in Beverly Hills, California. As a young war refugee from Latvia, her trajectory to that tiny locale had been at least as unlikely as his. So when she later studied under another Hindu, Bikram Chouhdury, the universality of the teachings remained clear to her. “There’s only one kind of yoga,” she says. “There are just different paths to it because we are such a myriad of people. We are all God’s experiment of one.”

Emmy was a young girl when she and her mother fled their hometown of Riga, Latvia, during the Stalinist army’s second advance on the tiny country during the second world war.When the Eastern front advanced on Danzig, the camp disintegrated and Emmy separated from her mother, was shipped off to Denmark, then back to Germany, and finally to the United States. She learned the language and eventually moved to California. Emmy was a successful businesswoman in Los Angeles by the time she attended that first yoga class. She had been pestering her jazz dance teacher for more of the slow stretching exercises he taught as warm-ups; he told her to do yoga—the first time she heard the word. “I became completely fascinated with the subject,” she says. For her, as for most practitioners, the initial attraction was physical. “But when I started learning the philosophy, it seemed like yes, that’s exactly it; that’s the truth,” she recalls,”the ethics and morality that my mother had taught me. I had always sensed that we’re not just a quantum mechanical body, that we’re multidimensional beings, and that the body is just a denser form of the many interactive energy fields. So it resonated completely with my state of mind.”

Emmy began reading books and practicing on her own. For the next two decades she sampled the relatively limited smorgasbord of yoga offerings then available in Los Angeles. “I would try a class here and there, but I was never impelled to stay because internally I never connected with anyone,” she says. The teacher has to resonate on some other level than just ‘Put your legs here’ and ‘do this’ and ‘stretch that.’”

Then at thirty five, Emmy almost died from a brain haemorrhage, which is how her father died in Latvia. The experience changed her forever. “A life threatening event like that makes you wonder what the purpose is of your survival. Why are you alive? Why didn’t you die? Emmy’s search for answers created cataclysmic upheavals in her life. She gave up being a businesswoman, divorced her first husband and began exploring meditation and yoga more seriously.

In 1973 Emmy attended a demonstration by a 26 year old yogi by the name of Bikram Choudhury. “His group consisted of maybe ten people—all ages and shapes, including a couple of kids. I was fascinated by the energy and precision of his demonstration.” At the end of the presentation Bikram jumped off the stage, walked across the room, and stuck a card in her hand. “Tomorrow. You come my school,” he said. She did.

As chance had it, in the preceding weeks Emmy had been reading Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramanhansa Yogananda, whose brother Bishnu Ghosh had been Bikram’s guru throughout his childhood in Calcutta. Ghosh, a master of yoga’s physical practices, trained young Bikram to compete in the National India Yoga Competition, which Bikram won at the age of eleven and for next three years. At Ghosh’s behest Bikram set off for the West, eventually ending up in Beverly Hills where he began reteaching Emmy Cleaves everything she had ever learned.

“We argued. We really argued,” Emmy says.“I had done yoga for a long time, none of it the way he demanded it be done.” Bikram’s methodology involves a basic series twenty six poses practiced in a 42C studio. His studio and teaching methods were different from Emmy had previously learned.“I would go into a Cobra pose doing everything right,” Emmy says, “ and he would say, ‘No, that’s not the way. The posture’s not the object; your body is the object.’I began getting very frustrated.And that heat!I said, ‘Bikram, if you’d turn down the stupid heat this room would be much more full.’He said, ‘An empty barn is better than a barn full of naughty cows.”

Emmy had had enough. It was upsetting my whole equilibrium,” she says. Her friend Barbara Brown, a pioneer in the development of biofeedback, was taking a trip to India to tour research centres and Emmy joined her. Among the facilities she visited she found yoga being used to treat medical conditions like diabetes and asthma. “Lo and behold, they did the postures Bikram’s way,” Emmy says.“I visited three of four other research centres that did the poses his way as well, with the same energy and same demand for precision.”

So Emmy went back to Beverly Hills and immersed herself in Bikram’s teachings and in the logic of his twenty-six-posture, ninety minute series. “The first time you do the twenty-six postures which cover a normal range of motion for just about anybody, they act as a diagnostic tool,” she explains. Even People with minimal body awareness are able to diagnose their own problem areas.Then with practice those same postures become therapeutic tools that reeducate your body and heightens the efficiency of its major systems.

Like any well chosen asana program, Bikarm Yoga is intended to tone the endocrine, lymphatic, and digestive systems, increase capillary blood flow and produce a strong, limber and comfortable musculoskeletal system.To attain the benefits of this series, though, the sequence of the postures is paramount which is why Emmy defends Bikram’s decision to copyright his method.

The efficacy of Bikram Yoga is made continually apparent to Emmy through the many therapeutic “miracles” she has witnessed in the thirty years she has taught it. What gives me such pleasure is that I am able to share this valuable thing, which has so much potential to better people’s lives and to heal whatever is not working for them,” Emmy says “That is the ultimate accomplishment of my life and will be to the end of it.”

A big thank you to Audrey Holst and Diane Ducharme Gardner for this wonderful content!

10 Reasons to Participate in the BYN 30 Day Challenge

Challenge yourself to complete 30 classes in 30 days or 5 classes a week for 4 weeks.

We know its not easy, but committing to a regular practice is life changing and a challenge may be just the way to jump start your motivation! Signing up for the challenge is easy. Stop by the front desk to register or sign up online at https://bikramyoganairobi.com/byn2019challenge.

If you are a member you can take the challenge for free, top up if you would like to take the Transformation Challenge, or put your membership on hold.  

Once you register, for the Transformation Challenge you will receive weekly clean eating meal plans, support emails, measurement tracking sheets and access to a private Facebook/ WhatsApp group with the BYN staff, teachers and the director Karim. Still not convinced? Well, here are 10 more reasons you should join either challenge!

1.  Be Accountable

When you work with a group, or set a goal “publicly” it helps to keep our eye on the prize.  Let us know what your goals are and we will check in with you as the days go by.

2. Feel the benefits of a regular yoga practice
Use this challenge to jump start a regular practice!  The more you practice the better the results. 1-2x a week is maintenance. 3+ a week you will feel the benefits a lot quicker.  Get stronger, more flexible and reduce stress.  This practice will make you want to take care of your body more.  Because guess what? If you don’t you will feel it on the mat.  And that is okay.  This practice is not about the postures but about how you feel outside of the yoga studio too!

3. Its a great way to get started
Even if you have just started with us you can join this challenge.  Use these next 30 days to commit to the practice.  Dive in.  See what its all about.  Try different times, different teachers, different classes and see how they feel in your body and mind when you practice FREQUENTLY.

4, Create a long term habit
Once you commit to the next month, you very well may realise that you love the way it makes you feel…and why would you want to stop feeling great?!

5. Be a part of a community
You will be working with a group of like-minded people with similar goals in mind.  You will be able to see how everyone else is doing, share your frustrations, celebrate your victories…and hey, a little healthy competition isn’t a bad thing! Can you do this on your own? Of course you can, but your likelihood of success is amplified with just that bit of accountability and group dynamic!

6. Sleep better
You will.

7. Eat better
You will want to because when you don’t, you’ll feel it.

8. Take time for yourself
You deserve to take time for yourself.  And you may be surprised at how much more accomplished and focused you feel the rest of the day.  You know the routine in an airplane: you put your oxygen mask on first before you help others! Same in life.  Self care so you can be a better human in the world!

9. Feel accomplished
You know that great feeling you get when you cross something off your to-do list? There is just something about it! You will feel accomplished every time you get to check off another class that you have completed! You will be inspired by your own discipline.

10. Be a part of something bigger
People have been practicing yoga for a long time.  By practicing yoga you are part of a long lineage of folks who have found that yoga will make you feel energised and gain self knowledge.  It’s time tested.  We know it works. You will too!

For more information on the Challenge see:

https://bikramyoganairobi.com/30-day-yoga-and-transformation-challenge/

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My Bikram Yoga Journey

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My

Bikram Yoga Journey

I enjoy challenges, especially those I can relate to in terms of benefits and physical exercise. When my sister and I were offered a Bikram Yoga class, we jumped on the occasion; a challenge with my sister is the best challenge their is 🙂

We push each other and try to be as good as the other. We also understand each other without having to speak.

Though it’s increased in popularity in the last few decades, yoga has actually been around for thousands of years. And in its various forms, it is beneficial for not just your physical health but for your mental health and it helps in a variety of other ways too. 

We have been practising yoga for a while, not being naturally flexible, we thought the addition of the 40 degree heat in the hot room would enable us to gain flexibility in no time.

As we entered the silent room, the other yogis already positioned lying down, feet towards the back wall – we looked at each other which meant “hmm, this isn’t quite what we expected”. It was hot.

We lay down and started breathing deeply, as we felt the air was not conducive to normal breathing, we observed what the other students were doing and waited for the instructor to enter the room.

The class began with a breathing exercise, which hurt my shoulders, and made me feel uncomfortable, then came the standing poses. Poses I was familiar with but yet I did not seem to be able to go deeper into them, some I wasn’t able to do at all. My mind started to get in the way, thoughts occurring along the lines of “ Its too hot in here”, “ This is making me uncomfortable”, “How much longer is the class”, “There’s sweat in my eye!”

At one point the Instructor switched on a fan for a few seconds which changed my state of being and I began to relax a bit again. As soon as it went off, I started to obsess about when the next fan time would be, which did not happen for what felt like a very long time.

By this time my sister had already taken a knee, and was now lying flat on her back, she looked drained and was imploring me with her eyes to help her somehow. I smiled at her, or tried to amidst  my own exhaustion – she did not return it.

Not long after, it was my turn, first I took a knee, then collapsed into savasana, breathing heavily, my mind still racing, now I was eyeing the fan pleading with it to come on.

I looked at my sister, she was looking at me – this meant “lets leave”.

We quietly got up, and began to roll up our mats. “ Ladies, please don’t leave the room” we hear, “ the goal is to stay in the room for the entire duration of the class, you can stay in savasana if you need to, breathe normally through the nose, this will bring down your heart rate and enable you to finish the class”. Back we went into savasana which lasted until the end of the class for us.

We swore to ourselves we would never take the class again, the instructor however took us aside as we were leaving  and talked to us about our experience in the hot room. She explained that we were detoxing deeply and rapidly, about the benefits of a regular practice, that we would get used to the heat in no time, that its normal to feel overwhelmed and most importantly, to breathe normally throughout the class.

The personal touch made all the difference to me, within a day I was back in the hotroom.

Fast forward to today – I now practice 3 times a week, If I don’t get in my 3 classes I feel like something is missing. Over time I have felt a shift within myself , I am learning which foods are good for me and which ones don’t sit so well. I’m learning how to control my breath which in turn controls my mind. I don’t obsess over the fan so much anymore, and have come to a point where I actually enjoy the heat. Who would have thought? The more I practice, the stronger I get physically, mentally and emotionally. The more focused and determined I become on the mat, the more focused and determined I become in my daily life. I have come to find that who I am on the mat, reflects who I am off the mat.

I am transforming myself from the inside out, can breathe better than I have done in a very long time and would highly recommend Bikram Yoga to anyone who wants to make a serious lifestyle change. I had heard before that many Bikram students feel addicted to it, I can see and feel now for myself how this is possible.

There are a host of benefits that come with Bikram Yoga including increased blood circulation, improved digestion, flexibility, prevents injuries, glowing skin etc.

Come and take a class, see for yourself,  show up for yourself and be transformed.

Comment with what Bikram Yoga has done for you, or get in touch if you would like to contribute your own article.