Voluntary Discomfort
I’ve been doing Bikram Yoga on and off for about seven years. My first class was when I was just 15 years old. One of my friend’s older sisters had suggested I try it.
It’s one of the only places where people of every age, shape, and size walk into the same room and get instructed by a sweet 70-year-old lady to do what might be the hardest physical activity of their lives.
And just because you’re a petite girl with a dancer’s background, you quickly learn never to underestimate the fat man in speedos standing next to you.
Because while you’re shaking and your leg muscles are burning from balancing on one leg, all you want to do is get the fuck out of that room. When you lie down on your back, the floor is too hot. Everything is uncomfortable. The hardest thing you can do in there is breathe and stand still.
Ninety minutes.
104 degrees.
40% humidity.
Twenty-six postures, each done twice and held for about a minute.
When those 90 minutes are finally over and you collapse into Savasana, it feels like your muscles are falling off the bone — like a braised short rib floating in a pool of Thai curry prepared by a Michelin-star chef.
And it never gets easier. You just get more familiar with the suffering.
In my first class I had a full-blown panic attack from the heat. I had just quit ballet, and something about the strictness and rigidity of the practice felt familiar and comforting. Despite almost fainting and having some of the worst anxiety I’d ever felt, I came back the next week — and even dragged my sister and my dad with me.
Around that time, Bikram also made me feel like I finally had my life together. I was never a great student, but suddenly I felt motivated to succeed in my chemistry and math classes. I journaled, kept a schedule, and looked forward to walking into the heated studio during the cold winter months.
Then COVID hit, and I lost that rhythm. Honestly, the only reason I even got the vaccine was so I could have the card and be allowed back into the studio.
A couple of months later, I started working the front desk at my local studio. I built a community there — to the point where it became most of my adolescent social life.
Working there, I saw everything. I helped people when they got faint, cleaned the showers, and cleaned up vomit. At some point, I could tell who used the rented towels just by how they smelled.
It wasn’t glamorous, but it made me feel grounded, like I was part of something real.
I had free classes as part of my compensation, so I went every day. Sometimes twice a day. On Wednesdays and Sundays I’d rip through an Ashtanga half-primary series and then jump straight into a Bikram class, with no water breaks.
Bikram had become half my life. I was basically putting myself through torture every day.
I started reading the Yoga Sutras and the Bhagavad Gita, trying to make sense of why we willingly put ourselves through discomfort like this.
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And I got really bendy.
In bow pose — Dhanurasana — my teachers would grab my arms and lift me up like a handbag. In full locust — Purna Salabhasana — instructors would lift my legs and bend them so far that my feet touched my face.
One time I got cocky and jokingly asked my instructor if I could do camel pose a third time. The sweet lady obliged by bending my spine so far back that my head practically touched my toes while standing on my knees. I woke up the next day unable to move.
But that’s what I love about Bikram.
You stand in front of the mirror and face this annoyingly difficult class, even when your vision is blurry because sweat is dripping onto your eyelashes, or when you see stars after standing up too quickly. In that moment, all you really see is a reflection of yourself, even if it’s just a vague vignette through the fog of heat and exhaustion.
You can’t think about it too much before signing up for class or walking to the studio. If you do, you’ll scare yourself out of going. I usually distract myself with a podcast or keep myself busy until the last minute, rushing in just before class starts.
By the time you step into the hot room, you’re already sweating. The silence feels loud. And when the instructor walks in, everyone stands up and your heart drops slightly in anticipation of that first breathing exercise, filling your lungs with absurd amounts of air.
It’s pure. You meet yourself there in your most vulnerable state and somehow learn to keep going anyway.
The class isn’t really about flexibility or strength. It’s about negotiating with the voice in your head that keeps screaming at you to leave. The whole practice is just ninety minutes of deciding not to.
And yet the instructor is already calling the next posture. The mirrors are fogged. Someone behind me is moaning loudly or doing something entirely different. My legs are shaking again. The door is still there, five feet away.
Yes, if it’s a bad day, I’ll leave. But most days, for some reason, I stay. Even if that means sitting on the floor for half the class.
The truth is, Bikram might just be my favorite form of control. Outside the room, life is unpredictable. Inside the room, the heat is unbearable, but at least the suffering is scheduled.
There’s something comforting about being told exactly what to do for ninety minutes. No choices, no phone, no distractions. Just breathe, hold the posture, and try not to collapse. If you do, get back up.
Bikram strips away the performative aspect of modern wellness culture. In a city where workout classes double as social clubs for NYC transplants obsessing over Pilates reformers, Bikram feels refreshingly brutal, almost monastic by comparison. Every so often, there’s an overly confident transplant who walks in expecting just another workout class, and I catch myself quietly amused — not at them exactly, but at how the room humbles everyone eventually. I also remember that I was once that person too.
And somewhere between the sweat dripping into my eyes and the voice in my head telling me to leave, I remember that the door is always there. The strange thing is that no one is forcing me to stay.
But I stay anyway.
One of the instructors likes to say, “If you can, you must.”
In that room, it’s like advice and more like a law.
