Hot for Yoga - by Mehtab, Yoga Yoga's Founder

Does yoga make you hot? Does it stoke your inner fire and stimulate your willful passion? Does it make you sweat?

I hope so. Yoga is about harnessing the ritual fire known as "agni" that is the transformational force that burns away the impurities of body, mind and soul. It is the heat of the yoga practice and the flame of our inner awareness.

In yoga you want hot. You want the fire. And even though it seems that Austin in August would give use all the heat we may need, you need to learn how to play with fire.

At some point in your yoga practice, even if you engage in a gentle and slow moving style of yoga, you begin to create an inner heat in the body through the applied effort of your will and the regulation of your breath. This heat, on the most basic level, begins to open the circulation and the muscles in the body. You become "looser" and you can move more easily.

At some levels, it may only be a pleasant sense of warmth or very light perspiration. At other levels, you may be slipping off your soaked yoga mat and reaching for a second towel.

While you may experience this heat as the body being physically hot, the agni fire in yoga is actually a psychic heat. So unlike most physical exercises that get you hot, sweaty and tired, yoga gets you hot, sweaty and energetically purified.

That is because the inner heat you create in yoga through the application of your conscious will and breathing burns away impurities. This heat is sometimes called "tapas" or austerities because it is through this applied effort, the austerity or discipline, you build your own inner flame of awareness.

An example of how this inner heat works just beyond physical exertion is during an intense meditation or pranayama practice. You may be sitting perfectly still yet the intensity of your applied effort in your meditation and breath can create a powerful heat inside the body that produces profuse sweating.

I remember a six-week meditation I practiced for 31 minutes each evening. Every day I would sweat in a different and strangely localized place - behind my left ear, my stomach, the back of the neck, only the scalp or just the soles of the feet. The heat was coming from the purifying effects of the meditation itself as the energy channels of the body opened to this inner fire of applied effort and discipline.

This heat, this "agni" fire, is so valued by the ancient yogis that sometimes they would seek to induce it artificially. They would practice in warm climates or mediate near a fire. Even today modern yogis in some traditions may crank up the temperature extremely high in a classroom to produce the illusion of this inner heat.

But the outer heat is only an illusion and sometimes a dangerous one at that. While the outer heat can make the body feel looser, there will be a danger of overstretching unless the inner work has been done to open the more subtle channels of the flow of energy.

This inner heat is best accomplished by the muscular locks of the body (the bandhas) and the regulation of the breath (prana) coupled with the concentration of the mind - not by turning up the thermostat. When this inner heat is properly generated, you will sweat buckets in the early months or years of your practice as the body detoxifies and purifies regardless of the room temperature.

In the high Himalayas, yogis would have a contest as to who could generate the most of this inner heat. They would sit naked in the high mountain snow and wrap themselves in a number of wet blankets. Then they would go into their meditative practice and build up such a powerful inner heat, such a strong "agni," the blankets would dry out one by one. The Yogi who could dry out the most blankets won!

Your inner heat in your yoga practice can be dampened and put out by water, just like any fire can be. This is why yogis never drink during a yoga practice or meditation. No water, no hydration while the inner fire is building. No water bottles in yoga class. Afterwards one can hydrate as much as desired because much water can be lost in sweating.

After awhile, however, you will tend to sweat less even though the heat is present. The sweating ceases as the body becomes purified and eventually when this happens the physical body itself begins to feel very clean and light - almost weightless.

The exception to the no drinking rule during practice is when there is a high degree of artificial outer heat present. An overly heated room or practicing in full sunlight or in a hot climate can create hydration problems so common sense should be used to prevent illness. Better yet, keep your outer environment moderate and create all the heat from within.

The other contraindication is during pregnancy. There is already a high degree of purification and inner heat from the condition itself and the yoga practice should be more cooling than warming.

At Yoga Yoga we try to keep the studios at a moderate temperature - not chilled but not overly warm. By the time you come into relaxation at the end of the class, you should feel the warmth of that inner heat and enjoy a light moisture on the body that will naturally cool you off gradually.

Typically, one would not rush to a shower after a warming yoga practice. You do not want to cool down too soon nor do you want to remove the beneficial effects of the natural transudation (which sounds much nicer than sweat!). And as your body purifies with yoga, the perspiration produced during the practice has no unpleasant odor and is indeed beneficial to leave on the body.

So play with the fire of yoga. Give yourself over to the heat of the moment. Kindle your passion with your breath and concentration. Go for the good burn, the purifying heat of the tapas, the inner flame of the agni, and let your sun shine forth. You are hot, you are yoga.