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FedEx(pressed)
So, Helen, the wonderful owner of that magical place that's Bikram Chiswick, has asked me to write a little something for the newsletter in the months to come. Don't worry. If you complain enough, I'm sure she'll ask me to stop right away.
To tell you the truth, at first I was a bit surprised to be asked, as I don't know much about Yoga. I told her and, instead of a philosophical answer like: "Ah, but you know that you don't know!", I got: "If I asked anybody else, I'd have to pay them extra for it: you can do it during your regular billable hours." Point taken.
Here I am, then!
I think the first thing I should clarify is what we're doing here at BYC. Yes, we're doing Bikram Yoga, of course (although 'Yoga you don't do, Yoga you try!', as Bikram says), but maybe I should specify what kind of Yoga: Hatha Yoga. Which is the physical branch of yoga, consisting of 'Asanas', or 'Postures'. This means that all those different kinds of Yoga which involve Asanas are Hatha Yoga, regardless of the name they might be sporting (Ashtanga, Power, Flow, Jivamukti, etc..).
We call the yoga we do here at BYC Bikram Yoga, because of the specific series of postures we perform in every class.
Bikram's guru, Bishnu Ghosh, and his brother, Paramahansa Yogananda (author of the seminal book 'Autobiography Of A Yogi' and founder of the Self-Realization Fellowship) used to heal patients, who would come to them with all sorts of different ailments, by prescribing specific Asanas, in order to target a specific need. However, their dream was to create a series of Asanas that could benefit everybody, healing and preventing any type of ailment. After years of research and study, from all the hundreds of different postures belonging to the Yoga tradition, they came up with a series of 84 postures + 2 breathing exercises, which could work the entire body ('inside out, bone to skin, fingertips to toes') and guarantee perfect health.
This 84 posture series is what's now called the 'Advanced Series'.
However, Bikram thought this series had two issues:
1. It was extremely difficult, therefore not accessible to everybody.
2. It took over two hours to be performed and not many people can dedicate that much time to heal themselves!
So he decided to compile another, simpler and shorter series, drawing from the Advanced, which could still thoroughly work the entire body, albeit not as intensely. That's how the Beginners Series was born: 26 postures + 2 breathing exercises. A total body workout, from the inside out and the outside in, done in 90 minutes. And he was 'so proud of it, he put his naaame on it!'.
Now, even though Bikram called it 'Beginners Series', it doesn't mean it's easy! Bikram himself says that people in the West (where Hatha yoga is not practised from the age of 3) should stick with the Beginners series for at least 40 or 50 years..!
Not long to go, then.
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