A Yoga Novice Searches for the Best Fit

I am a stressed-out corporate employee who spends far too much time growing pallid under fluorescent lights, mushing my intestines together eight hours a day in my chair, burning my eyeballs out in front of a computer screen, and steadily tightening my forearms as I pound away on my keyboard like a frustrated classical pianist.

During this holiday season my shoulders have only grown more humped, my overtaxed adrenal glands more productive. I needed help. Not just for my body, but for my head.

In this city of glamour and youth, where bodies reign supreme and fitness options are infinite, I wanted something different from the hamstring-tightening athletic activities I typically turn to for release.

I decided to try yoga.

I had dabbled in the 5,000-year-old Indian practice before, tagging along with friends who can bend at the waist and, straight-legged, touch their noses to their knees and breathe from their necks like furnaces. But I never knew what I was doing, or understood the distinctions between the various types of yoga, with their dizzying, multisyllabic Sanskrit names.

I set out on a quest to find the yoga for me.

The array of choices was bewildering. From bungalows in Echo Park to storefront studios, corporate basements, institutes, centers and colleges, it seems yoga classes are taught everywhere these days.

No one’s quite sure how many millions of Americans are practicing yoga. A 1998 survey by the Wall Street Journal and NBC pegged the number at more than 18 million (up from 6 million in 1994). But Kathryn Arnold, editor of Yoga Journal, believes the number is significantly higher now, although there are no current figures.

Yoga is among the fastest-growing types of exercise classes offered in gyms, among both men and women. A survey of U.S. fitness centers by IDEA Health and Fitness Assn., a trade group, found that 69% now offer yoga classes, compared with 31% in 1996 and 57% last year.

Of course, there are many Angelenos who are as well-versed with the various types of yoga as they are with, say, the menu at the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf. But there remain lots of semi-novices like me.

But which type of yoga to try?

Kundalini. Bikram. Vini. Vinyasa. Mysore. Hatha. Iyengar. Ashtanga. Power. What did they mean? Were they all different? Would they give me buns of steel, or a peaceful mind? Biceps like Madonna’s (cool!) or a fleeting glimpse of nirvana?

After talking to various gurus, I narrowed my search to four forms of yoga that are most visible in Los Angeles: Kundalini, Ashtanga, Iyengar and Bikram.

With the exception of Kundalini, all of these are forms of Hatha yoga, the physical form of yoga. Although they all share certain poses and underlying philosophies, each practice, in its pure form, is distinct. In all cases I attended at least one level 1 or general class. Teachers pointed out that the benefits of yoga cannot come without regular practice. My findings stem from the admittedly superficial observations of a yoga neophyte, based solely on my class and a conversation with each teacher afterward.

(Of note: Teachers are extremely important. The same kind of yoga can vary widely depending on the teacher. Some teachers have trained for as little as six months, while others have studied for decades, traveling to India to work with a master. Do not be shy about asking your teacher how long he or she has trained, and with whom.) For the sake of comparison, I wore a Polar A-5 monitor, which kept track of my heart rate (in beats per minute) and the calories burned; the results are noted below. Of the four types, Bikram burned the most calories for me. I also carefully noted the less concrete, but no less beneficial, changes in my mind. (The very talk of calories and heart rates no doubt curdles the blood of true yogis, most of whom see yoga as primarily a spiritual practice with important physical side effects.)

At the end of my week, I cannot discern which benefits came from which yoga. But I can say that my head is calmer and my often achy back feels better than it has in years. I lost five pounds. And though I have only just begun, I have tasted the pleasures of the spiritual side.

Kundalini

I walked in off the roaring traffic and into a world where everything seemed bathed in soft, golden light. I had arrived at Golden Bridge. More Kundalini classes are offered here than anywhere else in Los Angeles.

The word Kundalini literally means “coiled hair of the beloved.” Kundalini works to move energy up through the spine. This release of energy is often symbolized by a serpent, which is uncoiled in the course of the yoga practice.

Golden Bridge had the feel of an ashram. The studio had wooden floors and brick walls. Our teacher, Sada Sat Kaur Khalsa, sat on a stage. She wore a turban (because she is a Sikh), a special turban-sized headset, flowing white robes and a beatific expression. The room was shadowed; it felt like nap time.

Khalsa told me that Kundalini is the mother of all yogas. It was practiced as a secret oral tradition for thousands of years, creating an image of mystery. She explained that although classes can involve dynamic movement, Kundalini yoga students are often still, and every class involves relaxation and meditation.

“That is what you are doing exercise for,” she said. “To get to a place where you can relax.”

The class began with a mantra everyone except me seemed to know. We put our hands in a specific mudra, or hand position. We pummeled our forearms with our own hands. We chanted a lot. We sang. We danced with our eyes closed. We did many breathing exercises, and swung our arms and bodies in unusual directions to get the blood circulating.

It was not all easy. We did quiet positions that appeared effortless, but were excruciating. We did squats until people grunted in pain and held our arms straight out to the side for what I later found out was only two minutes, chanting as we swung our heads from side to side.

After the 90-minute class Khalsa invited us to have a cup of tongue-tingling yogi tea.

Of the four classes I attended Kundalini felt the most meditative. I left class blissed out and calmer than I had been in a long time. While I broke a sweat only briefly during the class, I was very sore.

(Average heart rate, 82; calories burned, 46; class length, 90 minutes)

Iyengar

I took my Iyengar class at Yoga Works in Santa Monica one morning before work. The second-floor studio has airy rooms with wood floors and windows that are open on sunny days to let in the breeze.

Our teacher, Chris Stein, exuded warmth and nurturing energy. After meditating and chanting to open class, we began.

This form of Hatha yoga takes its name from B.K.S. Iyengar, an 85-year-old master who still teaches in Pune, India, near Bombay. Iyengar yoga focuses on teaching the classic yoga postures through correct alignment and precise actions of the body. The strengthening comes from how long you hold the pose. As beginning students we held simple poses for 30 seconds to a couple of minutes. Iyengar, we are told, can hold his postures for 45 minutes. Or more.

Unlike teachers leading classes of some other forms of yoga, Stein circulated through the class, straightening our knees, pulling back our shoulders, aligning our hips, watching carefully to make sure we did not injure ourselves or push too hard.

Iyengar yoga also uses props. We used blocks, blankets and special chairs to support us. The more inflexible you are, the more you use props.

I used everything.

We probably only did four to six poses in a 90-minute class, but we did them perfectly. I emerged from the class not tired, but energized. In fact, my heart rate was slower when the class ended than when I started. It sounds hokey, but when I walked out my eyes felt brighter, and my mind felt more alert.

While Iyengar continues to advanced levels, most yoga teachers recommend that any aspiring student at least begin with an Iyengar class to master the postures.

(Average heart rate, 75; calories burned, 20; class length, 90 minutes)

Bikram

Bikram yoga is extreme, and it seems to appeal to extreme people. Bikram yoga takes its name from Bikram Choudhury, who came to this country in the 1970s. He lives in Los Angeles, where he runs Bikram’s Yoga College of India. Bikram yoga consists of 26 poses, each of which is done twice. They are always done in the same sequence, and never vary. While most yogas require you to generate your own heat, Bikram heats the room to 105 degrees, so that he can work bodies like a blacksmith, he says, loosening even the most inflexible urban dweller.

Our teacher, Ted Lehrman, wore a headset like an aerobics instructor and stood in front of the room. The studio smelled like old sweat, and within minutes I was sweating myself. Lehrman revved us up with a nonstop, high-speed motivational patter of encouragement and instruction that made me feel like I was listening to talk radio. For the next hour and a half he never slowed down. It was the voice of my high school swim coach, raised from the dead.

“Push yourself; this should hurt,” he said. “If you’re feeling nauseous, your lips are tingling, that’s OK.”

The man next to me kept whispering, “Be careful,” followed by grunted obscenities as he pushed himself to new levels of pain.

At times I thought I was going to pass out from the heat. There was no one-on-one instruction. In the locker room longtime Bikram devotees swore to me, unsolicited, that Bikram yoga will make you long and lean.

“This,” said one woman, “is like what the Green Berets are to the Army.”

I worried I might seriously hurt myself, but when class ended, I felt great. No, I didn’t feel spiritually calm, or physically balanced. Rather, I felt the kind of all-over, pummelled-to-a-pulp exhaustion that can only follow extreme exercise.

(Average heart rate, 114; calories burned, 390; class length, 90 minutes)

Ashtanga

Ashtanga has the reputation for being the most difficult form of yoga. Some Ashtanga classes actually require a minimum two-week commitment so you can learn the poses. In its proper form Ashtanga yoga should be practiced six mornings a week.

The Mysore-style Ashtanga classes at Yoga Works are taught in the tradition of Sri K. Pattabbi Jois, using his method of one-on-one instruction. Ashtanga yoga consists of six precisely designed sequences, or series. Each sequence is made up of postures. The postures are linked by a series of movements called vinyasa, which create heat and lead to increased flexibility. Each change in position is accompanied by an inhalation or exhalation (what teacher Chuck Miller calls a “breath-movement-unit”). Eventually, when you are strong enough, you flow smoothly from one pose to the next, breathing deeply, but never panting. Students learn these sets of postures, hundreds of them, over many years.

I rose before dawn to take Miller’s class. Miller, who founded and owns Yoga Works with his wife, Mati Ezraty, looked the way I imagined a yoga teacher to look: long, blond hair, the beard of a sage, sinewy limbs and kind eyes.

When I arrived at 6:30 a.m. the room was warm and slightly scented. It was barely light and figures more flexible than any humans I had ever seen flowed through contortionist poses with the grace of ballerinas. I felt like I was out of my league.

I was.

Students work through the poses at their own speed, with no guidance from the teacher. The reason some teachers require a commitment, I discovered, is that they invest the majority of the class working with new students (me) one on one.

I spent the first hour doing sun salutations. Some of the postures made me tremble. Others proved impossible. Forty minutes into a 2those-hour class, I was so exhausted Miller told me to stop. He congratulated me for even being there, and talked to me in a soothing voice about the meaning of the practice.

“Physical exercise is a side benefit,” Miller told me. “This is a spiritual discipline.”

I lay limp in child’s pose, knees bent, forehead on the floor, arms outstretched in front of me. I felt like crying, and I could already tell my shoulders felt worse than after two hours of surfing. But I came back the next day for more. For me, even at my level, Ashtanga came closest to the hybrid of meditation and physical exercise that I seemed to crave.

(Average heart rate, 100; calories burned, 60; class length, 2those hours but participated for only 40 minutes)