A Bikram Yoga Teacher’s Tools for Wellness

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Classic Wisdom for the Modern Human: A Self Study Guide for Wellness contains a few tools and practices for knowing your mind and body better, so you can connect with your interior world to love yourself and love others. That’s pretty much it, in a nutshell.

Bottom Line? The world will be well if each of us are well.

A 5-Part Guide for Wellness

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Wellness that comes from authenticity— of being the real you– takes attention, self awareness, grit, mindful choice, and a willingness to learn. These are the five parts of the Self Study Guide.

Self Realization

Answering, Who am I? is a lifetime process; it is a journey with no final destination. The Self Study Guide gives you several tools and practices for this journey to self realization, one of which is Bikram Yoga.

Breaking External Dependency

Bikram Yoga helped me realize that caring for my body is essential for a healthy mind and vice versa. I learned about how my very busy thinking mind has everything to do with how I feel, my stress levels, and my mood. I learned with consistent practice how an open-eyed 90 minute moving meditation is superior to my formal education, self help reading, and the various forms of dependence on things outside of myself I had unconsciously relied on for my wellness through my life. Bikram Yoga taught me that the key to wellness is self realization– an entirely interior process.

“To Thine Own Self Be True”
–William Shakespeare

I share my learning experiences in this Self StudyGuide to invite others to learn not about me or Bikram Yoga per se, but more about what it means to be a human person— and most important, to inspire and motivate you to find out what it means to be the real, authentic you. Self study for self realization is about honesty. It is that simple, but definitely not very easy.

Healing Modalities

My personal tools for wisdom and wellness are Bikram Yoga practice and daily journal writing, both of which work as therapeutic modalities. Both practices have led me to deeper, more conscious awareness; more humility; more openness to experience (flexibility); more love and compassion for myself and others; and more balance in my daily life. Neither has led me to perfection nor financial windfall, but I will admit that I am far more honest with myself and others, and I believe this is why I am healthy and happy.

Once you learn to confront “what is” without trying to push it away (aversion) or grip it too tightly (clinging), you understand more and more about the nature of your own suffering. If you can learn to stay in the space of experience, without judgment or reactivity, then you may be able to create more mindful responses to whatever life brings. You’ll likely appreciate the freedom such meditation brings. Can you say, game changer?

Wellness for Modern Humans

I’ve created this Self Study Guide for readers to learn more about one’s own unique, specific human nature through deliberate self study, as I have found this to be the foundation for a high quality life of meaning and purpose, especially in our modern world of rapid change. To “know thyself” is classic wisdom, so self study for self realization is critical for living well within a modern world full of information, distraction, noise, and unwellness stemming mostly from cultural values that don’t foster vitality. That is why throughout each part of the Self Study Guide I write about why and how each of the five parts of the self study wheel matters for both personal and social wellness. My work in the Self Study Guide also adds to what many others already understand about the state of unwellness in our modern world and are trying to address with their wonderful work. You will notice their influence throughout the Classic Wisdom for the Modern Human: A Self Study Guide for Wellness.

I also wrote the Self Study Guide as an answer to the people who continually ask me to explain the connection between my Bikram yoga series practice and my “life outside the studio” which includes my level of vitality, physical and psychological transformation, and the resulting wellness and happiness from such ongoing growth.

Practical Tools for Wellness

In the past, I have written about my passion for yoga and about my passion for writing as ways of expressing who I am on my blog, but I wanted to give readers something tangible, some practical tools they could have and use for themselves, in their own personal way, for their own personal development, beyond just reading an inspiring or motivating testimonial. As well, I am always inviting people I meet to the studio to try a hot yoga class, but many are intimidated by the perceptions of what Bikram Hot Yoga is, the negativity surrounding its founder, and the presumed vanity associated with looking at oneself in a mirror with little clothing on for ninety minutes each day.

It is difficult to explain how looking at yourself in a mirror and stretching in a hot room leads to self realization in a few minutes of casual conversation. Hence— this Self Study Guide.

Appearance vs Reality

I hope this Self StudyGuide offers a bit of insight about how it is that so many Bikram yogis have been so utterly transformed (inside and out) despite Bikram Choudhury’s reputation, the criticism of our strict Dialogue method of instruction, and all of his and the yoga’s perceived flaws and controversy. I hope it helps people understand what profusely sweating in 105/40 heated room half naked with strangers (who become friends bound by compassion) is more than what it seems.

There is more to Bikram Yoga than meets the eye, so many more positives than people know or talk about beyond our Bikram Community. Perhaps more information to educate more people is due. And, of course, I’d like to invite more people to come try the practice by informing them about the personal development that may be possible for them by beginning, like I did, an ignorant but semi-willing, slightly open-minded person looking to try a physical, body-based yoga practice as a form of exercise.

Surface vs. Deep Learning

I started looking in the mirror during my early practice out of vanity, a desire to achieve, and as a performance because that was my previous, socially- conditioned, conventional mindset. The challenge of the workout drew me in, (I wanted to conquer it, not let it beat me), the practice itself magically got me to stay for reasons I could not explain, then to become a teacher to share my love for the practice, and then to write this Guide to spread that love further beyond just my local studio. Loads of other Bikram yogis have their stories of self realization too.

But if you want a spiritual treatise, this Self Study Guide is not that book. I am mute when it comes to enlightenment or theology or the soul. There are books about the limbs of yoga. There are books about yoga as medicine. I can only report in my Self Study Guide about the tools and practices I use to find out more about who I really am, my truth, with the hope that they benefit you to know yourself and express your uniqueness for a meaningful life of purpose and wellness.

Pay it Forward

Bikram Yoga was a gift of fate I was lucky enough to receive. I didn’t seek it; it found me, so I’m hoping this little book pays my gift forward by finding its way to you– to more people who don’t know Bikram Yoga exists or to people who thought they understood it (and themselves), but do not. In that sense, I hope it promotes more learning and thus, awakening. Perhaps when combining Bikram Yoga practice with other self study techniques I have included in the Self Study Guide like introspection, meditation, self-audits, and daily journal writing, readers can transform their lives for more wisdom and wellness as I and so many others have and continue to do.

Head to your local studio and try a few original, hot, 90-minute Bikram Yoga classes. And if it helps, read the Classic Wisdom for Modern Humans: A Self Study Guide to Wellness for additional tools useful for engaging in the process of self realization!

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