I have done Bikram Yoga for many years. It’s a specialized series of yoga poses copyrighted by Bikram Choudhury and designed for Americans. You enter a studio heated to 105 degrees and sweat your way through a series of 26 poses for 90 minutes. This kind of yoga helps with weight loss, strength, posture and skin tone. I can always tell if someone is doing hot yoga by the look of their skin – it always looks cleaner and glowing.
Hou Ying, principal dancer for Shen Wei Dance Arts introduced me to Bikram Yoga and I was hooked halfway through the first class. But the problem has been to find a clean upscale yoga studio near Williston Park. Nearly every studio I went to was grungy, smelly and dirty. Alas, a studio has finally opened near us that is upscale, clean and just plain gorgeous. Welcome to the recently opened Bikram Yoga Roslyn which is a cross between an upscale luxury spa and a yoga studio.
The proud owner of this new place is the successful entrepreneur and banker Jamie Weil of Sea Cliff. The moment you walk into his studio on Old Northern Boulevard in Roslyn you know there was money and lots of care put into this place. He hired specialists in heating and air filtration and has created a state-of-the-art hot yoga studio.
He told me that ventilation system cleans the air, ionizes it to kill all bacteria and pumps in fresh oxygen to replace the carbon dioxide. It feels like you are inside one of those Michael Jackson hyperbaric oxygen chambers. The walls have a special type of paint and the floors are covered with anti-bacterial fabric which absorbs sweat, feel good and looks like wood.
When I asked Weil why he decided to open a hot yoga studio he said, “Banking is my profession but yoga is my passion. I am forever indebted to yoga. I had serious back problems years ago and avoided surgery by going to hot yoga.” Dr. Alan Sloyers is one of Weil’s regular students and he told me, “This kind of yoga is a real challenge, I enjoy it and I always leave feeling better.”
When I asked Francine Karcher, who is a very talented student, she said to me, “Yoga is able to create clarity in a world filled with confusion.” Good line.
Weil’s teachers are all fully credentialed Bikram Yoga instructors, no small accomplishment. They must go out to Los Angeles and endure a nine-week boot camp which cost $12,000. Many fail to make it through but the ones who do come out the other end as real pros.
Jennifer Gream is one of Jamie’s teachers and she told me, “Bikram yoga changes your life. It gives you balance and reduces stress.”
Steven Gonzales is another teacher and he said, “Bikram yoga enhances mental and physical well-being by challenging the mind and the body at the same time.”
Over the years I have written about Bikram yoga for many magazines. As a sport psychologist I see that it helps athletes relax, slow down, build strength and flexibility and enhance posture. I can attest to the fact that it helps your golf game and I have seen many dancers and professional athletes attend classes.
But I think the most important value is one rarely spoken about. We now live in an increasingly isolated and alienated world, alone with our TVs and our cars and our work obsession. Bikram yoga builds a real community where people come to meet and talk and to relax.
Italy has its piazzas and now we have our yoga studios. I think America has fallen in love with hot yoga because it provides this sense of community. I have met many of my current friends at yoga class. Not only did I meet and become friends with Jennifer Zhu, who is a world champion ball room dancer, but I have also met guys like Peter Karlin, ex-actor turned mortgage banker. I have met Alan Sloyers, who invites me to his golf club as I invite him to mine. This list goes on.
There are all types of people that come to hot yoga. Most seem to me to be high achievers. They all drive up in BMW’s or Mercedes or Audi’s. When I remarked about this to Weil he said, “I think yoga attracts people who are thoughtful and respectful and kind.”
I think he is right and best of all his teachers act the same way. They are all pros but they also have fun in class and have a goodness about them as well. I think all that trickles down from the Weil.
