NAMASTE': Meeting Baron Baptiste at His Yoga Immersion Day in Denver

Here's a thrill from my yoga mat:
That's me sharing a laugh and a high-five with yoga master Baron Baptiste, who founded Baptiste Power Vinyasa Yoga--one of three yogic traditions I've studied and practiced. I just opened my 18th year of practicing, and marked the milestone with the honor of meeting Baron last weekend when about 300 yogis joined him for a Baptiste Power Yoga immersion in Denver. My friend Lori and I unintentionally arrived very early and so we unrolled our mats in the very front row! We had just finished 3.5 hours of vinyasa. Whew. While Baron had us practicing headstands, I took the liberty of introducing myself since the two of us had talked at length on the phone during an interview for a piece I wrote about him for fitness section of The Denver Post, which provided this photo. More on this later. I've been promising several friends I would post some comparing and contrasting of the three forms of yoga I've studied: Iyengar, Bikram, and Baptiste Power. Soon! But for now, namaste'.

NAMASTE': Happy Yoga Month: What's So Cool About Hot Yoga?

September is yoga month, or so I’ve heard.

Photo by James Baca

Interestingly, three friends have asked me recently about trying yoga—or trying hot yoga--so maybe the publicity will pay off with more practitioners.

I’m just beginning my 17th year of hatha yoga (the physical branch) —and I've practiced with a fair measure of devotion and discipline; and every hour I've invested on my mat has served me at least tenfold off my mat.

By good fortune, not my own wise planning, my asanas (or poses) rooted in the Iyengar tradition. And speaking of good fortune, I had the profound honor of meeting Mr. Iyengar once, and sitting with him, and posing some questions to the guru. (Maybe I’ll post about that later in yoga month.) I still admire Mr. Iyengar immensely; and I’m grateful for my solid instruction in his alignment and his props.

But I defected. For the last five years now, I’ve practiced hot yoga—specifically Bikram yoga and also Baron Baptiste Power vinyasa yoga. Yes, this is that insanely hot yoga you may have heard about: For Bikram classes, my school heats the studio to 105 degrees Fahrenheit (sometimes hotter!), with humidity as high as 50 percent. For Power classes, the studio is not as hot or humid, yet still warm. The heat serves various purposes, one of which is to render muscles more malleable and another of which is to detoxify the system through profuse sweating. Works for me.

What’s so cool about hot yoga?

I aim to tell you. Please tune in again: I’m writing an informative and, I hope, inspirational piece for my three inquisitive friends; and I’ll share it with you, here, too.

Meanwhile, remember this: Blessed are the flexible, for they shall not get bent out of shape!

Namaste’

• Please see the links below for my earlier posts on yoga.

NAMASTE': Interviewing Baron Baptiste

Not the perfect headstand, but one of the most difficult I've ever executed. This Sonoma Coast beach had not sand, but zillions of loose black pebbles, making balancing extremely difficult, like trying to do headstand in a field of ball bearings. I could not hold the pose while looking toward the violently crashing surf. Nothing felt stable! After falling several times, I turned my back on the ocean, which all the signs posted on this dangerous beach warn against, but I set up a safe distance from the perilous waters, managed to get upsidedown, and changed my perspective.


Ha! I finally worked one of my favorite word plays--HEADSTANDING-ROOM-ONLY-- into a feature article, the lede of a piece I wrote on the yogi Baron Baptiste, founder of Baptiste Power Vinyasa Yoga. My story runs in the fitness section of The Denver Post this Monday. I have my yoga roots in Iyengar, but now practice Bikram and Power yoga, so I was honored to interview Baron, as he's know to students.

Please check out the article. Or if you're not local, you can Google
The Denver Post Baron Baptiste by Colleen Smith
and that should bring up the article.

We'll get a link up, too.

I wrote the copy below as a sidebar to my feature. The sidebar got killed--meaning it was not published--but that's the beauty of the blog: The writing was not all for naught. Here it is:

SIDEBAR TO BARON BAPTISTE FEATURE
If you think yoga is only for hippie-dippy, tie-dye donning, navel-gazing, om-chanting, vegan sorts, bear in mind that from 1994 to 1998, the Philadelphia Eagles contracted Baron Baptiste to train the team. Baptiste worked with Super Bowl champion players and coaches, but he touts yoga not only for NFL players, but also for athletes in any athletic activity at any level.
“Yoga is great cross-training or counter-training,” he said. “It’s a good support for any sport, a platform for all training.”
The benefits of regular asana practice are many, and evident on many levels, according to Baptiste.
“Yoga builds ease in the body, so people are more comfortable in any movement or sport. Yoga builds agility, balance, mobility, freedom of movement, strength. You feel a freedom in this sense of strength,” said Baptiste.
“It’s a great balance of releasing and strengthening muscles and joints, using your own body as weight, working on multiple planes and angles and dimensions.”
And the mental benefits figure into the athletic equation, too. Baptiste said, “The great mind training allows athletes to be relaxed and at ease and performing at their peak.”

NAMASTE': The sacrum, the sacred

The sacrum, the triangular bone at the base of the spine, gets a lot of attention in hatha yoga.
In a workshop with Jonathan Reynolds of the San Francisco Bay Area, he taught that the sacrum is considered a sacred bone, thus its name. He also mentioned that the sacrum is the one bone that does not burn, but is left on the funeral pyre.
Does anybody out there who might be reading this know if this is true?

NAMASTE': Start Your Day With Namaste'

In this photo taken in a Las Vegas in Oct. 2008, mannequins practice yoga at a class convened in a shop window near Cirque de Soleil in MGM Grand. Talk about finding the stillness in the pose!


As days grow longer, I'm setting an intention to put my yoga practice first--that is, to practice first thing in the morning. I've only actually made it to the earliest class maybe a half dozen times, but I always felt marvelous afterwards and noticed how smoothly my days seemed to unfold.

One day while practicing in the still-dark morning, at 6 a.m. at Yoga on 6th, a list of reasons occurred to me as we made our way through the 90-minute Bikram series. I went home and drafted this list, which my I gave to my yoga school to post around the studios and locker rooms.

Top 10 Reasons to Practice at 6 a.m.

10) No traffic.

9) No searching for a parking space at your yoga school and no parking ticket threat.

8) You show up on your mat with less junk in your mind.

7) Get the kinks out early and feel better all day.

6) Rev up your metabolism right away.

5) If you put your yoga practice first,
you won’t get derailed during the day and miss class later.

4) You’ll have your evenings free. (Or can come back for a double.)

3) You’ll face your day with a clear mind and a calm spirit.

2) You’ll show up with sparkling eyes and a yogic afterglow.

1) Change your circadian rhythms, change your day.
Change your day, change your life.

Pack your bag the night before; set your alarm; and practice daybreak yoga.


That said, I'm posting this at 1.21 a.m., so I doubt that tomorrow will be the day I resume this discipline.

NAMASTE': My 3-Part Series on Yoga for Life's Stages

In case you missed it, here are links to my 3-Part series on yoga for various stages of life. This series appeared in the Fitness section of The Denver Post this Spring.
Namaste'! (That's Sanskrit, translated as "The divine in me acknowledges the divine in you.")

Yoga for Seniors

Yoga for Youth

Prenatal Yoga