My First Bikram Yoga Experience

I took my first Bikram Yoga class during my Northeastern Tour this summer.

I have always been aware of the benefits of yoga. My grandmother did yoga back in the 1970s. Until recently, my personal yoga experiences were limited to a few private classes with a good friend, and some free classes in church basements and community centers.

I have been to many yoga studios to teach tarot, meditation and other complementary modalities, but, until a few weeks ago, I had never taken a class in a real studio.

True Bikram Yoga in New Haven and Madison, Connecticut, is about as real as it gets.

I attended a Saturday morning class in the New Haven studio. I also visited the Madison studio.  The New Haven studio is downtown, in the basement of a grand old office building near New Haven Green. The Madison studio is a brand-new facility on a second floor with huge windows.

There are many yoga studios that offer a “hot yoga” class, or a class based on the Bikram series of twenty-six postures and two breathing exercises. Robin Brace, the owner of True Bikram Yoga, closely adheres to the teachings of Bikram Choudhury.

Robin explained to me some of the differences between Bikram and other forms of yoga.

Bikram Yoga is practiced in a hot room, specifically 105 degrees with 40 per cent humidity. There are a list of benefits of the heat posted on a bulletin board in the New Haven studio. I kept that list firmly in mind as I suffered through the ninety-minute class. I found it oddly comforting to learn that Bikram developed the hot room to mimic the environment of Calcutta, where he first learned yoga.

A Bikram hot room floor is carpeted. This keeps people from slipping on pools of sweat. The carpets at True Bikram Yoga are frequently cleaned. However, if your idea of a yoga class involves the sweet scent of exotic incense wafting on a gentle breeze, your senses will be shocked. A Bikram studio smells like a gym.

Bikram Yoga doesn’t focus on the search for enlightenment. They don’t say “Namaste” to begin and end the class. But don’t for a minute think that the Bikram Yoga experience isn’t spiritual. Bikram Yoga is difficult and uncomfortable. Enlightenment comes simply from the process of getting through it.

Bikram Yoga is practiced in front of a mirror. “Eyes on you!” The teacher commands throughout the class. Looking at myself in skimpy yoga clothes, covered in sweat, trying to gracefully balance on one leg, I appreciated the lesson of self-acceptance.

A Bikram class is 90 minutes. There are no short classes, or beginner classes. Beginning students practice alongside experts. For me, this thought was immediately intimidating. I imagined my overweight, middle-aged self sandwiched between young, lithe, slender beauties turning themselves into pretzels without breaking a sweat. The reality was much different than that.

While each of us did the same postures, we were each individually challenged to do our own personal best. For me, staying in the hot room for ninety minutes, breathing through my nose and actually getting my forehead to touch my left knee were my challenges and achievements.

Robin Brace, the owner, taught the class I attended. While Bikram Yoga teachers are trained to use a specific dialogue to guide students in and out of postures, Robin seemed to know how to help each person with their specific challenges.

After the class, we had fresh juice and slices of cold grapefruit. The other students were warm (no pun intended) and congratulatory. “How did you like it?” “Are you coming back tomorrow?” “You made it through your first class! Way to go!”

I was shocked. Didn’t they see me fall out of Standing Bow posture in a rather dramatic way? Didn’t they notice me lying on my mat, panting, while they were bending themselves into Camel and Rabbit postures?

Suddenly I had a clear flash of yoga-induced enlightenment. I have avoided yoga studios of all types for most of my life. Somehow, I thought a yoga class would be a lot like middle school physical education class, where I could never make the basket, or hit the softball. I have been avoiding the benefits of yoga, and exercise in general, because of how much gym sucked in seventh grade.

Robin gave me a button that said “I survived my first Bikram Yoga class.”

Bikram Choudhury, the founder of Bikram Yoga, is controversial for a number of reasons. Some people in the yoga community express concerns about the man, and the practice. I’ve yet to hear a Bikram student say anything negative about any other style of yoga. The closest was a fellow student, after class, who told me this.
“I’ve studied many other yoga styles. Bikram is my favorite.”

I remembered her in class. She struggled with a few postures, and had to leave her mat to get tissues from the back of the room. She seemed to be suffering as much as I was.

So often we seek to maximize pleasure and minimize pain. Sometimes there is pleasure that comes from doing the hard thing, rather than avoiding it.

I like a gentle, relaxing yoga class, too. Now that I’ve survived my first Bikram class, I’ll feel comfortable visiting different studios and learning different yoga styles. But, like my friend in class, Bikram may become my favorite.

Give Yourself a Promotion

If you are a solopreneur, you probably have a pretty varied job description. Like any career-minded professional, you probably also have goals for the future; things you would like to accomplish and ways in which you would like to challenge yourself.

In the corporate world, there is a structure in place to encourage us to think about our professional development. If we excel, we are given new, more interesting responsibilities, and more money. When that happens, some of our lesser responsibilities are taken on by other people, so we have time to address our new tasks. When this happens, it’s called a promotion.

While we solopreneurs may have goals for professional growth and development, there is no structure in place to help us get there.

Certainly, if we excel, our business grows and we make more money. That part of promotion happens naturally.

The task-advancement aspect of promotion only happens for solopreneurs if we make it happen.

We can only try new things if we make it happen. We can only make time for new things if we relinquish the tasks that no longer serve our goals.

This can be a very difficult thing to do. To stop teaching a class because you need the time to write a book, for instance, can be a tough decision. To stop working street fairs because your time is better spent elsewhere may require a whole new business plan.

Solopreneurs are like sharks. If we don’t keep swimming, we’ll die.

We must constantly update our skills, offer new products and adapt to changing technology. We also need to be our own HR department, and our own supervision.

When you have your own business, if you are not moving up quickly enough, it’s because you forgot to give yourself a promotion!

Three Heinous Marketing Mistakes Made by Healers, Part Three

This is the third and final installment in my series about marketing mistakes made by healers.

To illustrate the third mistake, I will tell you a story about my friend who went to a new dentist. On his first visit, he felt very “upsold.”

Before returning for his next visit, he did some on-line research and found a YouTube video of the dentist being interviewed on a marketing webcast. In the interview, the dentist is proudly explaining how she is monetizing her practice, and the tricks she is using to make the most money from each patient.

This confirmed what my friend had felt; the dentist was more interested in his money than his mouth.

At his appointment, he told the dentist how he felt. She was offended, but couldn’t say much when mentioned that he saw her on YouTube claiming that she commonly did exactly the thing she was now denying.

My friend has a new dentist, one who care more about keeping her patients healthy than she does about taking their money.

The third heinous marketing mistake is caring more about marketing than you do your clients. That mistake is compounded if you, like the dentist on YouTube, brag publically about your unsavory practices.

The best advice here, is have ethical marketing practices. Don’t take advantage of people. Don’t be greedy. If you are inclined to take advantage of people, don’t be a healer. If you are a healer who takes advantage of people, don’t brag about it.

There is a crass edge to some marketing enthusiasts. In the first installment of this series we talked about not being shy about marketing.

Today we will add something to that.

Don’t be shy about marketing, but also don’t be crass.

Marketing people often freely talk about how much they make. They love to talk about six figures. “Six figures! I’m making six figures, and you can too!” I can guarantee you, people who make real money, and people who are worthy of the money they make, don’t talk about it quite that way.

When you give something away, give it freely.

I once interviewed a healer who is well-known for providing great free services. I commented on that, and asked her about her philosophy on business and freebies. I expected to hear something about sharing, or giving back, or even sampling. What I heard was a comment about generating hits for her website. She even told me, off the top of her head, the number of hits free offers were generating.

To me, that’s crass. It may be true, and it may be the kind of thing we talk about privately in strategy sessions. If you are a healer, service should be your top-of-mind priority always. Web hits and six figures are the happy byproduct of that, not the goal.

Three Heinous Marketing Mistakes Made by Healers, Part Two

This is the second in a three-part series about mistakes that entrepreneurs with healing practices often make.

The first mistake, which I covered last week, is about being afraid to market, being shy about marketing and not doing the research to become knowledgeable about marketing.

The second mistake, our focus for today, is sort of the opposite problem.

Don’t become a spammer, or an in-your-face-business-evangelist, no matter how excited you are about your product or service.

If you are paying more attention to the size of your mailing list, rather than the quality of your mailing list, you are making a mistake.

If you are sending newsletters to thousands of people but getting an open rate of less than twenty percent, you are not marketing, you are spamming.

If you invite folks to your webpage and then require them to sign up for some free offer before they can read about your services, you have clearly demonstrated your questionable priorities.

And, if your freebies really aren’t free, or aren’t valuable, you are guilty of some of the oldest tricks in the book.

P.T. Barnum was right, there is a sucker born every minute. But do you want your client base to be full of suckers?

If you are guilty of these sorts of high-pressure marketing techniques, you get a gold star for enthusiasm and hard work. If your tactics are working for you, and you are OK looking at yourself in the mirror, that’s your choice. However, there are considerable drawbacks to these types of techniques, and, once you are labeled as a spammer you will lose a lot of ability to promote your work at all.

Sometimes we become spammers unintentionally. I woke up the other day to find myself included in a very large group message on Facebook. The healer was marketing a webinar. In her great wisdom she felt the best way to do this was to send a group private message to eighty of her closest friends. When she realized how poorly received this was, she apologized, saying that she didn’t realize what she did was wrong. If even one of those eighty people reported her to Facebook for spamming, her marketing problems were only just beginning.

She was guilty of spamming, but she was also guilty of last week’s mistake; failure to do research and learn how to market.

Getting labeled a spammer is a very real risk. In the past year I have tried to partner with two different organizations whose URL could not be included in my weekly newsletter because the URL was already identified as a spam site. It’s hard to promote an online event if you can’t send the URL to your client base.

The other risk of these kinds of marketing mistakes is that you will simply look cheesy.  If you want to be the “Amway” of your particular modality you certainly can, but you will end up limiting yourself more than you will be helping yourself.

Find the balance that works for you. Quality is better than quantity. Classy is better than cheesy.  Do get your word out. Don't be a spammer.

Three Heinous Marketing Mistakes Made by Healers, Part One

This is the first in a three part series about marketing mistakes. Each week I will address one mistake in detail.

The specific type of marketing I am addressing is the marketing of businesspeople who could loosely be called “healers.” In that category I include medical professionals, psychologists, tarot readers, life coaches and energy healers, amongst others.

Basically, I am addressing practitioners of healing arts, either allopathic or alternative. I am doing this both to help my colleagues benefit from some of my experience as a successful practitioner, and also to warn against some marketing problems that could be devastating to a new business.

The first mistake, and the one I will cover in this post, is so simple it is surprise that it’s a problem at all.

The first marketing mistake, and one that most healers make, is to be shy about marketing, or to not put any energy in to marketing at all.

If we wanted to be marketers we would have majored in marketing in college and we would be working in that field now.

We are healers because we are called to be healers. The problem is, we may know very little about marketing. We may easily fall prey to expensive rah-rah networking schemes that don’t work. We may truly believe that if we burn enough candles and visualize hard enough our angels will direct our clients to us. We may be uncomfortable talking about ourselves. Marketing may make us feel boastful, insincere and impolite.

Here’s what healers need to do.

Be honest and direct in your marketing. Be clear about your purpose. You simply want to make people aware of who you are and what you can do for them.

Decide who your demographic is, and how to best reach them.

If there is something you don’t know how to do, or don’t understand, research it. Don’t be afraid of technology, and don’t be afraid of learning something new.

Don’t let high-pressure ad execs talk you into expensive media campaigns or unnecessary “SEO.”

Believe in yourself, your ability to help people, and your ability to be successful.

Do the research you need to do to learn the best ways to market your practice.

Learn the technology you need to know.

And, most importantly, don’t be afraid to toot your own horn. It’s not boastful to market. It is appropriate to make it easy for people who need your services to find you.

Next week, we will tackle the second heinous marketing mistake!

Three Rules for Writers

Recently, my first book, "Fortune Stellar," was chosen as the book of the month on a BlogTalkRadio show. My second book, "Tarot Tour Guide," has received great reviews as well.

I’m not sure that either of those facts makes me a great writer.

One thing I know for sure, I am a better writer now than I used to be, and I plan on improving. My next book will be my best book, I’m sure.

I keep a number of blogs, and publish an ambitious tarot newsletter each week.

Aside from a high school diploma, I am a self-taught writer. I hope that fact isn’t entirely apparent to my readers.

I have received some advice over the years; advice that I credit with my success as a writer so far.

Since I am seemingly successful as a writer in my field, I will share the three pieces of advice that helped me get there.

I won’t tell you which piece of advice came from which person, but here are my three sources. One bit of advice came from my Creative Writing teacher in High School. Another came from a tarot teacher, many years ago. A third came from my editor.

I hope these help you as much as they helped me.

1. Learn the Rules.

   It doesn’t matter if you are a rebel, or want to be modern, or hip, or whatever. It’s fine to break the rules, and it’s fine to write informally, as long as you have a grasp on formal writing first.

2. Write for Fifteen Minutes Every Day.

   It doesn’t matter what you write about, or even if what you write is any good. What matters is that you make it your daily habit to write, and that you never, ever say you “don’t have time” to write.

3. BICHOK, or BIC HOK

   This one is well-known in online writers’ circles. It stands for “Butt in Chair, Hands on Keyboard.” Much like the second item in this list, a lot of being a good writer comes simply from writing. If you suffer from writer’s block, forcing yourself to sit and write will chip away at the block quite quickly.
   Don’t wait for inspiration. Just write and the inspiration will eventually come.

Tacos al Carbon: A Unique Lake Worth Experience

Lake Worth is one of my favorite cities of all time, because it boasts such a wide variety of cultural offerings. This week I explored something different when my kids took me to Tacos al Carbon.

Tacos al Carbon consists of a corner lot in Lake Worth. There is a small restaurant with tables, and a window for outside service. There are a variety of picnic tables, one open food truck serving tacos, and a fleet of food trucks that I assume are waiting for rush hours and weekends.

Tacos al Carbon is open 24/7. The prices can’t be beat. The food is good, but a little inconsistent.

The guacamole was the best ever, but the chips seemed a little stale.

The most popular dishes seem to be tacos and wet burritos, which are like huge enchiladas.

I found the spicy pork to be not very spicy, and the beef to be a little dry.

Two of my kids say the beef tongue is the best meat to get. I will never know because I will never taste something that could be tasting me at the same time.

We had a fun outside dining experience, complete with feral kittens and a spider bite. This is not a great place to take a first date, but for an interesting evening in Lake Worth it’s worth a try.

The Cyberbullying we Love to Do

We hear plenty of protest about cyberbullying when it involves teenagers. We are consumed with outrage when attractive women are slut-shamed online.  The fact is, we need to be concerned about cyberbullying. Unlike the bullying of my generation’s childhood, which was brutal enough, it’s hard to escape from cyberbullying because your online persona follows you everywhere.

There’s another kind of cyberbullying. There are particular people who are perfectly acceptable targets to insult, dehumanize and abuse online. If you are having a bad day, you can find a photo of some unfortunate person and unleash whatever mean-spirited attack you want upon them.

Perhaps insulting someone else makes us feel better about ourselves. I may be having a bad hair day, but I look great compared to the fat f*ck in this picture.

Yesterday a radio station posted an extremely unfortunate candid shot of an overweight woman in very ill-fitting clothing. The station wanted to know our thoughts about this person. I was shocked by people’s comments. No one seemed to remember that she was a human being.

Finally, I suggested that this was cyberbullying, and maybe not the kindest thing to do.

I was told, in no uncertain terms, that it wasn’t cyberbullying because the woman was so overweight, and her clothing so inappropriate, that she deserved what she got.

Bullying isn’t bullying when we think it’s deserved? Spoken like a true bully.

It seems the general consensus is, if a person is particularly unattractive, it is not cyberbullying to post unkind things about them online.  Overweight people, poorly dressed people and unfashionable people deserve to be mocked because the sight of them offends our eyes. And so we post their pictures online and share them, so we can be offended, judgmental and mean.

I remember reading a blogpost from an overweight woman whose unflattering Halloween photo went viral. Her experience made one fact very real for me. Our society has made not living up to certain physical standards an acceptable reason to discount, trivialize and dehumanize our fellow human beings.

I blame Glamour magazine for this horrific societal trend. Without the “Glamour Dos and Don’ts” we would never be so desensitized to this kind of cruelty.

I admit that I’ve watched the “People of Walmart” video and laughed out loud. I tried to tell myself it was because of the clever original song.  There was certainly a part of me that felt badly for laughing at picture after picture of bizarrely dressed people, knowing that in many cases I was laughing at the mentally ill, the physically sick, the addicted, and the impoverished.

Public shaming has been a part of our American culture since our beginnings. In the olden days, we shamed people by putting them in stockades in the town square. Now we put them on the internet. Instead of hurling rotten food, we hurl insults.

Maybe it’s time for us to evolve now.

The Truth about New Relationships

Many times people are taken by surprise when their new relationships fail.

“I just know this is the one for me. We have a connection.”

The belief that you just lost your one chance at true love makes it hard to heal and move on.

The fact is this. Every new relationship has a phenomenal chemistry. Ever new relationship has an energy and a sense of destiny. That’s how relationships happen. Without that “new relationship energy” there would be no relationships at all.

We make a mistake when we assume that amazing feeling of being newly in love inherently means the relationship is meant to me.

Fifty years later, if you are telling the story of how you fell in love at first sight, then you know that “new relationship energy” held the promise of a future.

Here’s another thing. That couple that has been together for fifty years had some red flags about each other back in the beginning. Knowing that comes in handy when we are angry that we went ahead with a doomed relationship even though there were some red flags.

Just as every new relationship has that high-octane chemistry, every new relationship has some red flags. If you wait for a relationship that has no questions and no concerns, you will wait a lifetime.

The bottom line is this. Enjoy your new relationship, and see what happens. Make note of the red flags, and don’t attach to a particular outcome.  And, if you relationship ends, don’t kick yourself. Sometimes we have to explore opportunities that don’t work out.

Finding the right relationship is a numbers game. There are bound to be some that don’t work out. If you can simply enjoy getting to know another person without the pressure of worrying about the future, you will more easily find the person who is right for you.

Rolling the Panda

I may have become guilty of passive cultural appropriation.  Or I am learning an ancient Chinese exercise form. Or maybe both, I’m not quite sure.

Here, at my community, there is a “Chinese Wand” class twice a week. Our class leader is an incredibly fit octogenarian.  Like all group leaders in our community, she is a volunteer.

We gather in the still morning at the lake’s sandy beach and engage in a series of seventeen exercises.

The scene is idyllic. Sometimes I feel like I’m in a movie. The breeze rustles in the Florida bamboo as juvenile cranes practice flying at the water’s edge. Turtles bob up and down in the water, occasionally snapping at jumping fish.

From a boom box comes a meditative Asian flute.

A bamboo stick (the wand) is the centerpiece of sixteen of the seventeen exercises. The exercises have exotic names such as “the Twisting of the Snake,” “Peeling the Octopus” and “Rolling the Panda.” I am proud to report that, at present, I am the only person in the class who can actually get the panda to roll.

We count our repetitions with the Chinese elements, raising the chi life force with our breath.

The exercises are just the right amount of challenging. If my instructor is any measure, the exercises are quite effective. Supposedly the precise order and motion of the seventeen exercises work all the organs and muscles.

I am so enamored of this exercise form that I did some research on it.  Chinese Wand was brought to America by Minnesotan Bruce L. Johnson, who claimed to have been taught the ancient form in Shanghai during his time in the Navy.

The only information about Chinese Wand comes from Bruce L. Johnson himself. The limited information about the form is explained by a tradition of secrecy. According to Johnson, Chinese Wand was just for the use of the ancient Chinese rulers and their families.

Johnson himself has a remarkable history of fitness, health and healing.  He also has an interesting personal story. He was at one time a psychic mystic. His ultimate conversion to Born-Again Christianity caused him to renounce both mysticism and the practice of Chinese Wand.

There are many who continue to promote and practice Chinese Wand, also known as Jiangan.

It is very possible that Bruce L. Johnson is the Chinese Wand equivalent of Wiccan Raymond Buckland; simply a person chosen to bring a new spiritual practice to the United States.

It is probably more possible that Johnson himself invented the form, and gave it a romantic and ethnically-appropriated origin story.

Regardless, the practice feels good. Many good practices come of ignoble beginnings.

Tarot started as a simple game.

Most of what we believe to be our history was made up to gain sponsorship for exploration.

I do have a nagging question, though.

I don’t have a problem with people making stuff up – everything was made up by someone. But now I wonder how many origin stories that we hold as sacred trusted history are as likely untrue as this one?