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Hot yoga class turns out to be a stretch for this neophyte.
Instructor Niki Sue Mueller leads a class at Inversion yoga studio, which offers sessions tailored to various skill levels.
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For a single male given to rough-and-tumble pursuits like backcountry skiing, mountain biking, and river running, taking a yoga class presented some obvious distractions. First, I lacked the proper gear and had to rent a mat. Second, being a novice, I was a step slow on every move and anxious at falling behind. Third, I was sweating so profusely that I could have added to the flow of the Snake River, making me even further self-conscious.
And, oh yeah, I was the only guy in the class, surrounded by fit, athletic women in tights. It would have been easy to question my motives for showing up here, aside from this assignment. The lightest of the heavenly bodies in orbit around me, instructor Cameron Barker, helped quell any temptation by reminding me to keep my eyes fixed on a point on the wall.
Despite these distractions, I managed not to embarrass myself too badly or pass out. This was due in large part to the instruction of Barker, who was firm but encouraging and took extra care not to lose her most hapless pupil. “Yoga is about discipline,” she emphasized early in the progression of breathing and stretching exercises.
I had come to Inversion, the newest yoga studio in Jackson Hole, to try its specialty: hot yoga, for which the room is heated to roughly one hundred degrees with 50 percent humidity. In the midst of a long, cold Wyoming winter, this was like stepping into the tropics. That’s the reason owner Louise Sanseau founded the studio last year. She had arrived in Jackson in January 2007 to be greeted by a twenty-below-zero cold spell. “In the middle of winter you just want to get warm,” she explained. She calls the hot classroom “my little sanctuary.”
