answer:Hot Yoga. Yeah, I walked into a class a couple of years ago. It reminded me of all that No Pain, No Gain crap that was going around gyms run by young jits who didn’t know what they were doing a couple of decades ago. If yoga could be made to resemble the USMC, this is it. I don’t do yoga to reduce my waistline or lose weight (Which, according to an ABC poll, this is the main reason 78% of American students practice yoga). Your body will change for the better, but that’s incidental to the real rewards. If all you want is a slimmer waistline, then I suppose Bikram is your thing, and I would even venture to say that you may even slip into a kind of elated stupor, which you might mistake for a kind of elevated consciousness just before they put you in the ambulance. I did a little investigation on Bikram after I left that 110F studio that day. It’s a bastardization of Hatha, developed by a guy named—take a guess—Bikram, back in the 70’s. He’s a former all-India National Yoga Championship winner. (Since when did Yoga become a competitive sport?). My competitive countryman are sure eating it up, though. Bikram now has 1,650+ studios. Maybe this is how yoga will finally become mainstream therapy in this country: We can have a Yoga Superbowl every year complete with the world’s most limber cheerleaders. I can’t wait for the halftime commercials. This seems so far beyond what yoga is for me, I ran from that place like my hair was on fire. I search for rest, health and peace through yoga. I’m more of a Paramahansa Yogananda kinda guy, myself. I even like how the syllables roll off the tongue.