My $12 Therapy Session

So, we aren’t calling it Bikram Yoga anymore because he turned out to be a racist, homophobic misogynist. Whatever you want to call it – the ancient twenty six pose series of hot yoga that he introduced to Americans is like a drug to me. No, not a drug – a mind-clearing and body-wringing twelve dollar therapy session. My friend Ann introduced it to me in 1996. We used to heat up her tiny office at Daytona Beach Community College to over 100 degrees and play a Bikram cassette tape. We did the sixty day challenge – ninety minutes of intense hot yoga every day for sixty days. We were thrilled when we found a studio in Satellite Beach and drove hours down there to practice in our first real studio. It’s been a part of my life ever since and people notice the difference in me after a class. During an incredibly stressful trip to New York trying to fundraise millions of dollars for Habitat during the 2008 financial crisis (what my coworker Cindy Song coined “Trying to ski uphill in a blizzard”), Cindy turned to me after a disastrous meeting a Credit Suisse and said – “Drew, you need to find a Bikram studio – like today.”

I’ve been down lately. My body was wrecked after the Tararuas and I’m homesick. I can’t even think about how much I miss Bryan and the fur boys. The North Island was tough and I’ve had to constantly adjust to what this trail is. I’m also feeling anxious about what is next. I want to get my scuba teaching underway. Whatever I end up putting together, I need to stay busy. I’m not a guy who sits around well. I like to have a plan. I went to yoga today pretty jumbled and as I laid my mat down in the hot room I wasn’t sure I could stay. My heart was racing and I was sweating before the class even started. I stayed in the room and the teacher came in and invited us to stand. Wow – her voice. It was just the right volume. She more chanted her commands than spoke them and her cadence was soothing but forceful at the same time. She invited us to “Puuuuuussssh, Puuuuuussssh, Puuuuuussssh” at the end of each stretch hold. She quietly commanded us to find a new way to move our spine and trust our body. I just followed her every instruction and the muscle memory of the hundreds, no thousands of classes kicked in. My heart rate came down and my sweat felt cleansing instead of stressful. I only had one thing I could focus on and that was my breath. Slow, rhythmic nose breathing and getting into the recovery positions as efficiently as possible and staying still in between the intense stretching postures.

I’ve been trying to practice sitting meditation for years now but I think I settled on something important today. This hot yoga thing is my meditation. Sitting around and following my breath on Headspace just doesn’t do it for me. Contorting my body in a hot room does. It forces me to focus on the practice while my mind works on the rest in the background. I walked out of class today feeling great – solid about my decision to be on this hike and feeling so lucky to be able to do this – physically, financially and emotionally. None of it would be possible without Bryan. He knows me and knows that this is right for me now. Ok, I didn’t figure out what exactly is next for me during this epic yoga class but I feel like I’m on the right path nevertheless. That’s quite a reset.

I’m on the ferry this morning to the Promised Land – South Island. We’ve heard so much about how great the trails are and I’m ready to hit the ground running. My resupply boxes are on the way, my feet are properly geared up and I’ve picked out my first few campsites. It’s about a three and half hour ride to Picton and then I am catching a water taxi to the northern terminus. It should be the last of the logistics for a while and many long beautiful days of hiking ahead.