I started doing hot yoga! I love it! During class, I can feel myself literally sweating out the crazy.

My first hot yoga, aka Bikram yoga, was about fifteen years ago. I went to a studio in Hollywood with my sister Katherine. I knew next to nothing about hot yoga, but my sister wanted to go, so why not?

Well, I thought I was going to die. I had to leave the room to dry heave a bit in the women’s restroom. At the end of class, the teacher came over and said all these flattering things to my sister about how she was a natural and so flexible and gosh, she should come again. Then she looked at me sideways, sighed, and walked away.

Needless to say, I did not go back.

But, I could not get the idea of hot yoga out of my head. Every now and then, a friend or aunt would talk about how much she enjoyed hot yoga, and the things I heard made me think that despite my first experience, it might be a good practice for me.

My friend Laura convinced me to try again last December. She gave me lots of helpful advice beforehand, like Be hydrated and Bring water and Eat an hour beforehand so you have energy but don’t need to puke. Her most important advice though was to arrive early so my body could acclimate to the 105 degree temperature in the studio.

Armed with this good advice, my second hot yoga class was so much better than my first. I felt like I was getting my ass kicked, but in a way that made me feel radiant. The poses combined stretching and strengthening and midway through the class, my heart was pounding as if I had been running. When I left class, I felt very calm and relaxed. My worries had receded. I had found my dream workout!

Except the schedule did not work for my life.

I could have attended the 9 a.m. class, but I would have been about ten minutes late. (Pippa’s elementary school starts late.) I knew that would make me anxious and affect the quality of my workout. The 11 a.m. classes were all too late, because at the time, Julian got out of preschool at 11:30. Blah blah blah, talking about my mom schedule is tedious and dull, but long story short, I kept walking and wearing my Fitbit, while promising myself that when the time was right, I would return to hot yoga.

That time has arrived!

Julian is older and his preschool days are longer. I dove into my hot yoga practice last month. I’d like to go twice a week, but so far, I’ve only been five times. (I ran a preschool book fair for a week. Pippa had a cavity. We went to Disneyland. Such is life.) But I can feel my body getting stronger. I am getting stronger, body, mind, heart and soul.

I am just at the beginning of this hot yoga practice, but I am excited to see where it takes me. A few years ago, if I had written a post about doing hot yoga, I would have used a lot of swear words and then said demeaning things about how my postures compare to the other students. But now I am forty, and I do not feel the need to ridicule something that is giving me such joy. I just want to embrace this practice, sweat and all.

p.s. There is so much sweat! It’s ridiculous.