Brad made an important statement in his class recently that I pondered for a while. Our Bikram yoga practice is such a constant. It’s meant to be so. Every time we come to class we are expected to hear the same dialog in the same room with the same heat looking in the same mirror. Counter to the sentiment that this can get boring is the idea that this is most advantageous, as this atmosphere punctuates the one thing that will change – YOU! Watch and notice how this “control room” gives you the contrast to notice noise: mental, emotional and physical. Once you notice, you’ll start the journey of becoming self-aware, and the assignment to better know yourself begins. It’s beautiful and necessary if you want to become all that you were meant to become. Thanks Brad, as for me, your comments are just more evidence re: the power of this type of practice.
Recently, your management staff went on a retreat to Santa Rosa and stayed in an AirBnB to literally take apart, question, revise and resurrect boot camp style BYSJ. Amongst the team, we are calling this new version, BYSJ 3.0. The commitment to this methodology of yoga was picked apart for three days as to what we are doing, why we are doing what we are doing, and how are we doing it. Members, you couldn’t be in better hands than with this team as the passion exuded was at times tense, but yet exactly the gas we needed to build a better intention and a path that says, “Let’s go deep and high”. We powered up our propositions so that you might experience more yoga and not just more fitness. Here we go.
It takes a community like ours to carry out the uniqueness and distinction of this method of yoga. Because of you and your petitions to keep this yoga authentic, we are creating more strategies that sustain deeper roots that will feed the vines branching from YOUR practice. Not just any practice, but an established, mature, vulnerable, day after day, year after year, kind of practice that provokes temptations and dysfunction but also results in the mastery of a more self-realized human being. You’ve showed us for over 13 years that this yoga is benefiting you. Your actions show us, that if we dare to do the work, we can be fulfilled, satisfied, and happy in the truest sense.
Nowhere is this work better illustrated than with the 60 Day Challengers making a decision to do 60 consecutive days of yoga IN 60 days. It’s a crash course to sweat out, stretch through, wrestle with, and confront profound beliefs and behaviors that may not be serving one’s best interests. We culminate the 60 Day Challenge with a party. Over the years, this party isn’t so much about getting trophies (although the trophies are wildly popular) as it is about the chance to get up and get out the story you just lived through. I am always amazed at the lack of reservation members have when they come up and get their trophy and stand in front of so many and tell their tale of hardship and triumph.
Suresh shared his story of overcoming a surprising bout of depression; Deepti owns a 100 student pre-school yet made the effort to make herself first with a non-negotiable promise to come every day for 60 days (no doubles); Raj travels the world selling software in a very dog-eat-dog competitive atmosphere, and used the yoga challenge to soften attitudes that are cut-throat and lack heart; Sundar is in China nine times out of the year and uses the yoga to ride out the effects of jetlag; Amelia managed a practice through the loss of two close friends to keep her stable and grounded; Caitlyn confronted abuse, learning to love herself more in the shame she saw in the mirror; and it goes on. I’m certain not one of them began the challenge knowing a bigger challenge was calling. It’s when we commit to a journey and stay the course that we gain courage to get far more than just what we ask for. Isn’t it precious that a room, a coveted, open, big space holds the key to unlock anxieties of any and every kind that breaks us free to be free. The 60 Day Challenge is the work and the application supporting our sacred quote that says, “never too late, never too sick, never too old, to do yoga and start from scratch once again.”
This essay doesn’t have a “super-deep-come-away-insight” other than being an exclamation point to a right choice you’ve made and the right choice your management team is making. That’s huge in a world that throws at us thousands of justifiable choices in a matter of seconds. Be careful not to be fooled by the seduction of treatments out there that claim to self-help, but instead pick those that strike something deeper within you and come to self-know! We often tend to layer over instead of penetrating through the veils that block us from our true nature, which is true happiness. Picking this method of 26 and 2 is a right choice and THE portal to get you to that true happiness. 60 Day Challengers, you showed us – sprint style – what we can accomplish when we say “yes” to what is deeply right and accept the ups, downs, and unknowns of what that “Yes” decision holds. BYSJ is committed to the marathon version of that “Yes” choice so that we ALL (meaning 6.8 billion people) have the chance to self-know, self-love, and self-realize. After all, it’s our true nature, which is also true happiness.