"Rock Your Hot Pink Yoga Pants"

"Rock your hot pink yoga pants."  That's what my Yoga Sculpt instructor told us at the beginning of class.  This was my second Yoga Sculpt - Heated Power Yoga with weights at Core Power Yoga.  Morgan was subbing for the regular instructor.  Morgan used to teach at the Broadway location but left to go to law school in Arizona and is back for a couple of months.  She started class with a story of her first day at law school.  She had been teaching yoga for a year and went to class in her hot pink yoga pants.  Everyone else was dressed in suits with notepads in hand.  She quickly learned she wasn't a "suit" but was able to make it work for her.  The moral of her story is even if everyone else is rockin' a suit, or in class the positions or doing exercises with heavy weight, rock your hot pink yoga pants.  Stay true to yourself, listen to your body, and go for it.

This class is tough.  Have you ever done a yoga class that also has burpees, football runs, jumping jacks, and other plyometric moves?  Combine those with going into yoga positions using weights in between cardio sets and you've got yoga sculpt.  Add in the fact that the class is in a heated room and you are seriously torching calories along with detoxing and working hard for better vitality, strength, cardio, and balance.

It was fast-paced, fun and tough.  In the last 15 minutes of class we majorly worked glutes.  At one point, in the glutes series, my friend Joana asked "How's your butt feeling?"  Both of us laugh - it was such a tough glutes series of leg lifts with weighs that all we could do was laugh....and breathe to get through it.  After that series we went straight in to bridge lifts, which was more glutes work along with abs, inner thighs, quads and hamstrings.

For at least 45 minutes of the class I was dripping sweat.  That's part of the class - sweat out any toxins in your system since you are working out in a heated room.

I loved when I walked outside after class and it was raining.  As I walked in Mother Nature's liquid sunshine, I felt revitalized and renewed.  I tweeted out that it was refreshing.  It truly was!

Hot Yoga

Yesterday I took Hot Yoga.  Core Power Yoga offers a free week and I wanted to get in at least one more class during my first week.  I used to do Bikram Yoga on a regular basis but hadn't done it in at least 2 years.  So I was pretty excited about the Hot Yoga class.  It's a 60 minute class in a room heated to 105 degrees.  My instructor, Mary Beth, is very slim and fit.  I loved her calming tone of voice and that she corrected me with my hand positions.  I was separating my thumbs and fingers on a foot hold and she said I should keep thumbs with fingers.  It made the position a little tougher but it's suppose to be better for stability.  I'm a newbie yogi so definitely want the instruction and correction if I'm doing something wrong.

In the class we did a series of 26 postures.  I really liked how the class flowed from position to position.  I was a full out sweaty mess.  It's a different kind of sweat than sweating from cardio like running or biking.    You truly feel like you are sweating out toxins and opening yourself to a restored, renewed you.