When I say I do hot yoga, it usually does not warrant an impressed response; rather, most people would respond in a patronizing tone. “Oh, good for you,” they say, while looking down on my exercise choices. Some may believe that I am a zen person when it really is quite the contrary. After taking a personality test, I scored in the 80th percentile for neuroticism. So we can scratch the idea that I’m a naturally calm person.

But it is true that I use yoga to calm myself, sometimes in a meditative way, by going to sound bath classes, where the instructors hit crystal healing bowls for 75 minutes while you lay down trying to sleep and not cover your ears. Very relaxing. For the other 90% of my routine time, I go to classes where I workout so hard that I forget all my problems and just focus on not passing out on the mat. So by the end of the class, after the 5-minute cool-down stretch, we arrive in Savasana, corpse pose, and you literally just lie there like a corpse for 2 minutes.

That’s when the craziest thing happens. Even after surviving the instructor screaming in my ear through a microphone strapped to her face for 50 minutes, I always feel this mind-numbing bliss: Heart pounding, body completely in sync with my mind. There is scientific evidence that yoga improves one’s well-being along with one’s physical body. 

This doesn’t seem to be a well-known fact, though. Once, when I was trying to take one of my friends to a class, she said, “Would I rather waste my money or my time?” I immediately hung up the phone. Because for 1 hour every day that I go to yoga is time just for me, a space where I can think and distance myself from the real world. But to the point that yoga is not a good workout, a typical Sculpt 1 (S1) class is targeted to hit every single part of the body. A section is designated for the upper body, lower body, cardio (my least favorite part), and core throughout. These classes have amazing instructors who take the intensity up to the max in every class. 

Case in point: Cami Marseilles, a yoga sculpt instructor at Corepower Yoga, formulates the most creative classes that are guaranteed to make you sore for the next week. She said, “My Sun B is so long that there isn’t time to do a Sun B flow and a right/left side sculpting, but there is strength in it like lunges and kicks and holds to make it a fun/interesting class that will make your students sweat.” 

One of the main reasons is that hot yoga is quite the strain on the body. Even firefighters have had to leave a class early because of the body heat generated in class. It is stifling, usually remaining around 100 degrees Fahrenheit or more with added humidity. This helps to sweat out your toxins and heavy metals, which is greatly beneficial to your overall health. Huntington Beach Corepower is known for its incredibly hot and hard classes like no other studio I’ve witnessed.

According to The New York Times, “[Endurance athletes who work out in heat] produce more hemoglobin, a protein that helps shuttle oxygen to the muscles, which can help improve their speed in both hot and temperate environments”

So how do you know if hot yoga is the right kind of exercise for you? Well, there are a variety of different classes at Corepower yoga fitted to whatever your needs may be. If you are searching for rest, recovery, and relaxation, then take either a Corerestore or C1 class, with little to no heat and gentle flowing of poses and stretches to center your body back to health. If you want to up the difficulty and heat, then go to a C2 or hot power fusion (HPF) class, though fair warning, it is the hottest class in the studio and full of inversions, not ideal for a beginner. Even I, a seasoned yogi, still avoid HPF classes in terror. But C2 is a great way to get your body moving in a mindful way that will make you sweat and engage your core, made up of flowing through Sun B salutation (Sun B) with some added inversions. Lastly, if you want a sweltering workout with an incorporation of yogic practices, then Yoga Sculpt (YS) is the right class for you. It is a heated, weighted exercise class and is, as I said, a full-body workout. 

A YS class begins with Sun salutation A (Sun A), which is designed to warm up the body by flowing through mountain pose and other postures three times, breath to movement. This leads to your Sun B flow; you do that once through slowly and then two other times with weights, which are optional but encouraged for a deeper workout and building muscle. Sometime in the class, you will hit a biceps/push-up section, 2 squat sections, a cardio section, and finish off the class with an abdomen section. In between these, there is the sculpting series, which is the longest. Technically, you flow through a Sun B once, but in each pose, reps are incorporated, such as triceps kickbacks, wide/narrow arm rows, oblique work, rotator cuffs and shoulder raises. This is a typical S1 class, but depending on the instructor, they could completely scramble the order and replace certain moves with different exercises, allowing more creativity and expression. 

Now, this may seem like a lot, but if you are interested in learning more about YS with perhaps the hope of eventually teaching it, then the 50-hour YS training might be for you! It’s led by different instructors at the studio and is an amazing experience. Though sculpting may not be your cup of tea, if this is the case, then there is the 200-hour yoga training for C1 and C2. Or go an extra step and do the 300-hour yoga training, which enables you to teach HPF. 

Let’s move on to the dynamics of the yoga community, there is a huge mix of different yoga participants and it would be impossible to list them all. However, I can speak to what I know, practicing with Corepower for more than 5 years. I have never experienced a more welcoming place and community, every time I enter the studio it’s something akin to a breath of fresh air, getting greeted by a smiling individual each time. The instructors want you to enjoy their class and come back, as many get spooked their first time in a yoga class, so to avoid this, many modifications are offered in a class to help you transition smoothly into loving the practice. Each teacher is unique and has a different teaching approach, some you may love, others not so much, and that’s okay! Questionable experiences are part of the game. I guarantee that if you continue going it will get better each time, as it did for me and countless others. 

Depending on what time you go to a yoga class, you will have a completely different experience. One would think that a class at 5:45 AM would be a drab place full of half-asleep people, but the most crowded class is the YS class Monday through Friday at 5:45 am. If you’re looking to attend then you have to book it a week in advance, or else you’ll get thrown into the waitlist. But why would anyone want to wake up before 5 to go to an insanely hard workout class? I used to wonder about this. I believed these people to be nut cases to go every day. But then I went, and I saw nothing to what I was expecting. It was so loud in the room that almost every person was engaged in a lively, knowing conversation. Every time I attend, the large room is mat to mat full. And the people aren’t too inclined to move if you arrive 10 minutes before class starts, it can be really scary but you just have to dive in and fight for your place. They can make room, they just won’t be too happy about it. I mean who wants to be so close to another sweaty human that early in the morning. I can tell you that your sweat will not be the only thing on your body, but the sweat of your neighbors too. So get there early, and snag a spot in the corner if it’s your first time. 

Even though sculptors are competitive but not nearly as competitive as C2 people are. I’ve been to a couple classes where I feel completely judged as people blatantly stare and others perhaps show off a little too much with crazy inversions every 3 seconds. These classes are not too common, and hey maybe this is more of a personal problem, but I have spoken to others about this and they have agreed. I, myself used to be one of these judgy people who looked down on those who mainly did YS, but this has since transformed. 

Lauren Bova, a senior at UCSD, who has been practicing yoga for nearly 6 years at Corepower said, “I mostly avoid C2, except when I [used to] go with my sister. I preferred the warm high spiritedness of a sculpt class to the wandering eyes, condescending looks and the showoffs that always find me in a C2 class.” 

The last thing I plead with you, is staying the whole class. A lot of people go to yoga classes but leave before the cool down and savasana, which I get it. I have left a couple classes early if I have plans and am trying to fit in a class. If you do have to leave then do so during the cool down stretch because some people will stay then finally when we cease movement for savasana they start to loudly pack up. It is incredibly rude and disruptive to those attempting to go deep in this posture, so be mindful of that. There are so many benefits to staying, for one, the cool down is necessary to prevent injury by stretching out the used muscles. In yoga, the body often gets shocked because the movements are touching muscles that are usually left undisturbed. So to save yourself the ice, just lay down and enjoy. 

Daveed Adjian, a C2 and HPF teacher at Corepower yoga, said, “I see it all the time, yoga is not just for getting abs, [rather] the physical posters, [asana] are just tools to get to Savansa. People spend the whole class creating the treasure box, but by leaving early they leave the prize [and rewards] behind.”   

So try the free week, take the classes, find what works for you and most importantly don’t give up. Don’t leave the treasure untouched, come and collect it. Maybe you’ll be like me, forever changed for the better because of Yoga. Or maybe you’ll hate it, just as I did when I first started out my practice. To finish off each class, we sit criss-crossed with our palms to our heart center to remind ourselves how truly strong we are, then we take our palms up to our lips to remind ourselves to speak words of kindness to all but most importantly to ourselves. Lastly we bring our palms to the third eye center, the center of light and intuition, as the instructor says something like, “The highest in me sees, honors and loves the highest in each, and every one of you, with that thought we bow forward to seal in our practice, from my heart to yours, Namaste.”