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reflections on bikram’s yogaIn the course of attempting to study Counselling, the huge volume of hatred being directed towards me was making me ill. It began to dawn upon me that the very people who were making such a song and dance about ‘wanting to help people’ were the ones in most need of the very help they imagined themselves capable of giving.It was ironic- that these people, who thought of themselves as potential healers or counsellors, were more screwed up than the people they were setting out to ‘help’!! I began to realise why so many people have an aversion to sitting down with these ‘head bangers’. The main culprits were, I thought, the ‘man haters’: women who seemed totally lacking in any social or communicative skills at all, who wanted to vent their spleen and frustration about life on the nearest man around. Unfortunately, this happened to be me - the only male member of the counselling studies group out of 23 people!! But it wasn’t only that. This ‘counselling’ - had all its roots in Psychiatry, in mid-19th century theories of the mind - none of which have ever been proved, by the way!! It all struck me as, if not totalitarian, then certainly authoritarian boiling down to people systematically humiliating themselves in front of a complete stranger, and focusing on the most negative possible things. Nothing positive or cheerful was ever in danger of rearing its head. The whole thing was geared to concentrating on the gloomiest and most depressing themes possible. Which is why it seemed to attract possibly the nastiest and most vicious people I had ever had the misfortune to meet. For me to say that, it has to be extreme - bearing in mind that for large chunks of my life I have been an inmate of some of the world’s toughest prisons. In the last one, Glendairy, in Barbados, I worked for four months on Death Row, as a bucket man, where I got to know some 23 of the country’s toughest murderers and rapists. But even these guys were candy compared to the mean souls I encountered on the counselling course up at the ol' City & Islington College!! (For those of you who have actually read my book, you may recall that this is where the story finished off back there.) Calling it a day, I felt that in bailing out I was sparing myself a possible drug relapse/ murder trial/ suicide attempt in getting OUT of counselling. As I stepped into the bright sunny day, it was like a cloud of darkness lifting from me. Another part of me felt it was a shame, though. Yet another failure? Whilst chatting with my friend Coral Temple, the subject of Bikram’s Yoga came up, and even as we talked it was like a tiny chime sounding off somewhere in the distance - a reminder that it was time for me to get back there and continue where I had left off, many years before. 
I had previously done a few classes of Bikram’s Yoga when it had been
held over at Hornsey YMCA - in the Haringey Club. I had been impressed at
the use of the heat - sweating out all those bad substances from my system.
Wasn’t this kind of heat good for getting the toxins out of the system?
They had long since been deposited there during years of drug and alcohol
abuse. Not that you needed to have been such an inveterate sinner in order
to be in need of such a detoxifying process - even the chemicals, preservatives
and colourings in ordinary food and drinks must create quite a build-up
of dangerous chemicals in the body, it occurred to me. So now it was like coming back full circle, I thought, as I stood to the side of the studio in my swimsuit, looking at the heavily-overweight and certainly overwrought figure smiling knowingly back at me from the mirror- my own reflection!! Uggh! As the class began some of it started coming back to me - the way one posture seemed to lead to another. The towel beneath my feet soon became soaked with the streams of sweat which were by now running from me like rivers. |
For much of the class I had to cling pathetically to a railing on the
side wall. Where was my long-lost strength? It began to dawn on me that
for the preceding seven years I hadn’t done any exercise, and that
might have had SOMETHING to do with it. Leaning forward into a one-legged
posture called the Upward Bow, my enormous beer belly surged forward, nearly
unbalancing me, almost bringing down a fellow practitioner in the process,
and coming close to creating a chain reaction throughout the room.
I heaved a sigh of relief for the railing, as my flabby hands went and clung
to it. Somehow I made it through the class, and at the end of it went back
home and straight to sleep for the afternoon. But the next day - I was back,
and by staying focused and ‘on course’ I found, over the ensuing
months, that various things were happening to and within my body. One was that my strength seemed to be gradually returning. Increasingly, week by week, I was finding it less and less necessary to cling to the side railing. Bit by bit I was able to increase the extent to which I was able to enter into each of the 26 postures a Bikram’s class consists of. Finally, after about four months of going every day, I was able to let go of the railing, and stand upright on my mat for the duration of the entire 90 minute class. 
It gave me an incredible sense of achievement just to get to that point.
Only a few months prior I had been bedridden for 6 months whilst undergoing
treatment for Hepatitis C from UCL Hospital. The drugs I had to inject myself
had massive side-effects, mainly to make all physical motion totally exhausting.It had been only with great difficulty I had been just about able to keep myself, my few clothes, and my small bedsit tolerably clean. Although my treatment was - thank the gods - successful, I emerged at the end of it a wizened and almost crippled old man. Every one of my muscles had to be brought back to life. Things I had previously taken for granted - like going to the launderette or carrying my own shopping back from the supermarket became tasks of a Herculean magnitude. By sticking with the practice of this Bikram yoga my strength was slowly but definitely returning. I felt like a man coming back from the realm of the dead. 
Another thing I noticed was that my body - in the course of following the
process of a Bikram class seemed to be realigning itself in a strange way.
I discovered that in my knees, my back, my neck - areas always the source
of trouble- the joints were now beginning to fold differently, and that
all the old ‘kinks’ were straightening themselves out. The system
of Bikram yoga I now realised was actually an incredibly ingenious system
for ‘auditing’ through a individual’s physique and ‘ironing
out’ whatever needed physio-therapeutic treatment. As the pain in
these areas in my body began to melt away I found it possible to stop taking
the painkillers and anti-inflammatory drugs that were being prescribed by
my GP. Another great benefit, as I had at one time began thinking that I
was going to be doomed to eke out my remaining years as a semi-crippled
person. Hardly a cheerful thought. But there was yet another thing I noticed, and that was all my old cravings for alcohol, drugs, and spicy and fatty foods seemed to be fading away. For many years I had been the slave of these ‘addictions’ - even ending up on serious drugs such as heroin and cocaine for large chunks of my life. By doing the postures in the Bikram class it dawned on me that the glands of my body were now being galvanized into action in a harmonious and unified way, such that now my body was properly manufacturing the right combination of hormones and other chemicals it needed to retain its own sense of balance. I realised that most – maybe all- addictions- are the body’s way of screaming out for help, help it doesn’t actually get in the long term from abusing drugs, alcohol, chocolate, etc. 
In following the Bikram system of yoga, I wondered, had I actually stumbled
across an actual cure for addiction? Had I found the genie’s lamp
of personal freedom? If so, then what a wonderful investment I was making
with my time and energy. Tears streamed down my face, as I realised that
in all the years I had been so fucked up on drugs, I hadn’t been such
an innately bad person after all; that my former addiction to hard drugs
had merely been my body’s way of calling out that something needed
attention. I began to wonder at all the money spent by governments and individuals on ‘rehabs’ and ‘treatments’ for such things as drug addiction, alcoholism - even obesity and anorexia - none of which really work! Could these things be successfully cured by the sufferer following this Bikram’s yoga? If so, then I had found the Master Key - more! - the Aladdin’s Cave of real change and life improvement!! On another level, I found that psychologically a form of healing or regeneration was underway. My sleep pattern was being restored, and the many harsh and painful memories of some of the events in my past - especially re my travels in Afghanistan, Iran, Greece - and more latterly Barbados - began to recede. No longer was I waking up in a panic, gasping for air, or walking around massively paranoid that I was about to be killed by someone. Qualities such as trust and peace began to filter back into my daily routine, and I found it possible to have people around me I could begin to regard as possible friends. The days of drug-induced paranoia were at last over as the poisonous chemicals and toxins got flushed out of my liver, my kidneys, my mind, and the fatty tissues of my body through my daily practice. 
The practice of Bikram’s yoga I found to be quite revolutionary, in
a way. Most of traditional, orthodox, and even so-called ‘alternative’
medicine and treatment is based upon the notion that in order to ‘get
cured’ of something you have to present yourself to ‘an expert’
in the field. That might be a doctor, a herbalist, a counsellor, or whatever.
But essentially you have to place all your trust, all your personal power
and responsibility, all your hope, and perhaps quite a bit of your money,
time and vulnerability in the hands of someone other than yourself. Bikram’s yoga flies in the face of all this, because with this practice you begin to confront your own limitations, weak points, shortcomings, and by your own application and hard work begin to work with your own body and mind in order to bring about change and life improvement. So, here, it is all down to you, how far you go in turning your body and mind around, rather than throwing yourself on the mercy( or otherwise!!) of someone who has in fact a vested interest in keeping you weak and dispossessed, and permanently in the mode of being a ‘patient’. 
Bikram’s yoga is, I would say, is in fact superior to many of the
other variants of yoga on offer - at least from what I have seen. With these
others, in all too many of the yoga classes the teaching is ramshackle,
haphazard, and willy-nilly, still carrying over much of the 1960s, former
hippy-style associations that used to appear on British comedy. Here, people
would be portrayed as humming Om with their legs crossed over and hands
outstretched over the knees, palms facing up.One thing I liked about the Bikram method is that all the bullshit has been taken out, and it is remarkably free of cultism. We have been presented with a system of personal change that really does work, but you have to stay focused and exercise perseverance and commitment, qualities - it has dawned on me - that are vital to exercise in order to achieve anything of lasting value, in any area of life, come to think of it. The Bikram instructors have all struck me as totally professional and very committed to what they are doing. I feel very fortunate to have discovered this practice, and am still down there, every day, nigh on. I intend to follow this trail through for as long as I can. Terry Donaldson |