Hot Drop Apparel by Meredith Bowen is coming to Bikram Yoga Memphis! Top quality mens and womens yoga & activewear. Make  sure to drop by to pick up some Hot Drop and take a class with Meredith. Dec 10 @ 9am and Dec 11 @ 4.30pm.

Sign up between now and September 22nd and celebrate at Thanksgiving! Complete 60 classes in 60 days and watch your body, your mind, your habits, your attitude and your life change. Look and feel better then ever. Love will chase you. Money will chase you. Success will chase you. Prosperity & abundance will chase you. This challenge is all about YOU because YOU are the most important person in your life!

HEALING WAYS II: Food, Health & Nutrition Seminar with Balewa

Take your Health into your own Hands. Learn what constitutes a healthy diet, the cause of most common diseases, how to lose unwanted weight, how to have more energy, basic sprouting guidelines,and much more! Important information for you, your family and your friends. Healthcare is your constitutional right. Sign up at the studio or click here https://clients.mindbodyonline.com/ASP/adm/home.asp?studioid=4550 to sign up online and click on the WORKSHOPS tab.

When: Saturday, June 18
Time: 9am – 10am
Cost: $10 (All proceeds go to Shelby Farms Park Conservancy)
Location: Shelby Farms Park: Picnic Area 4, near Beaver Lake

Bring a yoga mat, large towel, water, your friends, family and your smiling happy face!

Download and fill out the registration form below to register.
http://www.shelbyfarmspark.org/sfpc/files/SF%20Yoga%20in%20the%20Park%20Registration%20Form_2.doc

Call or email Caleb with any questions: 901.767.7275 / ctinkle@shelbyfarmspark.org

Bikram Yoga is designed for EVERYONE – any age, size, shape, condition, or problem. To receive the benefits, a regular practice of 3 – 4 classes per week is necessary. Beginners are encouraged to start slow and take it easy for the first few classes. Benefits happen right away for some, including normalizing your weight. and it usually takes ten classes for your body to start to understand the poses.

As one student puts it, “A Bikram yoga class a day keeps the doctor away.”

1. Weight loss
Bikram Yoga is excellent for weight loss. Your digestive system and metabolism will improve, normalizing your appetite and diminishing unhealthy cravings. Your fat will turn into muscle as you develop muscle tone and strength. Warm muscles burn fat more easily as the heat flushes and detoxifies the body. Bikram yoga is known for burning anywhere from 500 to 1000 calories a session. The harder you work in class the more calories you will burn. Your cardiovascular system is worked and strengthened therefore, the more weight loss benefits you will receive. You may see and feel immediate results. You will naturally begin to start eating less and make better food choices.

2. Arthritis

Many students experience quick relief from arthritis after only a few classes of Bikram Yoga. A combination of the heat and the moving, twisting, extending and compressing of every joint can alleviate arthritis.  A regular practice is necessary for continued relief.

3. Blood Pressure
Unstable high blood pressure can respond very quickly to a regular Bikram Yoga practice. Consult your doctor and don’t push too hard for your first few classes. If you are tested about a week after starting Yoga, you may see a slight rise in pressure. Don’t be alarmed. By the second week, that pressure will be normal or close to normal and will stay there as long as you continue your yoga regimen. Many students who maintain a regular practice are able to stop taking blood pressure medication.

4. Back Pain
Bikram Yoga has helped countless numbers of people with back pain, stiff necks, headaches, scoliosis, herniated disks and many other back problems.  The Bikram Yoga series is designed to work the spine in every direction with many beneficial backbends, creating a healthy spine and thus a healthy nervous system. Make sure to tell your instructor what type of back pain you suffer from in case modifications are necessary.

5. Skin and Beauty
Watch your face and skin develop “the Bikram glow” as your eyes become brighter and your skin becomes more clear and soft. As you sweat, your pores are opened and cleaned allowing natural lanolin to release through the pores, softening and preserving your skin’s elasticity. “I feel so CLEAN inside and out, and my skin is so SOFT I don’t need moisturizer anymore!” is a student’s comment. Faces in general change expression from looking disturbed and frustrated to looking full of life and happiness. As your body detoxifies, you may eventually never need deodorant again!

6. Diabetes
Bikram yoga can be a perfect complement to the lifestyle changes necessary to help keep diabetic symptoms in check.  Recent research has found that performing these postures on a regular basis can decrease blood-sugar levels.  A dedicated Bikram Yoga student, who lost 50 pounds without dieting, healed his chronic back problems and no longer needed his diabetic medication after practicing Bikram Yoga for 6 months. He tells his story in the book “Diabetic Always, Insulin No More.”                         

7. Stress & Anxiety Management – Bikram’s guru Bishnu Gosh said “Mental stress and strain is the cause of all diseases, even infectious ones.” When performing the 26 postures and two breathing exercises, the fight-or-flight response is turned off and a feeling of balanced well-being is replaced. A regular practice can lower cortisol levels, calm the mind, increase mental clarity and release and reduce stress and tension.

8. Depression – On those days when you don’t feel like doing anything, going to Bikram Yoga class is key. You just have to show up and the yoga takes care of the rest.  After each session your mind will become more balanced and depression will be lifted. The more you practice, the better you will feel. Many students come off antidepressants and other medications after establishing a regular Bikram Yoga practice.

9. Breathing problems – Asthma, Allergies, Respiratory Problems
Bikram Yoga will be good for your breathing problems in several ways. The heat promotes relaxation of the muscles and nerves, and you can work with as much intensity as appropriate for your needs. Bikram Yoga will relax your mind and help let go of tensions, toxins and negativity. It strengthens your heart and lungs, improving your lung function. You will breathe easier and deeper than you ever have before.

10. Balancing Emotions

Bikram Yoga helps balance the emotions in several ways. Physiologically a regular practice harmonizes the nervous and endocrine systems – two systems which play a large part in emotional well-being. Practicing Bikram Yoga cultivates the mental faculties of faith, self-control, concentration, determination, and patience. As we become more aware of our inner life, we notice how events, interactions, and even the atmospheric pressure can affect us. As we become more aware, we exercise better choices in our responses. This helps us balance our emotional life.

11. Cholesterol

Many of our male students here in Memphis have come off their cholesterol medication from a regular Bikram Yoga practice. Your circulation increases allowing blood to flow throughout your body cleansing and clearing your arteries.

12. Thyroid regulation

Many of the postures in Bikram Yoga compress and work the thyroid thus helping to regulate the gland balancing thyroid levels. Along with thyroid regulation comes increased energy, weight loss and better metabolism.

13. Anti-Aging / Preventative Medicine
Bikram Yoga acts as anti-aging and preventative medicine keeping the body young and healthy. “Yoga maintains youth long. It keeps the body full of vitality, immune to diseases, even at old, old age. The Yogi never becomes old”. -Bishnu Ghosh

Many athletes such as Colby Bryant and celebrities such as Lady GaGa swear by Bikram Yoga.  “As a preventive medicine, it’s unequaled. I could have never lasted as long as I did in the NBA without it.” Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Professional Basketball Player and Bikram yoga student.

Article by Christine Boyer
Memphis Health & Fitness Magazine, April 2011.

Over 60 days, Tara Simkins will spend 90 hours drenched in sweat, wavering between nirvana and nausea, as she contorts her body into gravity-defying poses.

 Photo by Kyle Kurlick

Kim Norris and other yoga students perform the crescent moon pose at Bikram Yoga Memphis. Adherents tout the discipline’s benefits of stress relief and increased energy.

The name of her stress reliever and tormentor: Bikram Yoga — a 90-minute session of deep stretching that takes students through 26 poses in a room where temperatures soar above 100 degrees.

Simkins is one of more than 25 students at Bikram Yoga Memphis in East Memphis who have committed to taking 60 classes in 60 days to raise money for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

“When I think I can’t go any further in that class, I think about the kids,” said Simkins, a lawyer and mother of 8-year-old Brennan, who is being treated at the hospital for leukemia.

For each person who sweats it out for the 60-day challenge in what’s dubbed the “torture chamber,” a donation of $100 will be made to the children’s cancer research hospital.

A couple who practice at the studio are the anonymous donors behind the challenge.

Simkins moved her family from Augusta, Ga., to Memphis a year ago, when the youngest of her three boys had a relapse.

After Brennan’s third bone marrow transplant in 15 months, complications resulted in his being put on a ventilator, and there have been discussions of a possible fourth transplant.

While she was racked with anxiety over his condition and under pressure to stay positive for her family, a doctor at St. Jude recommended she take a Bikram Yoga class.

“The first class, I almost passed out,” Simkins said. “It’s really crazy, but I just had to go back. There’s something about the sweating that you feel so great afterward. It gives me the strength to face whatever we need to as a family.”

Bikram Yoga founder Bikram Choudhury says, “Give me 60 classes in 60 days, and I’ll give you a new body, a new mind and a new life.”

That 60-day challenge is promoted in hundreds of Bikram franchises across the country. But because several students at the Memphis studio work or have family being treated at St. Jude, the studio made it into a fundraiser for the hospital.

Open since 2005, Bikram Yoga Memphis came under new ownership three months ago with Christine Boyer and Isaac Christopher.

The young couple draw a strong connection between what happens at St. Jude and what goes on at Bikram Yoga.

“It’s a place for healing,” Christopher said.

“It helps with so many things. Every cell of your body is being worked,” Boyer said.

The co-owner and instructor came to Bikram Yoga with scoliosis, a curve in her spine that caused uneven hips and shoulders.

After three years of practice, Boyer says it has done wonders to realign her posture.

More important, however, she says, “It’s helped me stay sane.”

Fourteen days into her 60-day challenge, Alida Gage’s eyes and skin were sparkling.

“I really feel more energetic and happy,” said the 30-year-old University of Memphis student.

Many of her friends run the Memphis marathon to support St. Jude each year.

But running is not her thing, she said.

However, the idea of raising money for sick kids while sweating it out in her favorite yoga class hooked her.

“This is like running a marathon, but it won’t hurt your knees,” she said.

– Lindsay Melvin: 529-2445

The Details

What: Bikram Yoga Memphis, 60 classes in 60 days fundraiser for St. Jude.

Where: 5101 Sanderlin. BikramYogaMemphis.com, 682-9940.

Donate online: bit.ly/hGnZmw

Allow 2011 to become your most POWERFUL year yet with a Bikram Yoga 60 Day Challenge. Complete 60 classes in 60 days and watch your body, your mind, your habits, your attitude and your life change. Look and feel better then ever. Complete the Challenge for the Children at St. Jude. For every person who completes the 60 Day Challenge, anonymous donors will donate $100 per person to St. Jude. To donate funds to St Jude, please click on the St. Jude logo above.  Every little bit helps. To join the challenge, sign up anytime before January 31st.  Change your life and help the children at St Jude.

“Give me 60 classes in 60 days and I’ll give you a new body, a new mind and a new life.”
Bikram Choudhury