Cumming woman turns up heat with yoga class

Her background About four years ago Perry was a regular exerciser, diligently attending spinning classes. “A friend of a friend said, ‘you should try yoga’ so I tried it at my gym, bought a few video tapes and I loved it,” says the 38-year-old, who resides in Cumming with her husband while on a leave of absence from teaching at Huntingdon College in Alabama. She started taking regular (Vinyasa flow) yoga a couple of times a week and about a year into it, she thought she’d try Bikram yoga (also known as “hot yoga” because of the high temperature of the classroom).

Her first Bikram class: After attending just one session at Bikram Yoga Alpharetta, “I completely fell in love with it,” she says. “It’s a whole different level of yoga. For me, personally, it combines that runner’s high that you get from a spinning class or running with yoga, where you get the spiritual mind workout as well.”

Adrienne Hughes-Harris/Special

Katherine Perry takes Birkam Yoga for her favorite workout.

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What it is: Named after its founder, Yogiraj Bikram Choudhury, Bikram yoga is similar to a flow yoga class except the room is hot. Very hot. It’s usually about 105 degrees. Why the heat? Perry explains, “If your muscles aren’t having to fight against external coldness you’re already warmed up to a certain degree. So you can actually have a little bit more flexibility.” Plus, she says that all that sweating helps with detoxification.

A typical class: It’s 90 minutes of yoga poses like dancer’s pose, standing bow, camel and turtle, “all poses you might see in a yoga class,” says Perry. The poses come in a series that is the same every single time. Perry is grateful for the repetition: “That helps you plan to get through the class. It’s a tough class and it’s hard to stay in a 105-degree room for 90 minutes.”

Cutting out cardio: At first she took Bikram classes two times a week and still did spinning because, she says, “Everyone tells you that you gotta do cardio. I kept it as a sideline.” But slowly she kept adding Bikram classes and not going to spinning classes. “What I found was that rather than gaining weight, which is what I thought would happen if I stopped doing cardio, I started losing weight.” In the three years since she began Bikram, Perry says she’s lost 30 pounds.

What it’s done for her: Besides losing weight she says she feels like she now understands her body’s signals. “After 38 years you’d think I would know that but I didn’t. I learned to not eat when I wasn’t hungry because I could feel my body better.” And then there’s that improved flexibility. “I’ve gone running a few times and I thought, ‘this is gonna kill me.’ I can run better now even though I’m not running than I could when I used to run. It’s definitely keeping me in shape.”

Her workout week: Perry now tries to fit in five Bikram classes, one or two flow yoga classes, and she also walks her dog a mile and a half every day.

Staying hydrated: “It’s recommended that you drink a gallon of water in the 24 hours preceding the class. If you’re not used to drinking like that it’s going to be hard at first,” says Perry, who doesn’t usually drink water during class. After class, though, she says it’s easy to down about a half gallon. “You come out wringing sweat,” she says.

Her advice: The sweat level shouldn’t scare people, according to Perry. She says the class is designed for beginners and the instructor offers modifications if participants want to make it more challenging. Perry says that one of her favorite quotes about yoga is “it’s never too late, it’s never too bad and you’re never too old or too sick to start from scratch once again,” said by Bikram’s teacher, Bishnu Ghosh, a renowned yogi. As a yogi herself, Perry says, “I agree with that!”

THE WORKOUT

Here’s where Katherine Perry sweats and stretches five times a week:

Bikram Yoga Alpharetta, 11550 Webb Bridge Way, Suite 2, Alpharetta, 770-777-1616, www.bikramyogaalpha.com