Integral Yoga: The Anti Bikram

Integral Yoga Institute of New York
227 West 13th Street
http://www.iyiny.org/
$30/3 classes no expiry


On a whim, I landed at Integral Yoga Institute of NY and while I knew it would be different, I didn't know how different.

The building itself is cool, kind of big (6 floors) very old school, lots of old wood, muted colors.  The lockers in the locker room reminded me of middle school . There are paintings and altars set up all over the place for Sri Swami Satchidananda. The place has a completely different vibe from any of the other young, hip, "sexy" yoga places I'd been to.  I was looking forward to taking yoga back to its roots.

There is a health food store, apothecary and a bookstore attached to the studio and for the price of my intro card ($30/3 classes) I get a 20% discount at each of those.


The class was led by an older woman dressed in all white who prayed for a few minutes at the altar of the Swami before class.   We started with a few "om's" and some sanskrit chanting.  While the chanting was pleasing to the ear, I still can't get into it. It seems so...cheesy.

After the chants we got started with the "traditional eyeball stretches." This was just weird. It was made extra weird because the class was in a narrow room with two rows where each row faces the center (see: eachother.) So while I am imagining a giant clock in front of me and looking at the different hours, the goofy older guy across from me is doing the same and it's kind of awkward. 

After this 20 minute or so warmup we finally got into the yoga and it was very traditional Hatha yoga.  I learned how to do a Sun Salutation among other things  The teacher talked very slow and was very detailed. She would usually explain the posture, do the posture and then walk us through the posture step by step.  There was an emphasis on not pushing yourself too hard, taking it easy, relaxing, not stretching too much, doing it however you wanted to, not worrying about whats right or wrong and so on.

As the practice continued we did a handful of posturess, some of which are very similar to the bikram sequence including cobra (bhujangasana), half locust (arddha salabasana), locust (salabasana), bow pose (dhanurasana) and head to knee (janusirshasana)   It was nice to hear those asana names and they will certainly be familiar to anyone who has taken a few bikram yoga classes.

The pinnacle of the class was the 3 minute shoulder stand. By far the longest pose, and 3 minutes is pretty long! I couldn't do it that well but the teacher really walked me through it (she didnt single me out but it was pretty clear because everyone else was doing it quite well.)   After that we kind of warmed down.

At the end we went into a deep relaxation/meditation that included a few body relaxation techniques that were very similar to the native American ones I learned through my spiritual mentor and reinforced at the tracker school several years ago : tensing the body up in various ways and quickly releasing and also imagining a warm bright light engulfing your body slowly. It was cool that the native American and yoga meditations have such similar cores. That really validates it for me.

We finished the class with half a dozen breathing exercises (slight exaggeration), including alternate nostril breathing  (no exaggeration).  The class ran about 20 minutes over which put me in a slight panic because I had to be somewhere. (See: control issues) I made it there.

The class was very meditative. It wasn't very physical. The emphasis on not pushing yourself, doing it at your own pace, taking it easy, was the complete opposite of what I'm used to with the similar poses of a bikram class.  In this class today I didn't sweat at all.  I wasn't sore later.  To be honest, I like bikram better, I liked to be physically pushed.  However I do appreciate the meditative stuff emphasized in this traditional Hatha "integral yoga" class

Since I do have 2 more classes, I will return. But there is no expiry, so I won't rush. Going to find a more strenuous class first.  Thinking about a level 1/basic led ashtanga class. Wish me luck.

 Might have to take a bikram class in between too as I have about 9 left on my card and I am "craving the stretch." Check out this other Ian's Capoeirista blog where he talks about bikram. Its funny how my first post mentions a lot of the same things.  Ahh bikram. Still love it.