Bikram won after two incidents in November: I went to Honolulu for my friend Lisa's wedding (Hi, Lisa!) and took the hike to the top of Diamond Head, and I went to Orycon and danced all night. Both of these were great fun, and I didn't have any issues while I was actually doing them. But later, both of them left me with painful, oh-no-I-can't-get-out-of-this-chair-without-using-my-arms, back spasms.

I realized that I could no longer take for granted my body's ability to just do whatever I wanted it to do. (That's the midlife crisis part.) I needed to do something to maintain solid foundational fitness -- which meant that it had to hit all the major body parts, and be done at least three times a week.

Bikram Yoga was practically a good fit -- convenient location and times, classes every day, and they offer a deal on unlimited classes which (for me) provides an extra incentive to go and get my money's worth. Also, it has a special emphasis on back-strengthening poses.

Bikram Yoga is a branded yoga (Bikram is a guy's name), which means that instructors and studios are certified and do things in a certain way. The sequence is 26 poses that takes 90 minutes to get through. It is the same sequence every time.

The gimmicky part -- or maybe I should say the part that seems gimmicky -- is that Bikram style is done in a heated room. A really hot room. A room that is ideally heated to 106 degrees Farenheit. So it is kind of like exercising in a sauna, although according to this Wikipedia article on saunas the traditional Finnish saunas were heated to temperatures of 160-180 degrees Fahrenheit!! and sometimes as high as 212, which sounds absurd to me, because at those temperatures you can bake things, so I wonder if the Wiki article is bogus, hold on... no, I'm not finding contradictory information. Saunas really do approach 200 degrees Fahrenheit. Also, they are Finnish in origin. I didn't know that. I knew they were Scandinavian, but not Finnish specifically.

Anyway, when people find out about the high temperatures of Bikram Yoga studios, their first reaction is to worry, "Is that dangerous?" I suppose that it could be, but after what I just learned about sauna temperatures, I'm pretty sure 106 Fahrenheit is nothing to worry about.

A hot room promotes flexibility and keeps you from cooling down when resting between the postures. The official spiel also claims that the profuse sweating "releases toxins." I am a bit skeptical of the whole detoxifying concept, but sweating lots probably is good for us, since we seem to be designed for it. Also, recreational sweat boxes are a time-honored classic -- see saunas, above.

I have now been taking the yoga for a year as of mid-November. Three or four times a week most weeks. Has it worked? Am I no longer forty?

Sadly, no. I am now forty-one. But the yoga has helped with what it was supposed to, specifically, to keep me from hurting myself during recreational exercise. Also, it has helped with things I wasn't expecting. For example, I like to sit with my legs crossed, and I had started to notice that my knees weren't quite as comfortable doing that as they used to be, and now they are again (most of the time). Most of my eczema has cleared up and the rest stays fairly manageable.

Anyway, I decided to write a few articles on my experiences, because I would have found such articles helpful when I was starting out. It's easy to find glowing patchouli-scented testimonials about the Power of Yoga to Cure Anything, but not quite as easy to find practical advice about how to get the sweat smell out of your yoga duds. (You can't. It doesn't come out. Sorry.)