In January of 2017, business partners Lily Koken and Sarah Rice opened a new hot yoga studio at 438 West State St. in Ithaca called Pure Sweat. It is in the same studio that held Bikram’s Yoga College of India before it closed. The studio is independent of the Bikram Yoga College of India but has adopted the same Bikram practices.
Pure Sweat yoga practices are based on Bikram yoga which was founded by Bikram Choudhury from Hatha Yoga. It is a complete physical and mental workout. Each Bikram yoga class lasts for 90 minutes and consists of 26 hatha yoga asanas, or postures, and two breathing exercises. Classes are meant to incorporate every muscle, ligament, joint, gland and tendon in practitioners’ bodies, working every body system possible — nervous, respiratory, endocrine and lymphatic.
“Each part of the body somewhere is being compressed, and then once you release all of that compression, it allows all of that fresh blood and oxygen to surge into that part of the body,” co-owner Sarah Rice said. “That’s a big part of the healing, the cleansing part of it.”
The classes are held in hot rooms, which are crucial to the detoxification process during this form of yoga. Practitioners sweat a lot because the temperature is set to 105 degrees and the humidity hits approximately 40 percent during each class. This heat helps to increase circulation, speed up natural body healing processes, cleanse the body by forcing out toxins through the skin by way of sweat and warm up practitioners’ muscles in order to better execute the postures being practiced.
Pure Sweat offers the full 90-minute Bikram Beginning Yoga Series. It is designed for all practitioner levels, both beginner practitioners and experienced practitioners. Classes are offered every day of the week, and doors open a half hour before the classes begin to help new practitioners become acquainted with the studio space.
“It teaches you all about your body and how much you can handle,” hot yoga practitioner Juliana Bilodeau said. “The longer I go, the easier all of this is and the more I feel comfortable listening to my body rather than trying to do all of the moves perfectly.”
Rates for classes vary depending on what the practitioner is looking for. The introductory offer includes a $20 charge for ten consecutive days of classes, $140 for ten classes, $135 for a monthly unlimited membership and $1,200 for an annual unlimited membership.
In order to teach the classes at Pure Sweat or any Bikram studio, instructors are required to attend a nine-week training course and must be Bikram-certified.
“All of our teachers went to a nine-week training course with Bikram,” co-owner Lily Koken said. “We memorized a dialogue, and it’s essentially a dialogue between the teacher’s voice and the student’s body. Everybody follows the instructions and stays together.”
And while every class works through the same sequence of postures and breathing exercises, each session remains different for each individual as they progress and develop both spiritually and physically. For this reason, class is never too easy or repetitive in a way that makes it boring, and sessions benefit both beginners and advanced participants alike.
“The postures are always the same, and there really isn’t any modification to the postures in the yoga room,” Koken said. “Everybody does the same thing, but we do modify depth. The postures are designed to work for every body type and person.”
