The boy tries Bikram

So today, finally, after 2 years of suggestion, coaxing and persuasion, my man finally experienced first-hand, my world of Bikram yoga. I'm not even sure how I managed to eventually get him to come to class, but I did, and after years of avoidance and thinking that he would hate it, he actually said he really liked it!!

I'd basically given up on trying to persuade him to try it, but yesterday I was at The Yoga Show exhibition in London helping out my teacher on her stand, and being one of her assistants demonstrating the postures when she taught her taster class. I got to talking with her about how he'd never been to class. She told me about her own experience where she'd said to her fiancee (now husband) that she wouldn't marry him if he didn't try it. She got him to go to three classes with the promise that after three if he hated it he never had to go back. Three because she says that everyone has a bad first or second class. He liked it and now even goes without her. Well that story inspired me!

It's not that I want him there all the time, or that I even want to 'work out' with him. But I push the benefits of the sequence and how much I love the class to people all the time, and I just really wanted him to at least give something that I find so positive a chance. Not to mention that I spend so much of my time in the studio that I really thought he should at least get a taster of the experience, so he knows what it's like first-hand, and not just from my opinion of it.

He got lucky today anyway, because the Sunday 9am class with Nina is always quite a nice relaxed one. It was raining outside, and still a little dark, and she didn't put all the floodlights on, so it wasn't too bright in the room. It didn't get that hot either, although it was hot enough to get a nice sweat on. Nina is such a good teacher and a nice person that it eased him into the class nicely. He stayed in the room and tried all the postures even when people around him were sitting down. I went in front of him so he could copy what I was doing, although that may have been a mistake as I realised I shouldn't be going into the postures as deep as normal as I didn't want him to copy my full expression. It probably also puts a bit of pressure to have your girlfriend able to make eye contact in the mirror, and able to see everything you're doing, when it doesn't matter what the postures look like, and the aim is just to make it through the class without leaving the room. But he did really well and I was really proud of him-he even took my advice about not kicking out in SFTK!

I think he was a little embarrassed when Nina called him about only taking two years to come to class! With hindsight I should have made him try it earlier, but was ultra-inspired that he should try it after the show yesterday. We're leaving London soon so that was also a good reason for him to come to my studio before we leave. Next time though I'm going to take him to a busy, sweaty, packed out 72-person, mid-week 7pm class and he might have a totally different experience altogether.