Published September 14, 2026 03:03PM
The first time I ever attended a hot yoga class, I fainted. I was 16 and brand new to yoga, and the trendy new studio was the talk of the town. My friends and I confidently rolled out our mats in the middle of the room, one bottle of water among the three of us. Anyway, you know the rest.
The fault was my own. I was naive about my body’s needs, the intensity of the style, and the general importance of water. (To be fair, I was a teen in the 00s.) Even so, it wasn’t exactly the best first impression of the practice.
Throughout the following two decades, I avoided heated studios entirely. Instead, I cultivated my practice in rooms of normal temperature, learning to align my breath with movement, turn inward, and stretch my (very inflexible) body even without the withering heat.
So last year, when I learned that the most convenient 200-hour yoga teacher training for me (in terms of timing, location, pricing, approach) was at a hot yoga studio, I considered it a challenge from the gods. I wasn’t a 16-year-old newbie anymore; I was a 36-year-old yogi far more familiar with myself and yoga in general. If I could hone and elevate my practice under sweaty, slippery, and suffocating conditions, regular yoga would be a breeze for the rest of my life!
I was actually sort of right. But what I didn’t anticipate was a hot studio’s ability to sap (or perhaps sweat) the magic out of my yoga practice.
The External Nature of Hot Yoga
Over the course of my six-month yoga teacher training, I practiced exclusively at the hot yoga studio where training was held. We touched on Hot 26, but the training was far broader than that, a beautifully crafted curriculum of yoga philosophy, practical anatomy, and applied psychology (our teacher had a Masters in Psych, which allowed for a lot of connected dots).
Even as I dove deeper into the whys and hows of yoga, the shear volume of heated classes I took slowly began to fracture my relationship with my physical practice.
Hot yoga transforms my flow into something so external that I never get the opportunity to go within. Yes, I am more flexible in the hot yoga studio. My body feels amazing afterward, a euphoria akin to an amazing cardio session. But the dripping sweat and discomfort keep my attention fully on my body throughout class. The quiet never comes.
I love yoga because it stills my very, very loud, busy, crowded mind. In the right class, my worries and ego disappear into a flow of breath and movement that brings greater clarity to my everyday life. The mix of spiritual and physical presence gives me the space to dissolve (dissolve, not melt) and safely reassimilate. That’s what yoga is to me—a chance to step outside of the rigors of being a person so I can be a being.
Months of enduring hot yoga proved that yes, I can practice in a hot studio. And I do understand why some people love the approach. It also taught me that I was right in my initial inclination to take my personal practice into milder climates.
It seems my yoga is just a chiller thing.
