How a 104°F Room Solved My Midlife Exercise Crisis

Bikram Yoga: The System That Still Works

If you want more insight like this, subscribe to How It Works (and Why It Doesn’t).

If you’re already a paying subscriber, you can support the project further via Stripe.

Almost a year into the pandemic, I went on my first date with my wife. On December 20th of this year, we will have been together for five years—and just 12 days shy of one year in Spain.

She has done a lot for me in so many ways. Somewhere around the middle of the top of the list is introducing me to hot yoga. My wife had been doing it for a while before she met me. We started our yoga journey—(lol)—together at the LA outpost of a chain called CorePower Yoga.

I was immediately hooked. A year in and I had done 100 classes. I ended up doing nearly 600 hot yoga sessions (including some hot HIIT classes) at CorePower.

Turns out that was just the beginning. An appetizer. An entrante.

The last thing I want to do is talk shit on CorePower. I owe a lot to that place. People like to say this or that changed their life, but doing hot yoga at CorePower actually did.

Primarily, it accomplished two things—

• It gave me a near-daily outlet to release some stress and anxiety.

• It turned out to be the exercise I had been searching for all my life. And it came at the right time—midlife.

That said, CorePower is a loose—a very loose—adaptation of Bikram Yoga. I really had no idea until we arrived in Valencia, Spain and finally settled on the studio where we have been doing hot yoga (and hot pilates) for the last eight months.

This is not going to be a posture-by-posture breakdown of Bikram Yoga. It’s more about Bikram as a form of regular exercise—as a system that works in a fitness world that simply doesn’t for so many people.

---

When you walk into a class, the heat and humidity hit you before the door even closes.

It’s not a “warm-up.” It’s quickly ramping up to 40°C (104° F) and around 40%-50% humidity of engineered discomfort. The kind that makes you focus before you even think about doing “exercise.” Bikram feels less like exercise and more like life training. It makes everything else you did or dealt with that day seem small or, at least, forgotten.

Ninety minutes. Twenty-six postures. Two breathing exercises.

Same order, same timing, every class, everywhere in the world.

Unlike a class at CorePower or any number of hot yoga studios around the world (definitely in Los Angeles), including some that call themselves Bikram even if they’re doing anything but.

There’s no music. No flow sequences. No instructor improvising a vibe. No “do what feels good” or “listen to your body” platitudes. No new-age calls to give yourself space, grace, or the permission to—basically—give in to physical and mental discomfort and dog it. It’s not that it never happens—I still stop, sometimes more than once per class—but your body is listening, and Bikram keeps pushing it and you, whether you or it likes it or not.

You’re in control, yet not in control of anything, and you spend the whole class trying to maintain whatever control you can.

I’ve done every kind of exercise.

Cycling. Running. Walking. Weight training. Yoga, the regular kind. HIIT.

Most of it is fine. Most of it is healthy. Most of it does something. But almost none of it—not the way most of us actually do it—creates clear, measurable, undeniable physical adaptation. The kind where you don’t have to convince yourself you’re working out or exercising.

Bikram does.

Every time.

And that’s why it gets a 9 out of 10.

Not a 10.

Because what if I’m wrong? What if the heat is slowly cooking my brain? What if the intensity works until the day it doesn’t?

But until that day arrives—if it ever does—it is the closest thing to a perfect system for the human body that I’ve found.

Not because you get better at it. But because you never stop being bad at it.

Part of the beauty and allure of Bikram is that it’s not something you master. People who call themselves yogis are few and far between and—more likely—just assholes.

Bikram beats the hell out of you no matter how long you’ve been practicing. Our main instructor—the super nice French guy who owns the studio—has been doing it for more than a decade. Still, every single class is hard. Or it never gets easier.

You don’t “dog it” like you do a bike ride. You don’t coast. You don’t hide. Every pose has a deeper version you can’t reach yet. Every class is a tiny fight with yourself.

You can’t do more Bikram. You just do Bikram.

And that’s the point.

---

Why the System Works (Even If You Don’t Want It To)

If Bikram were just a sweaty bro endurance challenge, it wouldn’t be worth thinking about. What makes it work—truly work—is the combination of heat, repetition, and neurological load.

Here’s what the science says (culled from me reading and skimming a bunch of science, which takes me back to my research and literature review days in academia):

Heat forces the cardiovascular system to adapt.

Exercise in high heat increases plasma volume, enhances circulation, improves sweat efficiency, and reduces the heart’s perceived workload during future exercise.
Multiple studies on heat adaptation show the same pattern: the body becomes dramatically better at moving blood and regulating temperature when repeatedly stressed in controlled conditions.

Bikram is basically controlled overheating.

---

Repetition rewires movement.

The same 26 postures, in the same sequence, is not a gimmick.

Do the same movements long enough and your body gets better at them—way better than it does with constantly changing workouts. Your body learns the poses deeply—in the way you learn a language through immersion, not apps. I’m living both of these processes right now. A key point that we’ll get back to later.

This flies in the face of what fitness culture sells you: novelty, variety, “keeping the body guessing.” It’s all marketing bull shit. Because they know that most people fail at exercise so they always need carrots to dangle. What are you going to do next to switch things up or find what’s right for you? I spent years on that personal fitness hamster wheel—until I discovered hot yoga and, to be fair, walking and cycling (though they’re both drastically different—leisure activities that can do a body and mind good).

Anyway, the research says the opposite of convention and capitalism: predictability builds progression towards some flavor of elusive mastery.

---

Constraint lowers mental noise—then hits you harder.

Because you don’t have to think (“What comes next?” “How many reps?” “Should I push harder?”), you direct all your attention into the pose itself.

The less you have to think, the more you feel.

That said, it’s tough not to think. That’s why our instructor always says sin pensar (without thinking). Focus on staying in the room, with your breath, and going deeper into the pose. That’s when you start to feel in a way you just don’t feel with the runner’s high or reaching the top of a hill on your bike.

---

Why Bikram Yoga Is Better Than Everything Else I’ve Tried

I’ve been cycling for decades. I walk everywhere. I used to lift weights. I stretch. I was once addicted to Spinning, a form of exercise where I was needlessly beating myself up, but not seeing commensurate results.

All of it is good in some way. Typically, it’s better than doing nothing. But none of it is complete.

Most exercise—again, the way normal humans actually do it—is a mix of half-effort, distracted pacing, inconsistent form, and novelty-chasing.

You’re not pushing, and you’re not building. You’re maintaining. At least that’s how I have always experienced exercise. Even with riding my bike or walking. I push myself to do more with those physical activities. And I see benefits. But these aren’t systems; they’re meant to maintain the baseline you will inevitably plateau at.

Maintenance is fine. But maintenance won’t transform you. It will just drive you crazy.

You run the marathon so you train for a 1/2 triathlon. You do that and it’s onto a full. You could be doing worse things with your life. But the point is that most people who exercise end up on one of two tracks:

• They ping pong from one thing to the next with large gaps in between—lucky to find a solid baseline and maintain it.

• They get obsessed with activities like running or cycling where you always have to do more to realize diminishing, if any returns.

Bikram does not maintain. Bikram adapts.

It’s worth repeating: You can’t do more Bikram.

It is the rare case where the ceiling is lower, but the floor is higher. No matter how fit you are, you will not breeze through a class.You can’t hide behind cardio strength or muscle mass.

Everyone breaks in the heat.

Huge muscle-bound bros walk in with bravado and walk out barely able to sip the Coca-Cola the instructor gave them so they wouldn’t throw up. Meanwhile, others who don’t like fit or have the perfect body do the entire class and—relative to the bro—make it look easy.

You can get stronger on the bike by going longer.

You can get stronger in the gym by adding weight.

You can get better at running by upping your pace.

Bikram has nothing to add.

You don’t level up. You go deeper.

Those are different pursuits.

---

This pursuit—my yoga journey—came at the right time.

At midlife, I needed appropriate, but not easier “exercise.” The typical path is to try a whole bunch of stuff, stick with nothing, and slide into physical and mental stagnation, if not disrepair.

Then I found hot yoga at CorePower and true Bikram here in Spain.

It’s hard. Some classes I feel like maybe I am getting too old. But I always keep coming back. Right alongside my wife.

When we don’t do yoga, we miss it. When we take off too much time, coming back temporarily feels like starting over. That’s why when we spend next April in Paris (more on that in the next few weeks), we’ll do Bikram a few times a week there, maybe even with our instructor in Spain who also teaches in France.

---

The Founder is the Worst Part (And Also Irrelevant)

Bikram Choudhury is, in the most generous language possible, a problem.

Every system with a charismatic but morally questionable founder eventually has to decide: do we take the method, or do we take the man?

Yoga has been doing this for 5,000 years.

The method is older than him.

The heat isn’t his invention.

The poses aren’t his invention.

The discipline definitely isn’t.

Systems that work outlive their creators. Systems that don’t die with them.

---

Why This Matters Beyond the Mat

This isn’t really a fitness article. It’s about systems—what works, what doesn’t, and how to tell the difference.

The same logic that makes Bikram effective is the same logic that makes Valencia’s urban design effective:

• Constraint creates clarity.

• Repetition creates fluency.

• Predictability strengthens you.

The same way I don’t need a hundred productivity hacks—I just need a rhythm I can repeat.

The same way I don’t need a car—I just need a city built on human scale.

The same way I don’t need a retirement fantasy—I just need a comfortable life I can sustain.

Systems that work feel obvious once you’re in them. Systems that don’t require constant explanation.

We also do hot Pilates at the same studio—same heat, same standardized sequence, just a different set of movements. The same logic applies: structure, repetition, and heat do more than variety ever has for me.

---

The Feeling You Can’t Fake

Every class ends the same way it begins: with the heat pushing against your limits.

You stand there drenched, waiting for the instructor to call the final breathing exercise. Your heart is thumping. Your vision is wobbling. Your voice feels weak when you finally speak again—thin, almost ghosted by the effort.

But you don’t feel tired.

You feel drained, wrung out, emptied in a way that somehow makes you feel stronger.

It’s a strange mix: physically spent but not wiped out, shaky but solid, rattled but fully alive. Walking out of the studio always feels like stepping back into the world with clearer edges. You’re exhausted, but you’ve also accomplished something—made it through another class.

And every time, I hope I can keep doing this forever. Not because it gets easier, but because it doesn’t.

Bikram is not fun.

It’s not chill.

It’s not a hobby.

It is a system.

And that’s why it works.