By Matt Kite
Tacoma Weekly

Hot yoga. Just two words. But when I hear them now, having finally sat in on my first session, a series of images stretches my mind. I see a puddle of my own sweat. I see fans whirring overhead. I see a roomful of quietly focused people making pleasing shapes with their bodies.

How do they do that?

As someone who has been running competitively for the last thirty years, I have a strong heart, a bottomless well of endurance and a work ethic that would make any 19th-century Protestant proud. I also have hamstrings so tight I’m convinced someday they’re just going to snap, like slingshots that have been stretched to the limit, and hurl me through the nearest window.

Thus the thought, which occurred to me recently: I should try yoga. Being an extremist, I had to up the ante. How about hot yoga?

Enter Tacoma’s Expand Yoga, which just moved to a new location on 6^th and Proctor. They opened the new digs on March 2nd, which explains the ongoing construction, but most of the facility is in place, from the unisex locker room to the spacious studio. The latter features handsome hardwood floors and the ubiquitous scent of aromatic cedar. And heat. Plenty of heat.

For “Original Hot,” the yoga class I attended last Friday, the temperature was cranked to a toasty 105 degrees Fahrenheit, the door to the outside hallway was closed and yoga mats were placed in front of a long row of mirrors. Stretching on those mats were a variety of people, most of them young, female and so much more flexible than me.

Liz Houck, our confident-yet-serene instructor, led us through an hour’s worth of postures, 26 in all. We started and finished with breathing. In between, we contorted our bodies every which way.

“My massage therapist has been trying to get me to come for about a year,” 48-year-old Angela Wales Rockett, a local artist and art teacher, said afterward, “and I’ve been very resistant.”

Angela’s biggest fear was the heat. She’s prone to feeling queasy in extreme temperatures, but much to her relief, she lasted the full hour and never once lost her cool—or her lunch. Better still, her right shoulder, hobbled for some time now with thoracic outlet syndrome, an overuse injury, held up fine.

“The hardest part was not knowing what we’re doing,” she said.

At least Angela had practiced yoga before. I was 100% green—and had the self-conscious grin to go with my newbie status. But like Angela, I survived the heat and the steady succession of maneuvers. While Liz took us through each exercise, I watched everyone around me. I was relieved to see some people take postures only partway. For some of us, as Liz reminded me afterward, completing just half of a yoga movement is giving everything we can give.

I was all too well aware of my tight hams, but I also felt gentle tugs in my shoulders, my lower back, my quads, my groin—you name it. If it could be stretched, I stretched it. I also unleashed a torrent of middle-aged flop sweat that drenched my mat and eventually spilled out onto the floor. When I reached for my towel, Liz recommended I just let the sweat drip off of me. “It will cool you off naturally,” she said.

I was ready to fetch a mop afterward, but Liz assured me that everyone sweats during hot yoga—and no one feels bad about it. Whew. Frankly, though, it would have been hard to feel bad about anything. I walked home from my first hot yoga session feeling light and relaxed, like a happy jumble of noodles. I haven’t felt that loose in, well, I can’t remember. Far from feeling sore or drained, I felt buoyant.

If you’re chronically uncomfortable or tight or just want to try something new, I have a recommendation for you. You’ll sweat. You’ll bend your body in ways that seem downright preposterous. But you’ll enjoy the process. Expansion is good for you.