Monique Tamminga

Times Reporter

A year of hot yoga, can it be done? Ask Natasha Sara who has done hot yoga every day for 235 days straight and counting.

Sara had done other kinds of yoga in her life, but last November a friend asked her to come try a different kind at Bikram Yoga in Walnut Grove, where difficult poses are done in a room heated to 110 degrees.

“I paid for two weeks unlimited on Nov. 2, 2008” she said. She had heard others talk about the 30-day challenge and secretly she decided to give it a try.

“I didn’t tell anyone either when I decided to do the 60 day challenge,” said Sara. Then she bought a year’s membership and she decided to go everyday.

“I’m calling it “my year of yoga,’” Sara said. Sara is a midwife who works on baby time, which can mean 14 hour days, and odd hours. For the few days she’s had to miss, she makes them up by doing two sessions in a day.

The classes are one and a half hours each but she’s managed to make time for them.

Like so many who try hot yoga, she too felt nauseated at the start and couldn’t even hold her toes and heels together.

“Now I don’t even feel like it’s hot in the room,” she said.

Sara, 36, has a history of knee problems and poses put a lot of weight on a person’s knees. But after around 100 days of yoga, she found her knees feeling better and better.

The weight, surprisingly didn’t just sweat right off right away, she said.

“For the first three months I didn’t really lose any weight, which was frustrating,” she said. “But then the weight just started falling off after that.”

She lost 30 pounds and has kept it off.

She hasn’t lost any new weight, but measured herself at 180 days and then at 200 and noticed nine centimetres had come off her waist.

“I’m keeping a journal of the things that are happening while I do this challenge,” she said.

“It’s amazing because I have less than 150 days left of the 365 days.”

While Bikram yoga is supposed to better a person’s emotional state, detoxifying not just the body but the mind too, Sara admits she’s not feeling that.

“I’m generally a calm person anyways which is good given the work I’m in,” she said. “But, I still get angry at things, I’m human.”

She doesn’t know yet what it will be like to not do yoga every day once her one year challenge is up because she is too busy focusing on finishing the 365 days.

The body will not shut down or relapse, said certified Bikram yoga instructor Candice Lim, who owns the Walnut Grove Bikram studio.

Doing yoga every day is not only safe but beneficial for the body and highly recommended for beginners, she said.

“Daily practice will give you balance, flexibility, and strength not just physically, but also emotionally and mentally. First stage is basically a readjustment of the entire body’s cells, muscles, bones, and organs,” she said.

“Second stage, readjusts the entire emotional body while simultaneously regenerating and rebuilding every single cell in the body. There is also the beginning of some serious realignment of the spine and the entire central nervous system.

Third stage, your body shape seems to suddenly change at an exponential rate, though you may not notice, said yoga instructor Candice Lim. These are the days when you start to hear all the “Wow, you look great! What are you doing?” comments. Next stage, you look and feel absolutely amazing, like a brand new human being, she said.

Sara is the first member to take on a one year challenge and it’s very exciting to see her stick with it, said Lim.

Sara doesn’t know why she’s been able to keep up such a challenge.

She’s not someone who goes into everything with such gusto.

“I cycled across Canada when I was 18, so I guess it’s in me to take on a challenge,” she said.