MAMA PRESENTS… Jason Schwartz with LAUREL WHITE. 2002 Laurel had a Hot studio leading classes and workshops on BIKRAM YOGA.
Summary & Transcript
aloha this is jason schwartz welcome to another mama presents today we have a beautiful guest this is laurel white and as you can tell you’re actually in position laurel is a yogi a yogini laurel locally here runs a couple of bikram yoga studios
Summary
This video features an in-depth discussion and demonstration of Bikram Yoga with Laurel White, a local yogini and operator of Bikram Yoga studios on Maui. Hosted by Jason Schwartz, the conversation explores the origins, philosophy, and benefits of Bikram Yoga, a specific form of Hatha Yoga developed by Bikram Choudhury to address common ailments experienced by Westerners due to lifestyle factors such as poor diet, stress, and sedentary habits. Laurel explains how Bikram Yoga emphasizes a precise sequence of 26 poses performed in a heated room set to approximately body temperature, which facilitates deeper stretching, detoxification, and healing.
Laurel shares her personal journey with Bikram Yoga, noting the rapid improvements she experienced in energy levels, flexibility, posture, and even weight loss within just a week of consistent practice. The video also highlights the scientific and therapeutic rationale behind the practice, including how heat aids muscle flexibility and toxin elimination, and how the sequence is designed to target every major muscle group and joint systematically.
The latter half of the video provides a detailed walkthrough of some key Bikram Yoga poses, including their physical benefits and the importance of breath control as a distinctive aspect of yoga compared to mere stretching. Laurel emphasizes the importance of proper sequencing and warming up before deeper stretches, as well as the restorative floor series that target the digestive system, spine, and endocrine glands.
The discussion concludes with a focus on the accessibility and inclusiveness of Bikram Yoga, encouraging viewers that it is never too late or too difficult to start. Laurel also mentions the growing popularity of Bikram Yoga worldwide and locally on Maui, the availability of certified teachers, and how interested individuals can connect with their studios.
Highlights
- [04:00] Introduction to Bikram Yoga: A unique form of Hatha Yoga designed specifically for Western lifestyles.
- [09:00] Importance of Heat: Practicing yoga in a heated room mimics internal body temperature, allowing deeper muscular flexibility and detoxification.
- [12:20] Rapid Benefits: Within seven days, practitioners can experience increased energy, improved sleep, and inches lost around the waist.
- [14:30] ️ Breath Control: Conscious breathing differentiates yoga from simple stretching and expands lung capacity.
- [17:00] Pose Demonstrations: Key standing poses warm up major muscle groups and joints to prepare for deeper stretches.
- [24:00] Floor Series: Targeting digestion, spinal health, and endocrine function to enhance overall wellness.
- [33:00] ⏳ Time Efficiency: Despite seeming time-consuming, regular yoga practice makes life feel more efficient by improving physical and mental function.
Key Insights
- [04:08] ♀️ Bikram Yoga’s Origin and Purpose: Bikram Choudhury created a streamlined, 26-pose sequence tailored to address common Western health issues stemming from lifestyle factors like prolonged sitting, stress, and poor diet. This specificity makes Bikram Yoga uniquely effective at healing and balancing the body-mind-spirit connection. The collaboration between Bikram and both Eastern gurus and Western medical doctors lends scientific and traditional credence to the practice.
- [09:42] Therapeutic Role of Heat: The heated environment (around 98.6°F or 37°C) plays a crucial role by warming muscles and connective tissues, reducing injury risk, and enabling practitioners to stretch beyond their usual limits. The heat also enhances sweating, which aids in flushing toxins and revitalizes the body, creating a sensation akin to being “back in the womb” where there are no physical limitations.
- [12:20] ⚡ Rapid Physical and Mental Benefits: Laurel’s experience highlights that consistent Bikram Yoga practice can yield noticeable results very quickly—improved energy, reduced need for sleep, waistline reduction, and better posture. This suggests the practice not only strengthens muscles but also optimizes bodily systems such as metabolism and nervous system regulation.
- [14:52] ️ Breathing as a Core Element: Conscious, controlled breathing expands lung capacity and oxygenates muscles more effectively than normal breathing. Bikram Yoga’s specific breathing techniques support detoxification and deeper engagement in each pose, distinguishing it from mere physical exercise or stretching.
- [19:00] Sequencing and Pose Progression: The carefully designed sequence starts with large muscle groups and major joints, gradually progressing to more challenging poses. This ensures the body is properly warmed up and balanced, maximizing benefits and minimizing injury. The poses also integrate strengthening and flexibility, which is essential for holistic physical health.
- [24:00] Holistic Health Focus — Digestion and Endocrine System: The floor series targets internal systems such as the digestive tract and endocrine glands, which are often neglected in other exercise programs. This internal focus helps regulate metabolism, hormone balance, and organ health, contributing to greater overall wellness beyond mere muscle conditioning.
- [32:31] ⏳ Yoga as a Time Multiplier: Contrary to the belief that yoga takes time away from a busy schedule, regular practice increases efficiency by improving bodily function, mental clarity, and energy levels. This concept reframes yoga not as a luxury but as a foundational health practice that enhances productivity and quality of life.
Additional Observations
- The interview underscores the importance of certification and proper training in Bikram Yoga to maintain the integrity of the system and ensure safety.
- The community aspect of yoga and the welcoming environment of the Maui studios contribute to sustained participation and motivation among practitioners.
- The testimonial style of the video, with personal anecdotes from Laurel and Jason, reinforces the accessibility and transformative potential of Bikram Yoga for people of all ages and fitness levels.
- The integration of yoga with athletic training, particularly for windsurfers and other athletes on Maui, emphasizes its value in injury prevention, recovery, and performance enhancement.
Overall, this video serves as both an educational resource and an inspiring invitation to incorporate Bikram Yoga into daily life for physical, mental, and spiritual rejuvenation.
Transcript
03:28
bikram yoga yoga in general i know of and yoga is um many people know about and bigram is kind of its own slant why don’t you start by uh sharing with our audience these are the people here of maui you see them oh maui a little about yoga and how bikram is different and who is bikram what is bigrum glad too thank you jason you’re welcome bikram yoga is a form of hatha yoga which is the physical form of yoga that combines the body the mind the spirit and using physical movements and breath to heal those parts of us the
04:08
body the mind the soul the emotional body the mental body the physical body bikram chaudhary is from calcutta india came to america and looked at us westerners and said hmm of all the thousands or hundreds of poses that have been around for thousands of years originating in india and china he said we need 26 poses in a very specific sequence that would heal most of what ails most westerners due to our cultural lifestyles which is our eating habits our way we drive and stress and walk or sit a lot and so forth
04:45
and that in the last 30 years has healed most of what ails most of us most of the time so that’s what how he had a dream and a vision of coming and healing as many people as possible and that’s where it came from and he studied uh and worked this out with western and eastern medical doctors as well as his guru his teacher bishnu ghosh who is the brother of paramahansa yogananda the founder of the self-realization fellowship now many of you heard that and you who already know what yoga is said oh
05:18
that’s what it is but i know that many of the people in our audience see the word yoga and really don’t know what yoga is so if you can help me yoga does that have a meaning by itself means movement it’s an exercise program has a huge meaning literally it means sun and moon or ha tha is the version that we’re talking about of yoga yoga has many limbs historically we could talk about it for hours but basically we’re talking about hatha yoga there are other forms of yoga bhakti yoga yana yoga okay
05:56
raja yoga what i’m meaning is to me yoga is a form of exercise of poses that um when you do them regularly keep you more fit and limber and in touch with things even that aren’t physical i found you know i was never really one to explore yoga and i had a friend say to me hey come with me i want to introduce to this woman she’s going to introduce you to bikram i thought bikram what that was a funny word and then i found that bikram was actually a person so biking chadbury did this 30 years ago came to america 30 years
06:39
ago shirley maclaine found him and asked and said i’ve got a lot of stressed out friends and we really need the stuff she found him in india and asked him actually i knew that shirley maclaine had all kinds of stressed out friends that you guys know quincy jones herb albert all kinds of really celebs and they were getting stressed out and so they hired this yoga teacher who employed his own slant on yoga and the practices of hatha yoga which is part of a larger family of yoga i mean um in the larger definition but um and so
07:20
now bikram is doing this and then you got trained by bikram actually by bikram uh he we’re certified anybody that’s teaching bikram yoga should be certified by him he’s the only one who teaches i see two times a year in los angeles in his headquarters wow and he started training teachers in 95 because people were starting to go out and just start teaching it the way they thought it should be taught so that’s when he decided okay it’s time for some training and i was in the second training in 95.
07:53
i then took it to australia introduced it to the australians at first they said what is this and they still said what is yoga so i was demystifying what yoga is as far as the hatha yoga goes and now i gotta get 80 people in a class there and then i moved here a couple years ago introduced it here and so we started in paella and now i’m opening november 2nd in lahaina people are asking for it so by the time you see this there’ll be a paella studio and a lahaina studio you know bikram yoga as i’ve experienced
08:29
it was really wonderful you know i’ve been busy with these political interviews for a while and so i’ve been off the trail of doing yoga regularly which i know i should be and i’ve actually felt a difference i was doing it probably two or three months maybe when i stopped and i noticed i physically feel the difference but also people have noticed that my po my posture really is not quite what it was there were lots of benefits from the yoga that i really enjoyed and what i thought was really
09:06
intriguing was we got into a room that’s warm that the room is sort of pre-heated for us because why is that what’s that about very good question and a very good answer for that it’s a medical reason as well is just what we need for our bodies our body temperature on the inside is 98.6 so the idea is that we create that same environment on the outside of the body so that there are less limitations it’s like being back in the womb there’s no limitations hopefully and with the sequencing of the 26 poses
09:42
times two each we move everything in the body from head to toe skin to bone therefore moving parts and pieces of the body that don’t necessarily get moved every day there’s stagnant static parts that don’t get as much oxygen as they need so therefore those parts of the body are actually dying and degenerating slower or faster than the parts that we’re getting that you normally would move every day so therefore we are moving every single inch of the body and we need the heat to warm us up it’s kind of hard to
10:10
stretch in the middle of the polar ice cap i found it just so refreshing by the end of class i was bathed and looked to be again i actually bathed in my own sweat but in just almost no time at all i found that my whole body cleansed in just a handful of days it seems like all the toxins in me were just out of me and when i was maintaining doing it i really i got up in the morning i was feeling fresher and i really never would have thought that exercising and feeling like i’m exercising so hard could give me more
10:47
energy than less energy it was really a wonderful thing i mean imagine that uh you know when you go and run and track or do something else it’s different but i guess there’s something really said that uh bikram over the years i don’t know how quickly he developed a final 26 but these poses really are sequenced i found that when i started if i would try to do a pose out of sequence it was a challenge but when i did them in sequence i was able to do things i could not believe i mean i
11:18
was able to move in great with greater mobility than i really ever experienced probably in my whole lifetime the sequence is absolutely really what makes it bikram yoga with the heat that is what differentiates it i mean i i really enjoy being in your class because you you pace it i mean it was uh really good like i think it’s an hour and a half i think i recall it was what a wonderful hour and a half you know as i’m sitting here i’m thinking well you know this is a show about yoga we can talk for a long time we should
11:52
probably do some poses and any other things that we probably want to say while we’re sitting that you can think of offhand things that you’d like to be sure to share with the audience the one story that i tell everyone so that they really understand what it is and what it can do for them is what happened to me when i first tried it um i ran into an old friend she didn’t have time to chat with me because she was on her way to a bikram yoga class she said come along so i did and i just felt so incredible like i
12:20
hadn’t felt in years after that one class i decided the scientist in me likes to kind of prove things sometimes and test theories i went back every day for seven days and at the end of that seven days i had lost an inch in my waist a whole inch and that’s the first thing that happens is you lose inches you don’t necessarily lose lose pounds because you’re gaining muscle but you’re losing fat so it voids each other out and i i was sleeping two hours less at night i didn’t need as much sleep everything
12:49
was working better and this is in seven days also um i was i had twice as much energy at the end of that one week and so that was it for me i bought the book and went to class as often as possible and we have a it’s real easy to find that if you do it consistently and consecutively and that’s when you see the results you say bought the book i mean so there’s a there’s a big beginning yoga book yeah i see it’s really great bedside reading it’s hilarious sort of like anything else
13:17
you know bikram maybe reading it is of some value i i can’t imagine that yoga is any more beneficial i mean i can’t imagine that the way to learn yoga is through a book i think it’s the physical classes and uh the movements would you be so kind maybe to share with our audience some of the poses that you think might be of value uh just sort of give them a sort of a taste is that all right love to okay you guys want that let’s do that let’s go let’s go do that right now all right welcome to bikram’s beginning
13:53
yoga class very important thing to start any yoga or stretching with is the breathing the difference between stretching and yoga is conscious breathing bikram has a very specific breathing technique that is created for us who may be not using all of our lung space it helps to expand the ribcage looks like this ah may look quite funny but it really works these are sweat popping off my forehead already sends the heat to the muscles next it warms up for artichondritis and a half moon pose opening up from your heels to your
14:52
fingertips on the left side stretching everything on the whole left side so we open up large parts of the body first moving large muscles first very important scientifically to open up and warm up the body that way and of course if you’re feeling a little cool that’s why the warm room helps you go into this deeper and go past your current point of flexibility in every pose by the end of class you’re a new you let me do the back bend after this one of course everybody does that at their
15:39
own pace and then hands to feet pose padastasana a head to toe stretch so we’re warming up very important the large parts of the body first so very big part of bikram yoga is the strengthening most westerners not nearly as strong as we could be so there’s a three-part pose here using the quadriceps largest muscles of the body gets the cardio working getting a blast to the heart muscle then you come up onto the toes sculpting beautiful leg muscles holding these for 10 seconds of course the more you do it every day
16:35
very good at it then the third part of that it’s almost as good as jogging down the street without getting those shin splints so we hold these a little bit longer than what i’m doing now working on the major 12 major joints of the body with eagle pose flushes the toxins out of the joints allowing the fresh nutrients to come into the joints healing that’s the beginning sequence for the major warm-up for the next two postures that are a minute long opening up the whole back side from head
17:44
to toe standing head to knee i’m doing this fast you’ll be doing it slowly of course it takes a lot of time to get to this place so wherever anybody is at you’re getting 110 of your own benefits i have to work harder at it to get my benefits that was standing hand to knee opens up the whole back side next one standing by pulling opens up the whole front side of course again wherever you’re at it’s perfect so those are held for a whole minute it takes a while for the body to really
19:02
understand what you’re asking of it and then it moves into that place of course using the breath next one’s only a 10 second pose balancing stick absolutely parallel to the floor this one gives you the benefits of running a mile down the street and back standing on one leg especially for the heart muscle and you do not want to do these out of sequence or not warmed up next one moves into separate leg stretching i’m going to show you this one from the side it’s eventually going to get a 180 degree turn
19:58
out the coccyx the tailbone forehead is going to touch the floor then it moves into triangle then i’ll face forward we do a different version of triangle and big crumb it’s a little harder because we need it so we start with in warrior pose then we move into our version that triangle triknasana where we don’t rest our hand on the floor so you’re actually opening resting or working the arms up and down in opposite directions twisting in the spine while strengthening this one works every single muscle
20:48
in the body in this version strength of body strength of mind last two standing poses this one is a very therapeutic pose as well for the endocrine system that means the hormones you smile more if you get them squeeze the organs more flushing toxins last of the standing series tree posts don’t forget i’m doing this quickly practice it for 10 years practicing every day the second set of tree pose is something called toe stand and it takes it a step further and strengthening the feet the ankles
22:14
things that support us every day um and the sweat you see on my face is absolutely normal and that means we’re detoxifying now the floor series we actually get a shavasana what we call corpse pose can you still see me it’s a really important time to allow the benefits to take place all that hard work we’ve just done allowing the body to assimilate so we rest for a couple minutes just pretending that we did going into the next one now we’re working into the real yoga that was warm up in that standing series
23:29
we’re going to pull and work on the digestive system strengthening tightening the muscles in the arms we’re breathing into the belly massaging the ascending colon so we don’t leave anything out in this yoga that’s the digestive system that we’re really working on here with the large hip joint getting a good compression getting lots of blood flow and oxygen then we do both legs so that we can get to the transverse colon as well and very much opening up the lower back transverse colon goes across the top of
24:05
the belly the diaphragm then we do sit ups for the belly abdominal region in between each and every one of the floor postures [Music] using the breath like that helps you to go a little deeper now for the cobra series and it took all of that before now to warm up the body properly to truly get into this and into the places where we don’t normally go so we can go past our current point of flexibility so this is for the lower back we hold that a little bit longer then we rest in between the poses to make sure that we truly
24:58
assimilate the benefits of this very important part of the sequence the next one is the locust we put our arms right under because we can with this sequencing and the heat very good for our carpal tunnel syndrome elbow problems tennis elbow and some people for this next one can actually touch their head with their toes for some of us we do what we can then we rest in between next one is purnasalabasana full locust now we’re working the mid spinal muscles the last one was for the upper spine
26:13
reversing the blood flow out of the legs and all the last three poses warmed us up for the next one to get truly into dhanurasana bow pose that one is what i call the counter pose to our western civilization and culture and what it does to our bodies then we have a few more stretching out the lower spine coming forward into fixed firm pose if you have funky knees in this one this is really great for the lower limbs and for the knees which a lot of people have problems with especially our athletic friends
27:21
we’re continually working on opening up the vertebra this one is really good for the psoas muscle it tends to close down the pelvis the pelvic region if you sit in chairs a lot i need to stretch it open again and again and again next one is kind of the yin and yang effect artichomasida again a very therapeutic pose that one blasts the endocrine system and it can glands with oxygen and blood and then we move into camel pose again these last two poses last 23 four poses have prepared us for these
28:19
two that are absolutely bringing the balance back into our lives from what our western culture does to our bodies and our minds so you never want to do this one cold you always go deeper in this one wherever you’re at it’s perfect opening up the whole front side of the body we breathe deeper open the organs work better then the next one again yin and yang the body really likes to go that way the yin and the um rabbit pose that’s in gasoline that one is the most incredible for opening the lower spine lumbar
29:17
it’s the only way in the world after these postures and the sequence with this heat to open up in the most tightest part of our spine next few poses then we’re finished that was a fast yoga class separate leg stretching you cannot stretch the backs of the legs enough everything we do even walking shortens them we’re bringing the heel up we’re also getting the compression again in the thyroid 99 of all women have a thyroid dysfunction whether it’s one percent or 90 percent and working on that thyroid
29:56
will absolutely reverse that and how we work on that and it’s very simple in hatha yoga is stretching it opens it up squeezing it that’s it that’s the simplicity of the yoga the blood flow how the oxygen flows and in and out of every part of the body this is the last part of the hands to feed pose at the end this is all about stretching and lengthening getting the forehead to the toes not just to the knees lengthening in the spine and the very last one is our spinal twist massaging the spine the nervous system
30:51
and we actually only do this one once all the rest we do twice because it’s a pretty powerful pose and every time we breathe as we hold it it goes deeper and then we do a final breathing which is quite important to release some toxins gastric acid from the belly and it looks like this we do a whole lot more of that i must think wow i really uh when seeing you doing the poses again i’m ready to run back into to come to class again i really like class and i really have appreciated that you’ve staggered the
31:56
class times you know i’m busy doing quote other work so i really like the fact that you have early times as well as later times so busy person like me can get it into my schedule the funny thing about a busy person we’re all busy so we think we don’t have time to take 90 minutes out for a yoga class stings said five years ago and he was a quoted an article in yoga journal a yoga teacher approached him and said i know i can create more time in your life if you take time out and do two hours of yoga with me every day at
32:31
the end of the article he said he never would have believed it six months later he had more time in his day because what happens is you’re cleaning up and working every system in the body becoming more synergistically efficient therefore your movements and outside your body becomes more efficient as well so there it feels like you have more time more clear-headed and things just move a little more more effortlessly and smoother well you know i think like i said i i’m really glad you have a
33:00
place in lahaina now because sometimes coming to pahia is a long haul different times of day so i like the fact that we got two choices you’ve been doing this i really know that you know others that have come to class all have really appreciated i’ve seen changes i mean i’ve lost weight like you say i’ve lost weight i’ve toned up my attitude’s better and now after all this other stuff it’s amazing i crave coming back to yoga class when i wasn’t coming my whole day was
33:34
like missing something i work with a lot of professional athletes because i was one with windsurfing yeah and i didn’t know about you back then and then when i quit and i found the yoga but i also needed it even more then because of the injuries and things and getting older my thyroid was not working i was on thyroid medicine i got off the thyroid muscle completely and i replaced it with the yoga and i actually feel like i do did in my 20s now that i’m in my mid-40s by incorporating this yoga into my life for
34:06
the last 10 years and now the professional windsurfers that mostly train here on maui and in wood river go to both bikram yoga studios in both places this part of their training i sponsor the women especially here gives them the edge well you know you know i don’t know what you were like at 20 but i know that in your 40s you’re really looking good i’m sure that you’re a model for a lot of ladies out there and gentlemen also who really would like to feel younger as they’re growing into the early middle age you
34:40
know we’re living longer and longer and it sure makes sense to me that if we take care of the package that uh as our health goes along being able to move and having more energy can’t be beaten well i don’t know how old peter jennings is he just got he just taped an episode of nightline doing a bikram yoga class with vikram in l.a with the 300 students that they normally have boy when you see the bikram studio there it’s this huge room with a massive people you’ve got a lot of people here
35:16
also but i mean i guess it’s growing growing we’re growing now he’s training 300 teachers at the moment he trains 300 teachers at a time twice a year wow they graduate on the 15th of next month so i’ve got a student in the training that’s coming back we’ve had two that showed up from the last training that are local maui people just growing like crazy it’s the fastest growing yoga hatha yoga in the world sort of like i want to say make big growth you know i saw this the article when i
35:46
was in los angeles i went to los angeles and that was the weekend the la times featured a bikram article i thought that was interesting i was almost going to go through the training but not yet i’m appreciating coming to your classes i really i really have appreciated you know that’s probably one of the great benefits of doing these tv shows i get to enjoy different things and the class with you really has i want to say saved my life really it’s been helping me you know i go to the gym and all that
36:19
but yoga really is a part of my life that really can’t be replaced by some of these other things and i’m really thankful to beaker man to you laurel for uh bringing this to me and all you guys is there an easy way for people to get in touch with you or how do they find more information so they might somehow come to one of the classes or a series of classes the website has all the details for both studios the phone numbers and the addresses and the schedule the website address is all those w’s b
36:52
chrome yoga maui with the little hyphens in between the words dot com so it’s bikram dash yoga dash maui.com nice short and simple you guys see that bikram b i k r a m yoga dash maui.com that’s pretty easy they don’t have a computer because i know that some of them don’t right some of you some of you don’t have a tv i always wonder how you see these shows without tv but is there a good phone number the phone number for the schedule and addresses for both locations is eight seven six zero zero five two
37:32
okay eight seven six zero zero five two in paella when you come into paella you’re gonna see the studio i’m sure that you say come on by you want to start at the beginning of class because once classes start it’s like the movies where you can’t go in in the middle you really want to be in the sequence from the beginning all the way through i’m sure when you come and enjoy the class you’ll appreciate it is an experience it’s sort of uh like i say it is a glorious experience i never
38:00
thought that i’d get more energy from knocking myself out but um i really have appreciated thank you for joining me here thank you it’s really been a pleasure thank you maui laura white bikram yoga maui just want to say one thing that become always says it’s never too late you’re never too old never too sick never to anything to start yoga to put it into your life words of wisdom thank you aloha
