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51 reviews for:
Hell-Bent: Obsession, Pain and the Search for Something Like Transcendence in Bikram Yoga
Benjamin Lorr
3.89 AVERAGE
51 reviews for:
Hell-Bent: Obsession, Pain and the Search for Something Like Transcendence in Bikram Yoga
Benjamin Lorr
3.89 AVERAGE
Really surprised how much I liked this book. Good perspective on yoga.
dark
informative
medium-paced
Why 5-stars? For me the answer is easy. I was a hardcore Bikram yoga for many years. Particularly during the 2000-2006 stretch. For many years, I had a daily practice. This made the book really come alive for me. His descriptions of the 90-minutes of hot and humid yoga really hit the nail on the head. I was curious about what it was like at the upper limits of competitive and dedicated practice, and this book revealed that for me. It was funny and the author is a very good writer. The book also exposes Bikram as someone who, while helping countless yogis by popularizing his 26-posture sequence (in extreme heat), is also severely narcissistic and morally broken. If you are or have been a Bikram yogi you will love this book.
As a regular Bikram yoga practitioner, but not someone who has ever gone really "gung-hu" besides keeping up my bi-weekly practice and doing a 60-day challenge, I was very interested to read Lorr's account of the inside-world of the bikram elite, those who participate in competitions and go to teaching training. Lorr must have natural yoga talent to have so quickly progressed from yoga novice to national competitor. I thought that the strongest parts of the book were the sections where Lorr psychoanalyzed Bikram's charismatic narcissicism and described the dirty underbelly of competitions and especially teacher training. His experiences make me happy to remain on the sidelines of this rather cultish phenomenon. Hot yoga can have tremendous health benefits, but like anything, too much is a bad thing. I'm still not sure exactly what wallwalking is, but I'm pretty sure I want to avoid it. Lorr is a talented yogi and writer and all bikram yogi(ni)s will enjoy this book.
This book really articulated a lot of my contradictory feelings about yoga. I go in waves of practicing and not and have spent lots of time turned off by yoga communities. Also this book confirmed a lot of what you hear about Bikram the man. Probably wouldn't read unless you were interested in yoga already, and only part of it is concerned with the competitions themselves, but that was fine with me.
Also a neat discussion at the end suggesting a lot of benefits may be from a placebo effect. You see side effects so you assume the other good things are happening as well. Maybe, maybe not.
Also a neat discussion at the end suggesting a lot of benefits may be from a placebo effect. You see side effects so you assume the other good things are happening as well. Maybe, maybe not.
Listened on audiobook and highly recommend for anyone interested in yoga and history of Bikram-style yoga in particular. Fascinating in-depth first-hand account.
This was a mostly entertaining read but had some problematic bits ie the way he describes people was pretty harsh.
Writer Benjamin Lorr tries to give us an insight into Bikram as a man, Bikram yoga as a whole, and the extreme side of things in this book. At times, I'm not sure Lorr was sure himself about what he thought and he actually says as much in the acknowledgements. The tone is inconsistent and I think it could have benefitted from a bit of time and editing to keep the narrative from going off-track (which it does a lot).
It was on sale on Kindle and, to be frank, I would not recommend it at full price. It could have been something more but I'm not sure what and Lorr wasn't either.
It was on sale on Kindle and, to be frank, I would not recommend it at full price. It could have been something more but I'm not sure what and Lorr wasn't either.
I read this book because both of my sisters are avid Bikram practitioners and the author is a childhood friend of my husband's. As someone who easily contracts multi-day migraines following intense exercise in heat, I have never been tempted to try Bikram. However, I did find several points made in this book to be quite interesting and insightful. (You may not want to read on if you plan to read the book. I wouldn't exactly call these spoilers, but they may ruin some key "aha" moments.)
One insight was that humans can reach a new level of physiologic potential when exerting themselves in extremely hot environments, similar to exercising at high altitude. I believe the exact threshold was 10 days of exercise under these conditions would cause a change. These led me to wonder whether trying Bikram for 10 consecutive days would increase my threshold for exercise in heat. Or perhaps the alternative would be that I'd have a migraine for about a year. Tempting, but not that tempting. The second point I found quite interesting was the comparison between benefits of Bikram to the benefits people experienced from placebos taken in SSRI trials. The placebos that caused the same side effects as SSRI's (nausea, decreased sex drive) were equally as effective at reducing depression as SSRI's. However, the placebos that caused no side effects were ineffective at reducing depression. The point being that perhaps the side effects of the intense heat of Bikram (nausea, dizziness, hallucination) cause a very strong placebo effect, which is in part why it's so wildly popular. Fascinating the we need to feel so bad (at least initially) to feel good.
One insight was that humans can reach a new level of physiologic potential when exerting themselves in extremely hot environments, similar to exercising at high altitude. I believe the exact threshold was 10 days of exercise under these conditions would cause a change. These led me to wonder whether trying Bikram for 10 consecutive days would increase my threshold for exercise in heat. Or perhaps the alternative would be that I'd have a migraine for about a year. Tempting, but not that tempting. The second point I found quite interesting was the comparison between benefits of Bikram to the benefits people experienced from placebos taken in SSRI trials. The placebos that caused the same side effects as SSRI's (nausea, decreased sex drive) were equally as effective at reducing depression as SSRI's. However, the placebos that caused no side effects were ineffective at reducing depression. The point being that perhaps the side effects of the intense heat of Bikram (nausea, dizziness, hallucination) cause a very strong placebo effect, which is in part why it's so wildly popular. Fascinating the we need to feel so bad (at least initially) to feel good.
As a near-daily practitioner of yoga myself, who is very familiar with this particular sequence of poses, and had just so happened to have already seen a documentary about the insanity that is Bikram, I am happy to report that I was set up for a perfect 5-star experience reading this book. The film is not too long and I highly recommend watching it if you have Netflix (Bikram: Yogi, Guru, Predator), or at least doing some background research of your own and seeing basic pictures on Google of what a real hot yoga class with him looks like before diving into this book. It's. Crazy.
Normally I despise when nonfiction books about a specific educational topic turn into the style of a memoir, but it works incredibly well when Lorr does it (I loved his other book, too). I loved reading about his experiences in back-bending club (yikes) and eventually as a student of Bikram (also yikes). I loved listening to this audiobook in the car on my way to and from yoga. It got me strangely excited about my practice, even though the stuff covered in this book is mostly straight up brutal and not at all what yoga should be... that's why it was so entertaining.
Normally I despise when nonfiction books about a specific educational topic turn into the style of a memoir, but it works incredibly well when Lorr does it (I loved his other book, too). I loved reading about his experiences in back-bending club (yikes) and eventually as a student of Bikram (also yikes). I loved listening to this audiobook in the car on my way to and from yoga. It got me strangely excited about my practice, even though the stuff covered in this book is mostly straight up brutal and not at all what yoga should be... that's why it was so entertaining.