Before hot yoga, my relationship with exercise was pretty underwhelming. I ran track — hated it, was bad at it, and only did it to be social. I lifted weights, which was fun but casual and directionless. Nothing ever clicked.
The first time I tried a Bikram yoga class it was genuinely revolutionary — and I didn't see it coming at all. My boss invited me and I only said yes to build a relationship with him. I had no idea what I was walking into.
The room was oppressively hot. For all 90 minutes I wanted to leave. My body couldn't do half the 26 postures. I was sweating more than I ever had in my life and I was struggling just to stay in the room. But I stayed and I gave it everything I had the entire time.
Why? I've thought about this a lot. If someone had put me in that same 105-degree room alone with a YouTube video, I would have been out in five minutes. Even if you paid me $100 to finish it I probably would have walked. So what actually kept me there?
It was the instructor and the other students. We were in the foxhole together so to speak. Every experienced person in that room could tell I was struggling — but they didn't lower their standards because of it. They stayed strong. They showed me without saying a word that what was being asked of us was completely possible. You just have to want it. Watching the person next to me hold triangle pose for the full minute while I was fighting to breathe didn't make me feel defeated — it made me want to get there.
The instructor was something else entirely. Not the image you'd picture for a yoga teacher. But he commanded the room completely. He was locked in — fully aware of every person, every posture, every moment someone was about to give up before they had to. There's 10 seconds left. You can do anything for 10 seconds. Hold it. That extra ten seconds sounds small. But those moments add up. They're how you break through to a new level — physically and mentally. You hold something once that you didn't think you could, and now you know you can do it again. That's how you get better.
It all comes down to accountability. A strong room and a present instructor pull you toward a standard you wouldn't reach on your own. What you put in comes back multiplied when everyone around you is operating the same way.
I've since had this same experience in a lot of different studios — cycling, strength training, Pilates, all kinds. The modality doesn't matter. What matters is the quality of the room.
That first Bikram class changed what I thought I was capable of. And it compelled me to help enable as many others as possible to find the same.
That's what Felicia and I have spent the last several months building. We've been doing boots-on-the-ground research — attending dozens of studios across New York, across disciplines, evaluating every one of them. Instructor quality, class intensity, the energy of the people in the room. We've selected the best of them to form our initial cohort of studio partners for Arcana. Because the right room changes everything.