It was the summer of 2012 and I was in Montreal for five weeks. If you’ve never been to Montreal in the summer (or at all for that matter), Montreal summers tend to be hot (averaging around the 36 to 40 range). By virtue of location they end up quite humid at any time during the year, hovering around the 60% mark for ambient humidity.
To give you an idea of scale, our hot room’s average temperature is steady at about 37 to 38 degrees Celsius, and the humidity tends to fluctuate based on time of day, outside temperature and humidity, the amount of practicing bodies in the hot room prior to and at the time, etc. Generally, the hot room humidity trends from 20% (first thing in the morning) to about 45-50% later in the day. During the summer months or after particularly rainy days the humidity may climb higher, although we do our best to keep it steady.
Montreal 2012 was like walking around in a hot room except there was no exiting the room after an hour to a nice shower. Rather, it was a lot like waking up in the hot room, and eating and working in the hot room, and then sleeping in the hot room… and waking up as a hot sweaty mess to start it all over again.
Really glamourous, right?
At some point someone had made the passing remark that ‘if you practice hot yoga, the heat outside won’t bother you as much.’ And that, my friends, spawned something else entirely.
I started practicing yoga at Moksha Yoga NDG and went a hand full of times before coming home – just imagine my surprise when I realised that ‘home’ was also the same ‘home’ shared by Moksha Yoga Saskatoon, the only Moksha studio in the province of Saskatchewan?
Practicing in the summer is Saskatoon is a different experience from Montreal, but still similar in all the best ways… and arguably the reasons are even juicier here.
… I mean that very literally. While the ambient humidity in Montreal is high, I think anyone who has been to or has the pleasure of calling this sweet province home knows that we’re not exactly known for our luscious sea air. We’re a dry province. The hot room is not a dry space. This is a good thing. Because humans are primarily made of water.
Practicing in the summer in Saskatoon does wonders for reminding my body what it feels like to not always be dry. It also has a really great perk of reminding me to keep a close eye on my hydration day to day, something that I lacked prior to taking up a regular practice.
I find a summer practice to be favourable also because it does actually make the outside temperature seem less intense and I believe this is so for a few reasons –
- Hydration is key
- It makes me a more efficient sweater (in part due to hydration), but it’s almost as if my body is more familiar with the idea. Sweat, believe it or not, a normal bodily function and is one of the main ways that your body cools itself when it overheats. It’s a good thing.
- It makes me more efficient at breathing and it also makes me more cognizant of the pace of my breath, my heart, how much activity I’ve had, when to rest, when to nourish and eat, etc. Being more mindful of the breath opens up doors to other ways that the body operates to keep you healthy, whole and hale- especially in the summer heat, which is a good thing when activities pick up and you’re running around in ‘go’ mode
- It also serves as justification for a nice cold treat. 2012 also happened to coincide with the frozen yogurt boom, and I have no regrets about the amount of frozen yogurt I consumed that year.
A heated practice (specifically here at Modo) is a great idea in the summer because (and this is Modo’s best kept secret I’m about to let you in on…) the classes are less rambunctious, hot room real estate is suddenly wide open – you can take up as much space as you want.
You want three blocks? You take three blocks.
Maybe even four.
You can use the wall space fairly easily for modifications, whereas in the height of the winter months, it might not be possible. There’s more parking. The sun still shines when you leave, even when you leave at the end of the last class of the day- do your yoga, eat the ice cream and watch the sunset. Dreamy, right?
Fast forward to summer 2019.
The heat doesn’t bother me much these days and the practice is much more familiar today than in 2012. And although it’s been 7 years of a set series, the practice is never boring (a question I get asked every so often). Modo is a practice that remains something interesting to watch even after seven years (and here’s hoping they’ll be many more), whether it’s summer or winter, night or morning, week day or weekend.
No man (or woman in my case, but really any person or thing) walks in the same river twice – and this is a theory in practice every single day I come to my mat.
Thank goodness for steamy Montreal.
Love, Rose
