Approaching my usual studio, I play a guessing game about the pedestrians ahead: Are they going to class or elsewhere in the big city? Will they turn left at the studio? I can not see their faces, nor can I peg them by style–the bare Bikram minimum people wear in the studio bears little relation to their street clothes. Still, I can sometimes identify those I am about to sweat with by something in the way they move.

If I were trained in kinesthesiology or Rolfing, I might know the exact cause of this distinctive gait–and it is as distinctive to Bikram yogis as glowing skin. Sometimes when I am waiting at the studio door for class, I look for clues on the people leaving the previous one. Soaked and exuding accomplishment, standing straighter than other mortals, their spines defy gravity. Yet each and every one of them–from the guy as ripped as a diehard gym rat to the alabaster slyph–has a firm, almost heavy step. Their legs seem to begin at the waist, as if their bones are more integrated with each other and the muscles. Their feet land on the floor with force.

And those feet are different too. The awkward chair series exercises the toes, which become long and straight and learn to embrace the floor with a prehensile grip. the Bikram arch has a high curve, the ball of the foot a bouncy plump. With each step, the metatarsal bones splay wide like an antique fan.

I have heard that every nerve in the body ends in the foot. Perhaps Bikram yoga–the chair series and all that balancing–massages every pathway, replenishing each one’s sense of the ground. So that the Bikram walk I see is a matter of sound feet sounding out, stepping forth with silent strength. You look. Your guess is as good as mine.

Namaste,
Yoga Lily