Beads of sweat are rolling into my eyes and I can taste salt on my lips.
The heat is unbearable.
There are two large fans on one wall belting out hot air and placed around the floor are those small, white, fan heaters, all set to level three, to the highest, hottest setting.
Together all these fans make for a thunderous noise.
I had imagined dainty Indian bells, some kind of Yoga-appropriate music, oh I don't know, scented candles. This is the very opposite of everything I had in mind.
I can't breathe. It's a simple as that. I can't breath. My chest feels tight and my mouth is full of hot, dry, sweaty air.
I am stunned, appalled and nauseous in equal measure. It is like walking into a furnace.
I look about me.
Everyone else appears serene. I venture up to one woman - we'd exchanged 'Franglais' pleasantries in the changing room - and I crouch down next to her. 'It's hot isn't it?' I say, stupidly. 'Is it meant to be this hot..I mean it's too hot isn't it? Isn't it too hot?'
The woman smiles sympathetically but I'm aware of hard stares from others in the room. The Englishwoman needs to shut up, I'm thinking.
Ok then. Feign nonchalance.
And while feigning, consider options for escape.
But I don't know what to do.
I am 'in the room'.
I am not allowed to leave 'the room'.
The sign on the door had been ominously clear. "Do not leave this room for the next 90 minutes".
And I'd had the no-nonsense brief from the woman on reception: "For first time you might feel dizzy, you might need to rest, you can kneel, you can sit, you can lie down...but you must not leave room, we don't leave room.'
All I can think of is the cool air in the real world on the other side of the door.
The plan, well, what passes for a plan, had been to take the opportunity during this time out to get more exercise, to improve health, wellbeing etc etc.
So I started running again (for cardiovascular!) and today is yoga (for serenity, wisdom, flexibility and general at-one-ness-with-the-universe type stuff). My first ever class.
I should have done the research.
I should at the very least have taken the trouble to read the detail on the website instead of merely noting that the Bikram Yoga studio, being just a few hundred yards from where I live, would do as much as any other sort of yoga studio. And drop-in classes too. Perfect.
'Blimey...you've gone for hot yoga!' my brother emailed when I sent him the link.
I thought he meant 'hot' as in 'trendy'. I know.
He meant 'hot' as in 100 degrees.
It's a horrific, unexpected, nightmare...
But if I leave this room now, thinks spiritual me, I will have stumbled off the path to inner peace before even making a first step. And anyway, says rational me, I've paid 25 Euros for a week's trial membership. That did it.
I look for somewhere to sit - at the back, obviously.
I roll out my rented mat, pop my towel on it and sit down.
Even the slightest movement, from standing to sitting, brings out droplets across my hairline and I can feel sweat running down my back. I try a few tentative stretches and stop when the rooms starts swimming and spinning.
Lots of the people here are extremely bendy. And they are hardly wearing anything at all. One man wears just swimming trunks and the women are in those bikini-type outfits you see on Olympic athletes.
The woman I'd spoken to earlier stands upright, lets her head loll back and the rest of her body follows, folding in on itself, until she is a crab, she..er..scuttles about like this, left to right, but then, extraordinarily, she walks her feet even closer to her hands until her hands can grab her ankles. She is running with sweat, it is falling off her in heavy droplets on to her small, blue towel.
The class hasn't even started yet. Some people are lying flat on their backs, eyes closed. Others are sitting cross legged facing the wall, meditating...presumably, garnering strength for what is to come.
Everyone is wet through. The smell is not pleasant.
I dread what's about to happen.
The door opens and a diminutive woman walks in, much, much younger than most of us. 'Stand up!', she says loudly, firmly. 'Class begin'.
And what happens after that is the most gruelling, most challenging workout - and the heat, designed to enable deeper stretching, while reducing stress and tension, makes even the slightest movement a huge trial.
We begin with a deep breathing exercise, standing tall, hands together, fingers intertwined, clasped under the chin. We talk a long, slow, measured gulp of air, raising our elbows, keeping our fingers clasped, holding breath, then throwing our head back and loudly exhaling. My shoulders start to ache, my head is already swimming and dreaded black spots start to gather in the peripheral vision.
This is the first of the 26 poses* that make up a Bikram yoga class. I am conscious of fabulous bodies doing incredible things all around me.
I work very hard, so anxious, I suppose, to restore that suppleness I once had and I push and push and despair at my lack of flexibility and it hurts and I am suffocating.
The instructor barks across the room: 'Beginner, sit lower...good beginner....beginner focus, relax your face....beginner stretch higher...'
It's the 'focusing' that does for me. I stare hard into my own eyes in the mirror trying to perfect the 'Standing Bow Pose' and I stare so hard at my beetroot-red face that I feel like I'm falling into the mirror and I realise that I am going to be sick. My face, my vision, is obliterated by black spots and I keel over - a self preservation thing, stopping the faint before it takes hold.
I am on my hands and knees on the floor, sweat is dripping from my chin and my nose onto my towel.
I break all etiquette. I put my hand up. 'I'm sorry, I need to leave the room. I feel sick,' I say to the instructor.
She doesn't let me. And she is very firm about not letting me.
'Lie down. Lie down now! Do not disrupt class. What you are feeling is perfectly normal. Just lie down and take deep breaths until you feel better.'
I do as I am told. I can't believe this.
I can't believe I don't walk/crawl out of there. But I turn over and lie flat on the mat, waiting to throw up all over myself in front of the whole class.
I stay there, while the others go through 'balancing stick', 'separate leg stretching' and 'triangle' poses. And slowly the spots fade and the nausea abates ....
Something in me - the fear of being the ridiculous English person, mainly - tells me to crack on and I slowly roll over, haul myself back to my feet and try to join in again.
But I sit down a lot now, backing off at the least feeling of discomfort and I move at a snail's pace, reflecting, as I watch these amazing, supple, super-beings, that I haven't exactly excelled in the 'wisdom' stakes so far. I should have taken it easier instead of ploughing in as if I was still the teenage ballet dancer of so many years ago.
There are people like me at the back who sit down too. I realise, unlike in a ballet class, there is no disgrace in giving in, in resting.
The last 13 poses are much more floor-based with relaxation time in between and so it's manageable, though barely.
And oh, the best bit, the very best bit, when the instructor comes down from her podium and 'flick, flick, flick' each of those monster fans is switched off . And we lie there and there are gentle tendrils of cool air.
The very last thing we are instructed to do is lie on our backs, legs stretched, heels together, feet relaxed, arms by our sides, palms facing upwards, eyes open, gently breathing, for two minutes, without moving.
The 'Savasana' or 'dead body' pose. Appropriately enough.
Then 'Namaste' and the teacher is gone.
There is little conversation in the changing room. I'm not surprised.
And as I look at myself in the mirror (the horror, the horror!), I have to decide whether I can face it again - or am I jacking it in...
Later I do the research I should have done before the class.
I was foolishly unprepared and, while a quick Google search reveals there is as much to be said about the negatives of Bikram Yoga as the positives - lovers and haters seem to be out there in equal number - I know I cannot judge on that one experience.
Those 90-odd minutes in that room were, without doubt, among the most physically challenging I have ever encountered.
So all-consuming was the experience, there was no time for thought, for worry, for preoccupation with anything other than what was happening then and there.
A big change for someone who's never been good at 'in the moment' stuff, always thinking ahead, always planning, working out the next step, always fretting about something or other.
It's a flaw, I know. And it drives me to distraction that my brain will not be still unless I'm asleep.
But in today's 'hot yoga' session I was incapable of thinking about anything. And I think that was probably a very positive thing.
And it's for that reason, above all else, which means I'm going back for another go tomorrow. I know...I can't believe it either..
* http://www.bikramyoga.com/BikramYoga/TwentySixPostures.php
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