testimonials

Maria Petrenko

Bikram Yoga changed my life. Having had a very low fitness level, I was able to complete most of the postures in the very first class, but also feel stronger, leaner, more at peace after just several classes. Over a course of the year, I had experienced several different studios in Michigan and all over the USA. New Bikram Studio Northville is definitely the most consistent, cleanest, comfortable, and enjoyable. The staff in friendly, evolved, and helpful. This studio is a perfect place to start your Bikram journey or enhance your current practice.

Yvette Perry-Kahar

“I’ve had three very serious health scares in my life, and this yoga has resulted in one of the most comprehensive approaches to healing I’ve ever been involved in.”

According to my weight, I burn 1,568 calories doing Bikram yoga every time; but I don’t do it for the calories. I do it because I can touch my hands to the ground now…and my 18 year-old niece can’t! But seriously: How did Bikram yoga save my life? I started the day after Thanksgiving (2009), a time when I had been too tired to go to the gym and just thought I was too overweight to work out anymore. So after two people mentioned Bikram, I thought I would try it.
The first day I was like a jack in the box: Up then down, then up, then down… and I was really having a difficult time breathing. But I used to sing, run, and do aerobics, so I knew how to breathe properly and I’d never had a problem catching my breath. So I chalked it up to the heat and kept going – up, down, up, and down – on my mat.
After the first week I noticed I was moving a lot better during the day, but I wasn’t breathing any better. I started having to rest on the stairs to get up to my apartment. It was very scary. I went from having terrible knee issues to now having breathing issues. I went to four doctors who all said I was too overweight and needed to exercise, even though I have a brown belt in aikido and could spend an hour on an elliptical machine. They all said the same thing: “You're too fat, you're getting older, and you're too old to carry this fat.” Great.  I was too embarrassed to keep going to the doctor, but then I started coughing. I thought it was a cold.  
Finally an urgent care doctor suggested I had congestive heart failure. “No,” I told him flat out. “It’s allergies. I just need an inhaler.” Well, after I convinced him that I didn’t have the energy to drive myself to ER (which I didn't), he gave me an inhaler – and I still went to hot yoga every day. I was off from work, but I went to yoga every day that week! That Friday, my regular doctor wasn’t in for my follow up, so I went to ER like the urgent care doctor suggested.
And they kept me.
I was severely anemic, I needed two pints of blood, and I had been going into congestive heart failure. I’m 41 years old and my menopausal bleeding was actually a hemorrhage. I was having a fit in triage, saying, “I have to finish my 30 day challenge! I have to get to hot yoga! I can’t stay here!!!” That was when they all slowed down and started talking to me in a voice that said “You sound crazy but we're going to try to help you understand anyway.” I learned all about hemoglobin and what it does – mine was 6.5. So what, right? Well, it’s supposed to be 15. Oh, dear. I also have very thick blood, so what blood was left was moving very slowly and ineffectively through my body. But here’s the important thing: Because of the heat inside the hot yoga room –
the severe heat – my blood stayed thin enough to oxygenate my body long enough for me to get treatment.
I’ve had three very serious health scares in my life, but this was by far the worst one. I have fibromyalgia, a closed head injury (that has healed), rheumatoid arthritis, and the doctors are trying to lump all of this into a lupus diagnosis but I refuse to let them. I believe the heat, the stretches, the support, the warmth of the individuals, the commitment of the owners and the other students in the class…all have resulted in one of the most comprehensive approaches to healing I’ve ever been involved in.
So now, I take iron pills and vitamins, and two pills for migraines. If I’m in pain I use aspirin or something over the counter. But no more pills for my pills and no more incurable pain. Every pain I have now is temporary.
I still get winded in class, but I’m lasting longer on my feet. And when I’m tired, I know how to relax, flat on my back, in a healing position. And when I get stressed out, I imagine I’m in a class full of people standing in the tree pose, which I think is the most beautiful pose.
And when I’m afraid that I'll never get better, I know it’s a lie.
 – Yvette Perry-Kahar
 

Amy

“This is where I discovered the difference between addiction and passion.”
I have come a long way in just over a year.  Not specifically one way or another, but as a whole.  For 7 years straight I was addicted to diet pills.  It became a routine: bottle is empty; go get a new one.  It dawned on me that I was completely dependent on these pills, and that they had taken over my life.    
I heard about Bikram from one of my massage clients, and decided to give it a go, being ready for a change and coming to a sense of realization that I could not live my life that way anymore.  I’ve always been athletic, and one for a good sweat, but this was a whole new level….a new addiction.  A healthy one.  I found that as I kept coming, and sweating out those toxins and emotions that had been building up inside me I was becoming a whole new person. This is where I discovered the difference between addiction and passion.  I continue to educate people on Bikram Yoga, and tell them how it’s altered my life.  Whether they are looking for a good detox, a great stretch, or a life change is up to them.  It’s different for everyone.  I was once told that every 7 years one door closes and another opens.  I now understand. 
  All the advice, guidance, and love that I would preach to people, I actually learned to do myself.  I truly believe that you can’t love someone until you love yourself.  So not only has Bikram yoga saved me from being self destructive, it’s taught me how to truly love. 
THANK YOU for accompanying me on this profound journey.  All of you are so wonderful!

Al

“…the amazing sense of camaraderie and mutual support among Bikram class members.”
When you look up in the mirror and see men and women, young and old, overweight and perhaps underweight, all striving together with you to do your best it has a positive effect.  Also noteworthy is to get smiles of encouragement and friendly hellos from total strangers who just happen to be in the same class with you.   
-Al

Dave Cunningham

“As I drove home, it occurred to me that the only thing that was different was the yoga.”
   In June 2001, I stepped into my first Bikram Yoga class. I was in reasonably good shape having worked out regularly since my late 20’s. However, the impact of running several days a week for many years left me with long-term injuries to my knee and ankle. My lower back ached constantly and slipped out of alignment every couple of months, leaving me virtually incapacitated for two days with each re-injury. I also suffered with migraine headaches (one or two a week), a condition that had “dogged” me from the time I was fourteen years old. So when running became too much, I persisted with aerobic and weight training three times a week.
   As I left my first Bikram class, like others I have talked to, I swore I’d never come back. It was difficult, to say the least. That same evening at 9:00 PM, I had an audition for a professional production company. Unlike most evenings at that time, I felt energized and centered. The audition was one of the best I have done. As I drove home, it occurred to me that the only thing that was different was the yoga.
   So the next day, I was back in yoga class, and the next, and the next. It has been 9 ½ months since that first class. I am now one of those crazy yoga people who talks about it to anyone who will listen. I plan my days around my yoga class. My goal is to practice at least every other day. Often, I am able to get successive days of practice.
   After 9 ½ months of practice, my knee, my ankle, my back are healed or healing. But the chronic pain is gone. The biggest surprise of all is that my migraine headaches have declined from approximately 6-8 each month to 0-2 each month. I anticipate a time in the near future when migraines will be history for me. It will happen. I recently re-injured my knee. But I am confident that I will work through it and rebuild it through my practice.
I almost forgot to mention that last August I went on high blood pressure medication. In March, I was able to discontinue the medication (physician approved) because my blood pressure is back in the normal range.
When I started Bikram Yoga, I wondered how long it would take before I was bored by it. But my practice has changed so much over these moths as I learned, first, to stay in the room, then to focus on pushing my edge, then on breathing. I have love-hate relationships with different postures at different times. The changes keep on coming. I am emotionally, spiritually and physically changing as I continue to practice. I can not imagine being bored by it. I foresee staying with it for years to come.
   A word about the instructors. Each of them has a style of their own and because of this, each of them has something unique to offer. I am so grateful that they are there. I learn differently from each of them. This teaches me a lot about yoga practice. But more than that, it teaches me that everyone who comes into my life has something to offer me if I am open to it.
– Dave Cunningham

Don

“A benefit that probably means more to my wife than me: I stopped snoring.”
    In June 1997, when Melissa (Curnett) left to become a yoga instructor, I asked her what yoga was. She really didn’t give me much of an answer, but she sent me a book and audio cassette instead. Looking back, that was the perfect answer to my question. She inspired me to do the best thing I could do for my body.
   I started reading the book with a goal of learning one new exercise each night. It took me about a month, but I managed to get through all the asanas at least to the point I resembled the picture in the book and could do it from memory.
   Last March I started another exercise regimen in response to the poor results from my last physical exam. My doctor strongly urged me to lose weight, exercise, and reduce my cholesterol. This wasn’t a new recommendation, he told me that every year when I took my physical. The only thing different this time was that my blood pressure now required medication. I started a “simply eat less diet” and exercised three or four times a week with a four-mile walk in one hour, plus three repetitions of push-ups and sit-ups. In the next two months I lost ten pounds. I continued to diet and exercise, but I couldn’t seem to lose any more weight. The lack of results usually marked the end of my exercise fever.
   Lucky for me this was when Melissa sent me the Bikram Beginning Yoga book and I dug in with renewed determination. At first, I continued my “eat less diet” and my other exercises and added the yoga at the end. After I learned all the yoga poses, it took me about an hour and a half to do two sets, so I stopped my other exercises. I diligently practiced my yoga on the average of six days a week and I was rewarded: I started to lose weight again. In the next four months, I lost another thirty pounds.
   I had a follow-up check-up with my doctor to monitor my blood pressure and the results were phenomenal. My blood pressure was reduced and the doctor lowered my medication to the lowest dose level. My cholesterol went from 240 to 180 and the ratio of high density to low density cholesterol went from poor to exceptional. I have been plagued with colitis, or a spastic colon, for most of my adult life and it was simply gone. I had started to experience some trouble with impotence and that has been mostly cured. Another benefit that probably means more to my wife than me is that I stopped snoring. I injured my left knee in football when I was sixteen years old and had two operations to fix it. The knee has been fairly normal since then. Now my knee is the most flexible it has ever been since before the injury; that’s saying better than when I was just eighteen years old and on the swim team. Aside from all of the medical benefits, I have a new body and I feel great! I’m actually back to the same size waist I had in high school; from 40 to 34 inches.
   I’ve looked back on other exercise programs I tried over the years and compared them to yoga. First of all, I’ve never achieved such dramatic results before. The reason I stopped other exercises were lack of results, weather, and inconvenience. I didn’t walk or run in bad weather. I could only swim two nights a week at specific times. I didn’t have exercise equipment at home and it was a pain to go to the gym. Yoga can be done anywhere, anytime, with nothing (no equipment required) and independent of weather. I can fit my yoga practice into my life. I still want to practice with an instructor once a week to learn more, improve my style, and prevent any bad habits from developing. My outlook is to practice yoga seven days a week and forgive myself if I don’t find time some days. So I average about five days a week. I don’t target five specific days because if I miss one, I probably won’t make it up.
   So, back to the beginning. What is yoga? Now, I can see how long the answer is and how hard it would be to understand if you didn’t try it. I could say simplistically that yoga is exercise, plus mediation, plus systematically tuning your whole body, but that doesn’t do it justice. The mind-body connection hit home with me on the Fixed Firm pose. I was stuck down on my elbows and couldn’t lie all the way down on the floor. I was afraid to go further and that made me stiffer. I had to mentally focus myself to relax and have faith that I could do it. It worked, and I learned the importance of mental focus in yoga. I would have never learned it so well without experiencing it personally.
   I thank Melissa for being my friend, my inspiration, my coach, and saving my body from me. I know I deserve the credit for the determination and the sweat, but she was the inspiration and instruction and Bikram Yoga was the way.
– Don