It's not even officially summer, and already the city smells like a urinal and feels like a Bikram class. Which is why, apparently, I thought it would be a great idea to start a new Bikram practice. This morning.

The good news about doing yoga in a 400-degree room when it's 95 degrees outside is that when the door opens it feels like a Swiss Alps breeze. The bad news: So. Much. Sweat.

This all started with my friend Jenn contemplating the 30-Day challenge program that a bunch of the city's Bikram studios offer; it's uber-intense and usually cheaper than a regular monthly pass. A friend of her friend's recently finished and blogged about it. I thought it could be a good way to jumpstart my practice--seeing as lately I'm most familiar with Sitonmyasana. But semi-sanity prevailed, and we agreed to three classes a week for a month at the Park Slope Bikram studio.

The last time I did Bikram I vowed never again. It was right after 9/11, downtown, the air still filled with that smoke. The teacher was in full-on sargeant mode, yelling at one student not to look so glum. When she plowed ahead with the "spread your arms like an airplane" script for locust, the class plunged into shocked silence and I thought, "This ain't my kind of yoga."

But alas. I was still missing the love from this morning's teacher. And man, that place stunk like curdled cat litter cheese. But the heat, the sweat, the repetition. All so hard but ultimately good (I think). And at the very end of class when we were bathing in our savasana puddles, the instructor said, "Give yourselves a lot of credit. What you're doing by just being here is loving yourself." Either that, or the other thing. But I'll be back with that intention, yelling and all.

Here are guidelines for the Bikram 30-day challenge in NYC, which you can start any time--in case you want to beat the heat by putting it into perspective.

Are you a Bikram-ite? What do you like about it? Or not?