Bend it like Bikram

The first rule of Bikram Yoga is never to eat within an hour of starting class. The second rule of Bikram Yoga is that, during the 90-minute session, you cannot leave the room (which is heated to 105+ degrees). The third rule of Bikram Yoga is, no matter how much of a physical badass you think you are, expect to get your ass kicked during your first few classes.

I take my rented yoga mat and position myself in front of two former sorority queens (blonde hair, brown roots, perky tits and typical white-girl asses) and behind one female bodybuilder. A balding, middle-aged (but muscular) man ambles into the room wearing nothing but skin-colored spandex shorts.

If this is the chosen form of exercise for semen-guzzling, tabloid-reading sorority types and weekend-warrior musclemen, it's no problem. Mistake #1.

I can run a 3-hour marathon, can outlast Westpoint-trained army officers at hill intervals, billed 333 hours in the month of June, and downed half a bottle of Bombay Sapphire before an economics final that I set the curve in. I've won international adventure races, and jump out of planes for fun. I can do Bikram Yoga. Mistake #2. The Yoga gods definitely view hubris as the most punishable of sins.

It's 40 minutes into the class and I'm sitting down on my towel, vision blurred, head loopy, disoriented and sweating like a pedophile in the early learning centre. I don't even make it through the 45-minute "standing position" session. The gossipy fuck-and-chucks behind me are bending and twisting like they've done this out of the womb, and the saggy-stomached girl in front of me is contorting herself into all sorts of ungodly positions. Most humbling of all is the fact that these average sorts are on their feet, and I am on my ass.

So, why will I be back? Because the day after the class (and after one of the soundest sleeps of my life), I looked in the mirror and saw something I hadn't seen in the past 3 years. Youth. My face had this rosy, pinkish glow akin to that of children playing tag at recess instead of the grayish-white pallor of, well, a 20something "career woman" who could easily pass for 32 (at least according to an ex of mine who is now dating a Columbia undergrad resembling Claudia Schiffer with larger breasts). I will return to the studio, and risk humiliation and humbling to turn the clock back a few precious years.