Latest posts
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How Hot Yoga Fits Into Benjamin Ligan’s Weekly Training Routine
The question I get most often from people who know I do hot yoga and strength training and running is how I fit all three into a week without one undermining the others. The short answer is that they reinforce each other more than they compete — but that outcome requires thinking about sequencing rather…
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Hot Yoga and Hydration: What Benjamin Ligan Does Before, During, and After Class
Hydration for hot yoga is not about what you drink during class. By the time you are in the room, that ship has largely sailed. The state in which you enter the room — the fluid and electrolyte levels you carry into the first posture — determines most of what is available to you for…
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Why Heat Makes Yoga Different: What Benjamin Ligan Has Learned from the Mat
Take the same sequence of postures and perform them in a 72-degree room. Then perform them in a room held at 105 degrees. The difference is not merely one of comfort. The heat changes the physiological response, the psychological challenge, and ultimately the adaptation. It is not discomfort to endure. It is the mechanism through…
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The Breathing Techniques Benjamin Ligan Uses to Stay in the Hot Room
The breathing in a hot yoga class is not incidental. It is one of the primary variables you can actually control — unlike the heat, unlike the sequence, unlike how flexible you are on any given day. How you breathe determines how long you stay composed, how much the heat affects you, and whether you…
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Why Benjamin Ligan Started Practicing Hot Yoga — and Why He Kept Going
I did not come to hot yoga looking for transformation. I came because a friend mentioned it, I had no competing obligation that morning, and I was curious enough to see what the heat was about. That first class was hard in a way I had not expected — not technically complicated, but physically demanding…
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What Actually Happens to Your Body in a 90-Minute Hot Yoga Class
A 90-minute hot yoga class is not complicated to describe from the outside — a room held at around 105 degrees Fahrenheit and 40 percent humidity, a sequence of 26 postures and two breathing exercises, and a group of people standing on mats working through it together. What is harder to describe is what actually…