Ben Lazar

When Tricia invited me to do the 30-Day Challenge as I was buying my first monthly Bikram pass a couple of days prior to New Year’s, I was polite in my response to her, but internally, I was doing everything not to laugh out loud. Me? Do the 30-Day Challenge? Girl, you must be high.
As a beginner to Bikram, I had been going once a week for the previous couple of months, and was very comfortable with that. I had progressed to the point where I no longer felt as though I had been run over by a truck and needed to nap for about 20 hours after practice. Real progress, I thought. I knew I wanted to go more – but for me, more was 2 – 3 times a week, tops.
So after I voiced my skepticism to Tricia regarding her invitation to do the Challenge, another conversation entered my head. “Well,” I said to myself, “It is a new year coming. This could be the perfect way to start the year – maybe it’s no accident that this opportunity is coming up.” That was followed up by my saying to myself, “Dude, there is no fucking way in the world you’re gonna go for 30 days in a row!”
Tricia looked at me with a bemused expression on her face. In retrospect, I’m sure knew the exact content and tone of my internal conversation in that moment. Finally, she said with a knowing yet generous smile, “Look Ben, it costs the same as the monthly. Why don’t we just put you down for the 30-Day Challenge, and we’ll see what happens?”
“Ok.”
* * *
I didn’t tell anyone. I didn’t want to be held accountable to actually do it. I didn’t want the possible disappointment of taking it on and not fulfilling it. But after three days of going in a row, I said, “Ok, I’m doing this.” And I started telling my friends. Now I was on the hook.
After day 5, I had an enormous breakthrough: I no longer felt like a visitor while practicing. The practice was mine; it was something I did, and I could be at home in it. From there, everything opened up.
As the New Year (and my 30 days) began, I was going through an incredibly challenging time – professionally, financially and personally. Much to my surprise, in that space, my practice almost immediately transformed from a chosen obligation into a refuge, a place where I could get present to the best parts of myself, a place I could love and care for myself when I needed to most.
At the end of each practice, I would kneel and kiss the towel, expressing gratitude for what I had just accomplished and given to myself, and thanking the Universe for having this practice enter into my life. And that gratitude began to extend to everyone and everything I care about – my family, my friends, my loved ones, music, art, sex…all of it, even the stuff in my life I didn’t like and wanted to transform.
Each day, I committed myself to three breakthroughs in my practice. I was overjoyed the first day that I could hold each foot in my hand for a minute. Hell, I was just excited the first time I felt like I really got Pranayama down. Getting both of my hands down during Toe Stand made me feel like someone should throw a party for me. Being able to stay in Standing Bow was a win of epic proportions. I began to learn, really learn, the possibilities and temporary limitations of my body, and they were all perfect.
I marveled at the mysteries of myself in the context of this practice. Standing Separate Leg Head To Knee, which many of the teachers said was a relatively restful pose, was hell for me every day, but I loved Triangle. Really? Really. Keeping my palms closed AND my elbows locked in Half-Moon was such a challenge that I came to think that practice all was downhill after it. The day I was finally able to do it and get a “Nice, Ben” from Tricia was a moment of personal triumph that had me grin from ear to ear – and from my face to my soul.
I knew how much both the 30-Day Challenge and Bikram had impacted me the morning that I came to standing, and as Tricia spoke to us as we were about to begin, tears of gratitude that this was in my life began to slowly roll down my face.
And of course, there were the physical results. My clothes got looser. Everything, and I mean everything, got firmer and tighter. The muscles in my thighs began to feel like steel cables. I could see definition in my arms in the mirror every day that had never been there. My face thinned out and I could actually see that there were cheekbones there. Just about everyone I saw, even people I had seen relatively recently, all commented how great I looked.
Just going to the studio itself became a joy. I got to know the teachers and the students – great and soulful people, and I got known in return, which was a wonderful, unforeseen benefit of doing the Challenge that I had never considered. Just about every day I entered the studio, I would be greeted with a big smile from Julia, who would ask, “What day is it today, Ben?” Others would ask me what day I was on and really acknowledge me for what I was taking on. The studio began to feel something like home.
I got something from every instructor, many things, far too numerous to mention or properly do justice to. What I got most though, was their commitment to mine, and everyone’s practice – and by obvious extension, our physical, mental and spiritual well-being. Their love of, and belief in the benefits of Bikram, both as practice and lifestyle, emanated from every word they said.
I had thought that the completing the 30-Day Challenge would be the end of something. But yesterday, as I finished day 30, I got that it was only the end of the beginning. I am still very much a beginner in terms of my practice. But I see this as the beginning a lifetime relationship, one in which I am equipped with the knowledge of what I am capable of in terms of my own commitment, discipline and faith.
I’m a music person by profession and by love. And the music I love most is soul music, music that acknowledges hardship and pain, but is also infinitely ecstatic. And sometime during my 30-Day Challenge, I got clear that this practice – hard, challenging, occasionally exasperating and also joyous and ecstatic, is soul, just in a different form and medium. And so I thank Tricia and the entire staff and students of Bikram Yoga Lower East Side for making that studio a source of soul itself, and for the energy that they’ve brought into my life, a life that will never be remotely the same again.