SOME LIKE IT HOT. Others want a boot-camp approach to their yoga session. If you desire a real workout that mixes both aspects, try 'power yoga'.
A variation on the Ashtanga style, power yoga has become the hip way to tone up and slim down. Traditionalists may be up in arms about the demystification of a sacred way of life, but for those newly converted to the Ashtanga, Iyengar and Bikram (or hot) styles, yoga is the ultimate mind and body fitness regime.
In Hong Kong, Pure Yoga established the Bikram-style discipline at the beginning of this year and, although working out in a studio heated to 37 degrees Celsius with 65 per cent humidity may not be to everyone's liking, it has been an incredible commercial success.
Now comes a new twist. Pure Yoga has introduced power yoga classes at its Causeway Bay studio.
For those familiar with Bikram, it's a natural progression as many of the postures are included in the 90-minute 'flow class'.
Although the heat is turned off for the power yoga classes, as anyone who has tried Ashtanga will tell you, it gets just as hot and sweaty as the blistering Vinyasa series (approximately 50 flowing postures linked by breathing) stokes the prana (life-force energy) fires.
The new classes take on the format of Baron Baptiste's power Vinyasa series, which has been practised in the United States for more than 10 years and counts Hollywood actresses Elisabeth Shue and Helen Hunt as devotees.
