KAREN BLACKMAN - Moksha Yoga

Rip drip. The room would be totally silent were it not for that one sound. Drip drip. If you weren’t concentrating so hard on trying to maintain the ‘tree pose’ balanced on one leg with your arms reaching for the ceiling, you’d realize that the constant drip is the sound of human sweat hitting the floor. Focus is the key; it allows you to use your body in ways you never thought possible. All around you, people of different ages and body types are staring straight ahead, focused on the task at hand. Then Karen’s voice breaks the quiet…with fluid instructions to take you into the next pose. This isn’t a day at the beach. It’s more like extreme yoga. You move from one pose to the next, to the next, challenging possibly every single muscle in your body. After a series of standing postures you slink onto the floor, momentarily resting on the plush towel. And then you begin the floor postures, working the abs, spine, and upper body.

Karen Blackman’s instructional style may best be described as no-nonsense with a dash of comedy. She doesn’t allow you to slack off and she moves around the room with an eagle eye that picks up every little mistake. “Don’t spread your legs so far apart. You’re not giving birth to calves!” The point is to make sure you don’t hurt yourself. Karen is a pioneer of a brand of hot yoga in Trinidad and Tobago known as Moksha. She tells me that Moksha means liberation— liberation from the tensions of your body and the traumas of daily life. Her own experience with hot yoga has been life changing.

As a teenager she suffered from anorexia and eventually ended up in the hospital, and later on, began to gain weight and looked around for a healthy way to get in shape. Someone suggested hot yoga and she liked it so much that she underwent training and became a teacher. The changes she experienced were not confined to her body. Karen, like many other women with body image issues, used to hate to look in the mirror. Now, she says, “I’ve learned to love myself.” If you’re not familiar with why it’s called hot yoga, picture this. You’re in a small room with all of the windows and doors closed, with the Caribbean heat trapped in the air. It doesn’t feel claustrophobic by any means but it does feel like a sauna. Some of those who have tried hot yoga say that it causes you to ‘melt’ as the pounds are shed along with the toxins.

All the classes taught by Moksha Yoga Trinidad are drop-in, which means that any beginner can just dive right in. Danielle, 22, has been at it for about four weeks but has already experienced results: “Yoga is totally different from any other exercise I’ve ever done. It’s a unique form of exercise where you’re using your mind, body, and spirit to achieve different poses. I have honestly never perspired so much in my life! At the end of a class I feel like I’ve done a full body workout and, not only that, I feel unexpectedly relaxed and I experience a sense of inner peace.” And yes, by the time you get to the final savasana, relaxing on your back and breathing deeply, your mind is in a totally different place. You don’t even realize that an hour and a half have gone by. Then the doors open up and the cool air that rushes in feels better than breeze has ever felt. As you get up to leave, you’re overcome not by exhaustion, but by an almost superhuman sense of accomplishment—and you have to hold yourself back from jogging briskly down the road just for the heck of it.

There are testimonials from people who say Moksha yoga has helped them with everything from back and knee pain to insomnia and depression. If you think you want to give it a try, there are classes to accommodate almost everyone’s schedule, (see www.mokshayogatrinidad.com). Once you’ve actually completed a session, you won’t need any other incentive.

- Shivonne Du Barry