Hell-Bent: Obsession, Pain, and the Search for Something Like Transcendence in Competitive Yoga - Hardcover

Lorr, Benjamin

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 031267290X ISBN 13: 9780312672904

Publisher: St. Martin's Press, 2012

Synopsis

Author Benjamin Lorr wandered into a yoga studio―and fell down a rabbit hole

Hell-Bent explores a fascinating, often surreal world at the extremes of American yoga. Benjamin Lorr walked into his first yoga studio on a whim, overweight and curious, and quickly found the yoga reinventing his life. He was studying Bikram Yoga (or "hot yoga") when a run-in with a master and competitive yoga champion led him into an obsessive subculture―a group of yogis for whom eight hours of practice a day in 110- degree heat was just the beginning.

So begins a journey. Populated by athletic prodigies, wide-eyed celebrities, legitimate medical miracles, and predatory hucksters, it's a nation-spanning trip―from the jam-packed studios of New York to the athletic performance labs of the University of Oregon to the stage at the National Yoga Asana Championship, where Lorr competes for glory.

The culmination of two years of research, and featuring hundreds of interviews with yogis, scientists, doctors, and scholars, Hell-Bent is a wild exploration. A look at the science behind a controversial practice, a story of greed, narcissism, and corruption, and a mind-bending tale of personal transformation, it is a book that will not only challenge your conception of yoga, but will change the way you view the fragile, inspirational limits of the human body itself.

About this title

About the Author

BENJAMIN LORR graduated from Columbia University with a degree in environmental biology and creative writing. He lives in New York City and is currently at work on his second book.

Reviews

*Starred Review* In a narrative guaranteed to give goose bumps to chiropractors and their patients, Lorr announces one anatomic objective in the opening paragraph of this high-energy book, I convinced myself that I could take my spinal cord and bend it so severely that I could touch my forehead to my ass. To achieve his goal, he employs an extreme form of yoga that accounts for only 8 percent of the yoga practiced in the world, Bikram yoga. Bikram Choudhury is the leader of this intense and hot (the temperature of these studios is deliberately ratcheted up) form of yoga. Lorr describes Choudhury as a charismatic but controversial character while portraying himself practicing yoga for more than 14 hours a week and enrolling in a nine-week Bikram Yoga Teacher Training course that costs $11,000. His description of that surreal experience might make even Franz Kafka envious. Lorr’s appraisal of yoga culture and Bikram yoga, in particular, feels fair. He documents remarkable self-transformations—weight loss, enhanced energy, improved sleep. He marvels at the commitment of devotees. Back bending and bliss, stretching and sweating, bonding and betrayal have rarely seemed so complementary. Hell-Bent is sure to turn readers’ impressions of yoga upside down. --Tony Miksanek

Edition details

• Publisher: St. Martin's Press
• Publication date: 2012
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 031267290X
• ISBN 13: 9780312672904
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320