Steamy Poll for Bikram Yogis

Here's the link to the article on lemondrop.com but I figured I would just paste it below to save you the click!

As for moi? Nope, never happend to me...even in camel. The best I've ever felt in camel is peace and contentment but never euphoria and certainly not arousal! How about you fellow Bikram yogis?

Jul 2nd 2009 By Erin Donnelly

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Can Hot Yoga Make You Horny?

• Sex
• Health
• Orgasm of the Week

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I'm in a darkened room with a couple dozen other people, all of us dripping in sweat, pushing our lithe (OK, mostly lithe) bodies to the limit and breathing heavily. The room grows dimmer, the heat grows more palpable, and as we flop down to the floor, a warm, euphoric rush courses through our bodies.

One word: Yogasm.

I can't speak for everyone in myBikram yoga class -- a 90-minute, 26-posture Hatha Yoga practice in which the room is heated to a minimum of 105 degrees -- but let's just say I don't show up to class just to get frizzy hair and see how long I can balance on one foot before toppling into the person next to me.

Judging by the contented smiles and satisfied groans at the end of class, I can only assume I'm not the only one who finds that bending it like Bikram is pretty handy at hitting the G-spot.

Read how Erin flexed her sex life after the jump.

Certified Bikram yoga instructor Jessica Loera agrees. "It's more than just the heat that our students are addicted to," she confides.

Oh My God! According to BikramYoga.com, by warming and stretching the body, the exercises "systematically move fresh oxygenated blood to 100 percent of your body, to each organ [Editor's note: ahem] and fiber." When stretching and balancing (say, standing in a wide-open stance with your body twisted and your arms stretched to the ceiling), you build pressure and cut off blood supply. But when the pressure is released, it creates a "lock-gate effect," and the blood comes rushing back.

Or, as Loera puts it, "It's all in the circulation, baby!"

Though I've never actually had the big O in a yoga class, there's definitely been some strong stirrings of arousal, usually when the sit-down exercises start towards the end of class.

Remember the rope in gym class? It's like that. One well-positioned cobra pose and I'm ready to grab the six-pack-blessed guy to my left (or at least my guy as soon as I get home) and bring this baby to a climax.

Sexyasana If you're not up to committing 90 minutes to a full class (it's an intensive workout), you can crank up the heat at home and try a feel-sexy pose that Loera swears by: the camel pose (pictured, right).

Says Loera, "The camel pose is well known in the industry for inducing some very particular feelings that many students describe as 'near-orgasmic.' From the looks on the faces of some of my students, I'd say that's a fair assessment. Imagine 300 Bikram yoga-teacher trainees collectively feigning climax during camel pose after nine weeks of intensive Bikram yoga training!"

We're sold. Here's how to pull it off.

Camel pose: -Stand up on your knees with 6 inches between your knees and feet. -Place hands on hips, thumbs on the outside, fingers pointing down. -Relax head all the way back and look at the floor behind you. -Inhale and lift chest up towards the ceiling; exhale and push hips all the way forward, then come back halfway. -Bring hands one at a time to the heels, thumbs outside, fingers inside (without dropping hips back). -Keep head relaxed and breathe in through the nose. Inhale chest up, exhale through the nose and push hips forward. Keep the eyes open and keep breathing.

So ... was it good for you?

Tell Us: Have you ever come close to having the big O while exercising?

Recycle Your Old Sneakers

Just dropped off our ratty, old sneakers at my local Niketown. Nike has a great program called "Reuse A Shoe" that accepts any brand of athletic shoes and recycles them to create raw materials for new basketball and tennis courts, and running tracks. Check out their website for a local drop-off station near you or ship your shoes to their recycling center in Oregon. Pretty cool, eh?

6am Bikram classes: the struggle & the payoff

Now that the days are getting shorter, I wake up at 4:50 am to find it dark outside. What was once a 30-minute battle (some have lasted up to an hour!) with the snooze button in my pre-Bikram days, has now decreased to a 5-minute battle. Here's the dialogue that usually runs through my head the moment I hear the alarm and slap it off:

Thank you God for giving me another day of life to serve you!

Hope MoJo didn't hear my alarm and wake up...

It's really 4:52. Ok, I'm not dreaming.

If I'm getting to yoga today, I need to get on that 5:15 train.

Well...if I don't make it...I can still go tonight...

Hmm...If I go tonight, I won't be home till 8:30. Dinner at 9.

Ugh. I don't want to deal with the after-work crowd at the studio and the jostling in the locker room!

15 students in the morning versus 70 students in the evening?

Duh. That's a no brainer. Ok fine, I'm up.

That's my internal morning struggle.

But the BIG payoff is two and half hours later in final savasana or corpse pose. I liken final savasana to getting into the jacuzzi after swimming laps in the pool. After working hard for 90 minutes, I look to final savasana as my reward especially when I don't need to rush out. I can just lie there and bliss out. This is why 6am classes twice a week are worth it. By the time we're done at 7:30, I still have another 1.5 hours before needing to get to work. With the pressure of needing to be somewhere gone, I'm fully relaxed and I find myself falling into a light sleep. Sometimes I even dream. This time, I don't need an alarm. I wake up naturally & look around to an empty, quiet hot room. With a calm mind, a relaxed body, and an open heart, I love being the last one out.

Chopped!!!

I was so sick of the long hair, which I've had for years so I decided to chop 10 inches off. The last time I cut my hair short was in 1999. It was even shorter than this, a pixie cut. I would say this is a Katie Holmes-inspired bob.

When the hairdresser was done, my head felt lighter. And on a hot, humid day like today, the back of my neck and shoulders feel bare and cool. I kept the hair and plan to donate it to a charity like Locks of Love. Pantene has a program that accepts hair donations too.

I can't wait to hear what my colleagues in the office will say when I walk in tomorrow!

Where the name comes from

Ever wonder why I call myself "ActionJoJo"?

In college, everyone called me "Jo" and my best friend called me "JoJo". During our senior year, my friend Katie, who had just returned from a junior year abroad in Germany saw me and shouted out "JoJoAction!" Huh? She never called me that before. She explained it like this:

When I was in Germany, there was this hit song called "Jojo Action" by a group called Mr. President. Every time they played it, I thought of you! ::starts singing::

Listen JoJo Action

Gimme satisfaction

JoJo c'est la vie

Well, needless to say, she called me that ever since then. When I created this blog, I tried to use "jojoaction" but it was taken. So "ActionJoJo" was born!

And for a real treat, here's the music video to the song!

Update! Read all about it.

I notice that I'm the kind of blogger who pauses and stops writing for a long time for a variety of reasons. Then, I somehow get inspired and I pick it up again. So here I am. Back. Almost one and half years later. Lots have happened since March 08.

Celebrated my 10 year college reunion. The weekend was amazing and it made me realize how much I missed my 4 years at school.

Barack was elected president! Woot! I still love me some Hillary and was disappointed when she lost to Obama. Nevertheless, I'm happy with how things turned out.

I became an official TripVlogger for a travelsite called TripFilms and I'll be posting some of the videos I made for them on our trip to Hong Kong. We owe them videos on the Philippines so I'll be posting those soon too. In the meantime, you can check out my videos at Tripfilms here.

MoJo and I went to Hong Kong for New Year 2009 and then on to the Philippines for two weeks to visit my family.

I started practicing Bikram yoga in mid-March and I am an official Bikram junkie!!! I was inspired to try it because of the inspiring healing story of the creator of this yoga, Bikram Choudhury. He crushed his knee in a weightlifting accident as a young adult and Western doctors proclaimed he would never walk again. He proved them wrong. This practice has healed countless people physically, mentally, & emotionally including myself.

I had arthroscopic surgery back in 1991 and my knee was never the same. I always likened my knee to a shattered vase pieced together. Over the years, it would lock out, feel tight, feel like there were air bubbles in. I didn't have any strength in it nor flexibility. In March 09, I was leaning heavily on a banister to go down stairs because my knee didn't feel strong enough. I've been an active person despite working out at the gym, running, power walking, hiring a trainer. But over the years, my knee just weakened. Besides the knee, I had other joint/muscle issues: I pulled my back out several times, the tendons in my shoulder were starting to fray causing severe paine, my wrists hurt (I thought I had carpel tunnel), my ankles were starting to hurt. In fact, you can read me blog about it back in 2005. I felt like I was a 30 year old living in a 60 year old body. It was depressing to say the least. One acupuncturist friend who treated me told me that my body has a tendency to produce high levels of acid (caused mainly by stress, anger, and the food I eat) that is causing my joint pain/injury. She recommended that I sweat the acid out. Enter Bikram yoga and the inspiring story of healing by Bikram himself. I made a commitment to practicing 5-6 days a week and after 5 months I am so happy to say that all my joint paint has virtually disappeared. I say virtually because my knee pain has decreased tremendously and is on its way to healing fully. I feel like I've been given a new body with my regular practice. In addition to all the physical benefits (did I mention that I've lost weight), emotionally and mentally I'm also a different person. I am happier, more centered and at peace, and most importantly, I've been able to manage the stress in my daily life so well. Things that would make me fly off the handle before, don't bother me anymore. It's been an amazing and transformative experience. But I had to earn it. Healing on any level is not passive; it is an active engagement of your mind, body, and spirit. It takes commitment, hard work, discipline, and yes, sometimes pain to achieve breakthroughs. There's a time and place for medicine. Yes. However, I feel our society has become so dependent on pills to solve our issues when in fact pills just treat the symptom (and create more problems with side effects) and don't target the cause.

And most recently, we just came back from vacation. We went on a 9-day cruise to the Caribbean. Let's just say I'm not running to sign up for my next cruise. It was good to spend time with MoJo's family and not have to work for 9 days. The best part was sitting on a deck chair, facing the horizon and reading a book. Other than that, I can do without the overconsumption of food, alcohol, and goods. I'll stick to off-the-beaten path traveling unless it's a cruise to the Galapagos or the South Pacific!