Triple-Digit Heat, and Scolded for a Sip of Water
After nearly 20 minutes of intense yoga in a 105-degree room, the influencer had grown thirsty.
She dropped her pose, leaned down to pick up her Fiji water bottle and took a sip.
She didn't think it would be a problem. She certainly didn't think that within days, hundreds of thousands of people would have seen a video about her impromptu water break.
But that small decision, to take a drink of water partway through a 90-minute hot yoga session at Bode NYC, touched off a series of events — and one widely seen TikTok video — that resulted in an instructor losing her job.
And as with so many other moments of consumer outrage, broadcast by indignant shoppers or travelers (or yogis) to the riled-up masses on social media, this one also found a large and often sympathetic audience.
How could drinking water be a problem? In a yoga class?
The video in question contained several potent accelerants known to stoke outrage: sweaty vulnerability; the indignity, in an age of obsessive hydration, of being told you can't drink; relatively low stakes. ('Denying hydration in ANY workout class is a huge red flag,' one TikTok user thundered in a comment.)
Those chiming in from the sidelines missed some nuance, as they often do. But surprisingly, this modern moral tale finds its ostensible antagonist in a surprising place at the end: back on a yoga mat, at the same studio where all the unpleasantness began.
The firestorm began on Jan. 26, when Roma Abdesselam settled in for a 6 p.m. yoga session on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. The class was billed as Bikram style, meaning that practitioners would be expected to move through a carefully prescribed sequence of 26 yoga postures, directed by an instructor.
While working through the sequence, which was developed by the yoga guru Bikram Choudhury, who fled the United States amid a hail of sexual assault accusations in the 2010s, practitioners are often encouraged to refrain from drinking water until about half an hour in, usually once they reach eagle pose. (Instructors sometimes call this 'party time.')
Although her class hadn't yet reached eagle pose, Ms. Abdesselam, 29, exercised her free will and took a sip anyway. The instructor, a longtime Bikram practitioner named Irena, took notice and reminded the students not to drink water until they were cued to do so. Ms. Abdesselam, who said she did not remember that rule being explained at the start of the session, became frustrated and left early with her fiancé, who was also in attendance. They didn't say a word to Irena.
'I was a little taken aback because, like I said, I've taken the class before, and I never had an instructor say that to me at all,' Ms. Abdesselam recalled in a phone interview.
Moments later, walking through the January night, she recorded a video for TikTok. Clutching her black yoga mat, the infamous water bottle sloshing in the corner of the frame, she stormed down a Manhattan sidewalk with all the fervor of a woman who had sought the meditative calm of a yoga session but got the opposite. In the 42-second post, Ms. Abdesselam vented her frustration.
'And the instructor bullies me — calls me out in front of everyone — and is like, 'It's not time to drink water, I'll let you know when you can drink water, you drink water when I want you to drink water,'' she says in the TikTok video, which has since been viewed by nearly two million users.
Some commenters described similar experiences at the studio. Some faulted her for airing her grievances publicly. And others expressed skepticism that the incident had happened at all.
The instructor in question is also skeptical. At least, she recalls the day differently.
Irena, 56, who requested to be identified by only her given name, maintains that she did explain the instructions at the start of class, contrary to Ms. Abdesselam's recollection. She also said she didn't 'command' her pupil not to drink water but instead asked to 'please try to refrain' until the appointed time — the idea being that selectively forgoing water can strengthen discipline and improve flexibility, among other health benefits.
'I thought it was innocently said,' she said in an interview. 'It was my invitation — not an order, not a royal command.'
'It Just Felt Targeted at Me'
The day after Ms. Abdesselam filmed herself, red-faced and fuming, the studio posted a lighthearted response on its own TikTok account saying that 'not only is drinking water allowed it is encouraged!!' In the caption, the studio added that 'while we try to hold off until after eagle pose in original hot yoga, please drink water whenever you feel your body needs it.'
Then Jen Lobo Plamondon, who founded Bode NYC in 1999 with Donna Rubin, released a video statement in which she said that the situation 'does not align' with the studio's standards.
At Bode NYC, one of the first studios in New York City to offer Bikram yoga, teachers are instructed to 'encourage clients to drink water in between postures when they need it' and not to 'micromanage when or how much water people drink,' according to Ms. Lobo Plamondon.
'We were the only hot yoga studio in town for six or seven years,' Ms. Lobo Plamondon said. 'You knew when you were going to hot yoga, you were going to a Bikram yoga class. But now, every studio is hot. So when they come in and we ask if you've done hot yoga before, they say yes, but then they come into a Bikram-style class and it's very different.'
For Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, a history professor at the New School and the author of a book about America's exercise obsession, the problem stems from the 'slightly awkward way' that Bikram-style yoga fits into today's group fitness universe, butting up against faddish and social-media-friendly studios like CorePower or Y7.
Bikram fans might find value in the discipline baked into the practice. But in an era in which many think of yoga as rooted chiefly in 'self-care,' modern exercisers may find it abrasive.
In a phone interview a few days after the incident, Ms. Lobo Plamondon said that she held an all-staff video meeting to go over the company's policies and to emphasize to teachers that external reviews are taken seriously. She also said that the studio and Irena had parted ways.
'One-off reviews are not going to jeopardize your job,' Ms. Lobo Plamondon said. 'But when it spirals like this and we see that other people had a similar experience, it's not going to be tolerated.'
But despite Ms. Lobo Plamondon's efforts, it has proved difficult to reconcile the tenets of the practice with students' expectations. Another Bode student, Monica Carbone, 28, said that she had an experience similar to Ms. Abdesselam's during a 75-minute hot yoga class last month.
About 25 minutes in, while holding a pose with one leg up and her foot clasped in her hand, Ms. Carbone began to feel lightheaded and took a sip from her water bottle. The instructor then asked the class to wait until after the pose was completed to take a water break.
'It just felt targeted at me,' Ms. Carbone recalled in a phone interview. 'I was sitting in the front row, and whether or not that was the case, it definitely made me feel a little bit uncomfortable.'
Later, when Ms. Carbone got up to leave the room after starting to feel thirsty again, the instructor stopped her and offered to refill her bottle for her. She declined, then went to the front desk to explain to a manager what had happened.
'He said something which made me even more taken aback,' Ms. Carbone said. 'He was like, Yeah, I think she's one of the more traditional teachers. And traditionally you only leave Bikram classes when you have to do one of the three P's: puke, pee or pass out.'
The Teacher Becomes the Student
Irena has been practicing this style of yoga for 13 years and did teacher training with Bode in 2022. She said she understood that adaptation was necessary for any business to thrive — even ones rooted in tradition. Still, she stressed the importance of adhering to the principles of Bikram-style yoga whenever possible.
'You are seeing in this new era, young people are having a very hard time to be told what to do,' she said.
Reflecting on the fallout from her video, Ms. Abdesselam said she never wished for Irena to lose her job, just 'for her to be talked to.'
'Just because it's always how something's been done doesn't mean that it needs to continue being done,' she added.
Her onetime instructor might disagree. The same week she lost her job, Irena turned up for a class at Bode NYC's Flatiron location, where she remains a student. She loves the instructors and the community, she said, and has no plans to leave the studio.
'Yoga is bigger than you or I,' she said. 'Yoga is bigger than any teacher or any studio owner. Yoga is a culture, it's life, it's a discipline. The practice of yoga is my medicine.'
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