It starts when you unfurl your mat in a hot room--the heater is on, the sweat already beginning to trickle down your back.  It's your personal sauna, a detox hot box. You need it. You have been made up of too many hard thoughts lately.  Too much given out.  Not enough taken in.

You know not everyone can take the heat--not everyone can float through sun sals while feeling as if that same sun coats their skin.  But you know that the heat, fiery beast that it is, goes beyond just dragon's breath and hot coals under your feet.  It is really a gentle mistress--albeit under the guise of a hard-hearted dominatrix.  She wants you to feel good, even if it has to hurt a little first. 

Slowly, you feel your muscles melt under the heat, the cares you've carried around in your tendons and tissues weeping out of your skin, coating it in a healing balm of salt and sweat.  Even if at first your mind hums, your thoughts racing from past to present to future, the heat inevitably slows you down, pushing you back into your body.  Connecting you to your spirit. 

You are beyond rational thought.  Beyond the need to focus on the small events of your day, only the heat on your skin and the flow from one yoga posture to the next.  You have found your way back to yourself.  And that is enough.