Seattle Sun Newspaper - Vol. 7, Issue 11, November 2003

Copyright 2003 Seattle Sun. Please feel free to use the article below in your research. Be sure to cite the Seattle Sun as your source.

Rain City Yoga tends to

both mind and body

By JAMES BUSH

On the way to becoming a yoga teacher, Marta McDermott started out as a bad student.

"I took my first yoga class when I was 16," she says. "I was one of those people who was sort of snickering in the back of the room."

Although she tried yoga several more times, her transforming experience came after joining a friend at a yoga class at a Ballard health club. "It was amazing," recalls McDermott. "It was the first time I really connected with yoga."

McDonald's Rain City Yoga recently celebrated its fifth anniversary. She teaches classes in hatha yoga in her second-floor studio on Roosevelt Way Northeast, using the Bikram Method, a comprehensive series of 26 postures and two breathing exercises. "It's designed to work your whole body, from head to toe," she says. The first half of the poses are done standing and therefore focus on balance; all poses are repeated, being held longer the first time they are performed.

McDermott considers herself a walking advertisement for the health benefits of yoga. She had suffered injuries in several vehicle accidents throughout her life and says repeated classes made her neck and spine feel better, improved her posture, her digestion and even her sleep patterns.

One unusual aspect of the Bikram Method is that the poses are performed in a heated room (kept at a temperature of 105 degrees). This is partially to simulate the heat of India, but also to encourage a little bit of honest sweat and help cleanse the body, says McDermott.

"The first time I did it I didn't know [the room] was heated," says Lene Hansen, another Rain City Yoga teacher. "I thought something was wrong with the heat." Hansen, who "just kind of walked in one day," now teaches nine classes a week at Rain City.

The literal translation of the word yoga is "union," so dubbed because it's disciplined practice integrates the mind and body. The benefits of the 5,000-year-old Eastern practice are many: strength, flexibility, balance, concentration, and stamina. "You're working at different levels," says McDermott. "It's not just physical, it's mental and emotionaland some say spiritual, too."

McDermott began what she describes as her yoga apprenticeship by to substituting for her health club teacher, then teaching classes elsewhere to gain experience. While also working as a waitress to help pay the bills, she taught classes in such varied locations as the Grateful Bread coffeehouse in Wedgwood and the Public Defender's Office.

Her formal yoga training came in Los Angeles in 1996 under the tutelage of Bikram Choudhury, the creator of the Bikram Method. The intensive three-month course included studies in anatomy, physiology, and history. She returned the following year for advanced training.

When at the helm of a yoga class, McDonald is equal parts tour guide and drill sergeant.

Even as she's describing the benefits of a particular yoga pose ("Backward bends are so important for the health of your spine," she says), McDonald's also encouraging her class members to hold their poses and reminding them to maintain their focus. The group performs facing a mirrored wall, so they can constantly monitor their poses. "In a way," she says, "they're their own teachers."

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Rain City Yoga is located at 5014 Roosevelt Way, Suite B. For more information, call 729-YOGA or visit the Web site: www.raincityyoga.com.