After nearly 20 minutes of intense yoga in a 105-degree room, the influencer was thirsty.
She poses, leaning down, picks up a bottle of Fijian water and takes a sip.
She didn't think it would be a problem. She certainly didn't think within days, hundreds of thousands of people had seen a video about her improvised waterbreak.
However, the small decision to drink water midway through a 90-minute hot yoga session at Bode NYC touched on a series of events and widely seen tiktok videos as a result of the instructor losing his job.
And, like many other consumers' rage moments, this also found a large and often sympathetic audience, as broadcast by shoppers and travelers (or yogis) who drew to the masses who were riled on social media.
How is drinking water a problem? In a yoga class?
The video in question included several powerful accelerators known to awaken anger. Sweaty vulnerability. In an age of obsession, the insult of being told you can't drink. Relatively low stakes. (“Refusing to stay hydrated in a training class is a big red flag,” a Tiktok user thundered in the comment.
Chicking from bystanders, as often as it does, missed some nuances. But surprisingly, this modern moral story finds its ostensible antagonist in its last astonishing place. Go back to the yoga mat and go back to the same studio where all the discomfort began.
The Firestorm began on January 26th, when Rome Abdecerum settled for a 6pm yoga session on Manhattan's Upper East Side. This class was billed as Bikram style. This means that practitioners are expected to move through carefully prescribed sequences of 26 yoga postures supervised by instructors.
While working through a sequence developed by yoga guru Bikram Choudhury, who fled the United States amid accusations of sexual assault in the 2010s, practitioners are often encouraged to drink water for up to about 30 minutes once they reach the Eagle Pose. (Instructors sometimes call this “party time.”
Her class hadn't yet reached the Eagle pose, but 29-year-old Abdese Salam exerted her free will and took a sip anyway. The instructor, a longtime Bikram practitioner named Irena, noticed and reminded the students not to drink water until they could do so. Abdeselam said he doesn't remember the rules being explained at the start of the session, but he was frustrated and left early with his fiancée who was present. They didn't say anything to Irena.
“Like I said, I had taken classes before, so I was a bit surprised. And I didn't have the instructor say it to me at all,” Abdeselam recalled in a phone interview.
A while later, walking through a January night, she recorded a video of Tiktok. Clinging her black yoga mat, a notorious bottle of water in the corner of the frame sloshed, slamming the Manhattan sidewalks with the enthusiasm of women who sought the contemplative calm of the yoga session but opposed. In the 42-second post, Abdeselam let out her frustration.
“And the instructor bullies me – calling me in front of everyone – and “it's not time to drink water. I'll let you know when I can drink water, when I want to drink it,” she says in a video of Tiktok.
Some commenters explained similar experiences in the studio. He denounced her for publicly broadcasting her complaints. And others expressed skepticism that the incident had happened at all.
The instructor in question is also skeptical. At least she remembers the day differently.
Irena, 56, demanded that she be identified by her name alone, and claimed that she explained the instructions at the start of the class, contrary to Abdeselam's recollections. She also said she did not “order” students to not drink water, but instead was asked to “hold” until the appointed time.
“I thought I said it innocently,” she said in an interview. “It was my invitation. It wasn't an order, not a royal order.”
“It just felt like it targeted me.”
The day after Abdeseram filmed herself and smothered with a red face, the studio added, “Not only is it encouraged to allow drinking water!”, the studio added, “Drinking water whenever your body feels like it needs it while you try to stay modest until the Eagle posed in the original hot yoga.”
Jen Lobo Plamondon, who founded Bode NYC with Donna Rubin in 1999, issued a video statement that she said “the situation doesn't match” with the studio's standards.
At Board NYC, one of the first studios to offer Bikram yoga in New York City, teachers are instructed to “encourage clients to drink water between positions when needed,” and according to Robo Plamondon, it's not “when people drink or how much water they drink.”
“For six or seven years, we have been the only hot yoga studio in town,” Roboplamondon said. “When you go to hot yoga, you knew you were going to a Bikram yoga class. But now all the studios are hot. So when they come in and ask if you did hot yoga, they say yes, but then they come to a Bikram style class and it's very different.”
For Natalia Melman Petruzella, a professor of history at the new school and author of a book on American athletic obsession, the problem stems from the “somewhat awkward way” in which Bikram-style yoga fits into today's group fitness universe and obsessed with studios like “Core Poe” or Y7, where they compete against fadish and outstanding researchers in society.
Bikram fans may have value in the field burned into practice. However, in an age where many people think yoga is primarily rooted in “self-care,” modern exercisers may find it polished.
In a telephone interview a few days after the incident, Roboplamondon said she held an all-staff video conference to look into the company's policies and highlight the teachers that external reviews were taken seriously. She also said that the studio and Irena had broken up.
“A one-off review will not put your job at risk,” Robo Plamondon said. “But it would be unacceptable if it spirals like this and you could see that others have had similar experiences.”
However, despite Robo Plamondon's efforts, it has proven difficult to reconcile the doctrine of practice with student expectations. Another board student, Monica Carbon, 28, said Abdeselam had similar experiences in a 75-minute hot yoga class last month.
In about 25 minutes, while holding the pose with one foot up, Carbon began to feel the lighthead and took a sip from the bottle of water while holding the pose. The instructor then asked the class to wait until the pose was complete until the class had a waterbreak.
“It just felt like it targeted me,” Carbon recalled in a phone interview. “I sat in the front row and whether it was or not, it definitely made me feel a bit uncomfortable.”
Later, when Carbon stood up to leave the room after he began thirsting again, the instructor stopped her and offered to refill the bottle for her. She declined and then went to the front desk to explain to the manager what had happened.
“He said something that surprised me even more,” Carbon said. “He, yeah, I think she's one of the more traditional teachers. And traditionally, you leave your Bikram class only when you have to do one of the three Ps: Puke, Pee, or Passute.”
The teacher will become a student
Irena has practiced this style of yoga for 13 years and has been teaching on boards in 2022. She said she understands that every business needs to adapt to thrive. Still, she emphasized the importance of following the principles of Bikram style yoga whenever possible.
“You see in this new era, young people have a very hard time being told what to do,” she said.
Looking back at the fallout from her video, Abdeselam said she never wanted Irena to lose her job.
“Just because something is happening all the time doesn't mean it needs to continue,” she added.
Her former instructor may not agree. The same week she lost her job, Irena joined class at the Flatiron location in Board NYC. She loves instructors and community and has no plans to leave the studio.
“Yoga is bigger than you or me,” she said. “Yoga is bigger than any teacher or studio owner. Yoga is culture, life, discipline. Practice in yoga is my medicine.”
