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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.
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.
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.
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.”
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.
Another Bode student, Monica Carbone, 28, said 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.
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.
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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