Hell-Bent

Author Benjamin Lorr wandered into a yoga studio—and fell down a rabbit holeHell-Bent explores a fascinating often surreal world at the extremes of American yoga. Benjamin Lorr walked into his first yoga studio on a whim overweight and curious and quickly found the yoga reinventing his life. He was studying Bikram Yoga (or hot yoga) when a run-in with a master and competitive yoga champion led him into an obsessive subculture—a group of yogis for whom eight hours of practice a day in 110- degree heat was just the beginning.So begins a journey. Populated by athletic prodigies wide-eyed celebrities legitimate medical miracles and predatory hucksters it''s a nation-spanning trip—from the jam-packed studios of New York to the athletic performance labs of the University of Oregon to the stage at the National Yoga Asana Championship where Lorr competes for glory. The culmination of two years of research and featuring hundreds of interviews with yogis scientists doctors and scholars Hell-Bent is a wild exploration. A look at the science behind a controversial practice a story of greed narcissism and corruption and a mind-bending tale of personal transformation it is a book that will not only challenge your conception of yoga but will change the way you view the fragile inspirational limits of the human body itself.