'I tried the bizarre new craze taking over Ancoats'

It's as weird and wonderful as it sounds

Have you ever wanted to do yoga in a tent full of strangers in 40 degree heat?

Well neither had I until I went down to the new hot yoga studio that opened up in Ancoats last month.

Hotpod yoga opened in Manchester on March 27 and combines traditional yoga classes with high heat levels to create an “immersive experience that will carry you away.”

To a certain extent, a new yoga studio launching in Ancoats with a USP is exactly what you might expect in the trendy city centre neighbourhood. It has fridges stocked full of kombucha with 20-something-year-olds wearing matching yoga sets, who later post about their experience on Instagram.

It’s trendy and it’s cool but I didn’t want to write it off as a fad before I’d even tried it.

The studio owner - Gabrielle Fuller - is a former student at Manchester University that made the move into yoga after a transformative experience with Hotpod Yoga during a visit to Jersey.

Gabrielle describes Hotpod yoga as “so much more than just a yoga class,” claiming that “the warmth, ambient lighting, and inviting atmosphere of the pod allows you to disconnect from the outside world.”

The company claims a mixture of soothing heat, relaxing beats, and calming scent, in the cocoon-like environment of Hotpod’s dimly lit pod gives you multiple benefits for the body and mind.

The ‘soothing heat’ is a mere 37 degrees - pumped out by a number of heaters inside the large inflatable tent where the class takes place.

When it’s time for the lesson to start the tent is zipped up behind you and you are immersed into the sauna-like conditions.

The situation can be a bit overwhelming at first, especially for someone like me who goes dizzy from standing up too quickly.

But you soon acclimatise to the heat and relax into the calming atmosphere - and you can take a break or leave the tent at any time you like.

And it’s worth mentioning that there are a variety of classes available, catering for all experience levels.

The class itself is everything you want yoga to be, but its effects are heightened by the heat.

The brand - which launched in London in 2013 and has welcomed over 500,000 customers since - says it has “worked with world-leading inflatable experts, top architects and heating consultants to create patented pods which sit inside its permanent studios.”

Its tents - or ‘pods’ - are meant to immerse you into a yoga environment and deepen the effects of a typical yoga class - which it definitely does.

Even the most relaxing, low intensity class feels like a full blown workout. Every slight movement results in buckets of sweat.

And when you leave the class, as well as feeling like you’ve just finished a good workout, you have the sense that your body is going through a detox with all the sweat that you lose.

Hot yoga is said to have a long list of other health benefits, such as improving endurance and stamina, increasing strength and balance, aiding recovery and preventing injury, and contributing to better sleep, to name a few.

And despite going on one of the hottest days of the year, I felt freezing when I left the tent and ended up drinking buckets of water in the hours after the session.

Overall it was a great experience, and my prejudged ideas around it being another trendy Ancoats fad were washed away like the sweat off my skin.

I went for the novelty aspect of the workout but I’ll be going back in the future to enjoy a relaxing yet intense yoga session.