Amada O'Rourke

Review of Bikram Yoga San Diego

I love this school, but have some issues with it. ...

I love this school, but have some issues with it. The parking really is TERRIBLE. If you have the kind of schedule where you can drive over half an hour early to hunt for a spot, then great, but if you don't, another location would probably be best. You're basically idling in the street waiting for someone to come down to their car and leave. You're usually not the only driver idling and waiting for a spot. You can park in that weird little lot near the storage building, if there's space, but it seems unsecured. I would worry about smash and grab thieves in that lot, or catalytic converter thieves cutting under cars.
As of right now, several parking spots are actually roped off until the 28 for construction. So parking that was terrible is even more terrible. It's funny because you come to yoga to relax but getting there and parking can be terribly stressful, as is scuttling down to your car with a few people sitting in their cars rushing you to leave. There are sometimes construction noises during class.
I'm not sure how old this building is, but it is not unusual for the women's shower drain to be clogged at 8 a.m.
Despite signs saying that the locker room is supposed to be a quiet area, it is often too full of people who are just standing and talking about their families and their children's soccer games and such. It can get crowded, especially when people are not getting dressed, just sitting around in towels taking up space.
I do have an issue with a lot of the professors. There are many classes where it seems like we are just going through the poses, the instructor is taking you through something they've memorized, and that's the class. It's fine. There are a couple of professors who are way more engaging than the average professor. They talk about the effect of poses on your body, on your muscles and skeleton. They don't let you do a backbend or forward bend without telling you what to tighten up to protect yourself. They talk about poses they're seeing that people have learned wrong and have been doing wrong. After you take a class with one of those professors, the other professors seem really... Boring isn't the right word. But there is definitely a less engaged feeling with a lot of the professors. Some of them clearly power struggle with students who need to sit out a pose. Like if a person needs to lay down, it's not a personal slight to you and your teaching you know? A person just needs to lay down. There's a difference between a teacher engaging you to do something, and a teacher chastising you to try to make you stand back up. For what it's worth, the longtime students bring hot drinks to the Studio because they don't find it hot enough inside.
It's a fine school, I'm having a great time with it, but I don't know that I will return after the three months I've signed up for. It is close, it does feel very good to sweat, but I'm tired of being in a bad mood because of the parking or not feeling engaged in class.