Put your nose in the Éclair

Okay, so I missed / deliberately left out one last, perhaps most often asked question, about Bikram yoga on my post Monday.  I wanted to really explain this one so here’s the answer to your unanswered question: Yes it is smelly.

It’s a room heated to above body temperature with a bunch of people twisting themselves into positions that do actually cause your heart rate to rise.  People sweat and sweat can smell.  Some studios will smell worse than others—especially the carpeted ones.  Yes carpet, I’ll explain that later but actually you want carpeting.  The studios I go to clean those carpets at least once a week—my current place replaces the whole thing each year—so no it’s not grimy at all.  Regardless of how clean the studio is, class is guaranteed to get…stinky.  Please do not run for the hills.  First and foremost, you get used to it.  Seriously you eventually just stop noticing.  I know this is a bad analogy but did you dissect pigs in biology?  Remember how gag-inducing the formaldehyde smell was and the horrific realization when suddenly you didn’t notice it anymore?  This isn’t nearly as bad as that odor wise, but it’s the same idea.  You acclimate and just stop noticing.

Another thing about the sweat—well there are different kinds of sweat smell.  Your body produces sweat from two different glands depending on stimulation.  The eccrine glands are what cause you to sweat when you are hot whereas your apocrine glands produce sweat when you are under stress.  The former kind of sweat is heat/workout sweat—it’s mostly water and salt and smells fairly neutral.  The second kind is actually a milky fluid with fats and proteins in it.  Innocuous enough until the bacteria on your skin start to eat the fat and proteins that your body is producing when these glands turn on.  It’s the bacteria’s metabolic process and byproducts that cause the particularly rank kind of sweat smell that makes “I can smell your fear” an actual thing animals can do.   So yes it’s smelly and sweaty but it’s the GOOD kind…mostly.   I mean odds are you are stimulating that fight or flight response a bit when you work out, especially the first time in the studio, and even normal sweat is going to smell a little bit.

You might be thinking to yourself, okay so it smells but its good because you are sweating out those pesky toxins.  Which brings me to the most common mistake about sweat: you are not sweating out toxins.  Not many anyway.  Sorry to burst your bubble on this but that phrase always drives me nuts.  Most toxins are processed by your kidneys and your liver—only certain trace chemicals get pulled out in your sweat. Remember what we just said: eccrine gland produced sweat is just salt and water.  I don’t know where this mistaken idea that you can sweat out some unknown toxin ever originated but I have a hunch.  See there IS a point to the heat.  It does help stimulate an innate immune response.  I’ll get into the science behind that in another post but for now just know that increased body temperature stimulates white blood cell production.  This is where the immune boost from regular exercise, and especially Bikram Yoga, comes from.  It’s why people who work out regularly are healthier.  Since Bikram Yoga is such an intense combination of cardio and strength training, and it in particular gets your lungs stronger, I think the mistake is in the understanding what aspect of the exercise is doing it.  It’s not the sweating, it’s the heating—the sweat is just a byproduct of that.

Just plunge that nose in the air, inhale and remember that in about ten minutes you’ll be too busy worrying about how to get your arm twisted around your leg to worry about how the room smells.  Starting next week we’ll get into some of the postures. Don’t worry, the first one is just about breathing.  Until then enjoy this floral scented éclair recipe from my kitchen.  It’ll have you smelling like roses, or, er, hibiscus.

Orange Hibiscus Eclairs

Olivia Original (with an assist from Dorie)

Pastry Dough (Pate a Choux)

• 1 cup low-fat milk
• 5 Tbsp butter
• 1 Tbsp sugar
• Pinch of salt
• 4 large eggs
• 1 cup flour

Orange Cream Filling

• 1 recipe modified orange cream (I used Dorie Greenspan’s recipe from an older post “My Bloody Valentine”) – but instead of tangerines I just used oranges.

Hibiscus Chocolate Glaze

• ½ cup heavy cream
• 2-3 Tbsp loose hibiscus tea leaves
• 4 ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped

Preheat your oven to 425 degrees and prep a baking pan with parchment paper.

Heat the milk, butter, salt and sugar in a medium sized sauce pan over medium heat.  The mixture should just almost come to a boil.

Add flour and remove from heat.  Work the mixture together with a wooden spoon and return to medium heat. Continue working until all flour is incorporated and the dough forms a ball. Transfer mixture into mixing bowl and let it sit for a few minutes to cool.

After about five minutes, with mixer on its lowest speed add your eggs, 1 at a time.   Make sure the first egg is completely incorporated before continuing.  Once all of the eggs are added you should have a smooth batter.  Scoop into a pastry bag and using the largest rounded tip, pipe immediately into 3-4 inch long oblong rectangles.

Cook for 10 minutes, then reduce the oven temperature to 350 degrees F and bake for 10 more minutes. Once they are removed from the oven pierce one end with a paring knife or pierce with a chopstick immediately to release steam.  Trapped steam will cause condensation and be the source of your beautiful pastry collapsing in on itself.

Once the pastries have cooled, fill with your orange cream made earlier.

Prepare the chocolate glaze:

In a small saucepan, heat the cream over medium heat just until it boils. Immediately turn off the heat.  Add in the hibiscus flowers and steep for about 10 minutes.  Drain the milk and bring again just to almost boiling.  Put the chocolate in a heat proof bowl and pour over the hot cream—whisk until smooth.  Gently dip the tops of your eclairs in the chocolate, shake gently and flip over to set on a cooling rack.  If desired, sprinkle with additional crushed hibiscus and decorator’s sugar.