By this point in the year, when Champaign has morphed into an arctic tundra and University students have been reduced to human popsicles, that illusory springtime thaw can seem faraway. But not for yogis practicing Bikram yoga, an intense series of 26 postures that is practiced in a “hot studio” heated to 104 degrees Fahrenheit.

The practice was developed by Bikram Choudhury in the early ‘70s and has become trendier in recent years as hot studios have sprung up across the country. Unlike traditional yoga, advocates for Bikram yoga say practicing the poses in extreme heat amplifies the health benefits yoga offers.

Teri Shannon, a Bikram certified instructor and manager of Naperville Bikram Yoga, said the heat warms muscles, making them more pliable and allowing participants to sink more deeply into the postures. Additionally, an obvious effect of cranking up the heat is sweating profusely.

“When you’re sweating, you’re detoxifying your body,” Shannon said. Shannon has science on her side to back her up: capillaries that weave around muscles respond to the heat by dilating and expediting the removal of waste products, such as carbon dioxide and lactic acid, from the bloodstream. On a cellular level, the heat also allows oxygen to detach from hemoglobin more easily, so when blood passes through warm muscles, they become saturated with oxygen.

“(Bikram) put a series together of 26 beginner postures to affect the entire body from head to toe,” Shannon said. “The whole body is worked. All of the energy centers are balanced. People walk out of Bikram yoga feeling like a million bucks, like they’ve had a two-hour massage.”

The 90-minute class is shaping up to be a hot trend, literally, as more people learn of its quick benefits. Shannon said the Naperville studio went from having 20 classes a week to almost 70 in the five years since she started there as an instructor.

“I think that it’s going to stay in the popularity stream for a long time,” Shannon said. “Right now, most of the people that I have in class are not teenagers — they’re people that have situations with their bodies that they want to improve. I don’t see it being a flash-in-the-pan trend. I see it as a long-term way for people to live more happily in their bodies.”

Annie Flaherty, junior in FAA, said she first tried Bikram yoga more than two years ago because the idea of practicing yoga under such sweltering conditions had always intrigued her. The intensity of her first class left her with a burning thirst for more as Flaherty “completely fell in love with it.” Flaherty said she practices at a Bikram studio in Evanston, Ill.

“My first class, I felt like I was going to vomit and pass out at the same time,” Flaherty said. “You sweat a lot. You feel like you’re in India. (But) what I enjoy about the heat is that it creates a warmth in your body that allows the stretch to go deeper. The heat creates a tourniquet effect on a selected body part and when you come back to a resting position, fresh oxygen flows through that tissue and removes metabolic waste.”

Flaherty added that most first-timers tend to be dehydrated even before the start of the class, which can bring on feelings of nausea, dizziness and feeling faint. To counter this effect, she said she drinks an electrolyte beverage before and practices on an empty stomach.

“Not only does it feel good physically, but I feel like it’s also a mental and emotional exercise. It really challenges you to stay focused on the present moment,” Flaherty said.

At Flaherty’s studio near her hometown of Buffalo Grove, she said people of all shapes, all sizes and all ages come to melt away both mental stress and stubborn body fat. For a 150-pound person, a 90-minute session burns about 1,000 calories.

In Champaign, Evolve Fitness Studio offers a 60-minute Warm Flow Yoga class twice a week for participants wishing to reap similar benefits of the Bikram program. Mary Wolters, the class instructor, implemented the warm flow yoga class last year. Although not as balmy as Bikram — the mercury in the Champaign studio only hits 80 degrees Fahrenheit — the class operates under comparable principles: external heat warms muscles and facilitates better flexibility.

“It’s much easier to get into the poses, and in the yoga practice there’s a sense of flow that happens,” the Rantoul resident said. “That fluidity is much easier when the heat’s on.”