Author Benjamin Lorr wandered into a yoga studio--and fell down a rabbit hole

Hell-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...