Beth Galis, owner of Yarrow Hot Yoga & Wellness Studio here, knows how to bring the heat.

Participants in her Bikram-inspired yoga classes sweat it out plenty doing a series of 26 distinct yoga postures for an hour and a half in a room sweltering at 105 degrees Fahrenheit and 40 percent humidity. They're encouraged to drink lots of water and dress in shorts.

The two-year-old business moved to a 4,000-square-foot space at 412 W. Boone in October, from Galis' South Hill home.

Galis says Bikram yoga is named after a yogi guru from Calcutta, India, and is based on 26 hatha yoga postures done in sequence, along with two breathing techniques. Hatha yoga is the most commonly practiced form of yoga in the Western world, and is done for its benefits to both mental and physical health.

Galis says that while any of the hatha yoga postures used in Bikram yoga can be taught in a heated setting, Bikram yoga, which is always taught in a hot setting, is different because it uses a very specific series of positions.

"It's a Westerner's way of meditating, because you work out so hard that there is nothing in your head by the end of class," she says. "That's the way it's spiritual as well, and anyone from any religious background and any walk of life can come."

Yarrow's heated yoga studio is about 1,500 square feet in size, and can accommodate up to 45 students in a single session. Along the length of one wall is a calming mural of swirling clouds, while the opposite wall is entirely mirrored, to help participants perfect their yoga postures.

The space also includes a smaller, 400-square-foot studio that's still heated above normal, but not to the extent of the larger room. There also are separate locker rooms for men and women, a small retail section for clothing lines designed for yoga, and three small treatment rooms used for massage therapy and other alternative body healing methods.

The cost to attend hot yoga classes at Yarrow ranges from $15 for an individual drop-in class to $99 a month for unlimited access under a six-month membership, she says. The studio offers an introductory rate of $30 for 30 days of unlimited access for those interested in trying it out.

Bikram classes are offered at varying times each day of the week, including early morning and in the evening. Class times are listed on the studio's Web site, at www.yarrowyoga.com. Other studios and spas here offer other forms of yoga in a hot setting.

"The reason I love this style of yoga is because anyone can do it, from someone who doesn't know anything about yoga to someone who's been practicing yoga for years," Galis says. "Rarely do people get injured in this style."

Galis says the intensely heated setting of her Bikram classes helps cleanse the body through sweating, and allows a person to go deeper into a yoga posture.

"It's athletic, but even someone who's not athletic can move at their own pace and can take breaks," she says. "Even if there is a superstar yogi next to you, as long as you give 100 percent, you'll get 100 percent of the benefits."

Galis says she became interested in Bikram-style yoga about three years ago, and then traveled to Acapulco, Mexico, to take nine weeks of classes to become certified to teach it.

Galis says she began practicing yoga about 12 years ago, when she attended Fairhaven College, the interdisciplinary liberal arts college of Western Washington University, in Bellingham, Wash. Students at Fairhaven design their own degree programs, she says, adding that she chose to study creative movement, dance, the healing arts, and education. One of her focuses of study involved creating a curriculum for children that incorporated yoga, movement, and exercise.

"It was fun because I could study whatever I wanted and incorporate it into my major," she says.

While there, she says she studied yoga, shamanic energy medicine, Thai massage, Pilates, and reiki, a Japanese form of alternative medicine, also referred to as palm healing.

Shamanic energy medicine is based on the belief of Peruvian Inca shamans that humans have energy fields that can at times prevent personal well-being.

After graduating from Fairhaven in 2001, Galis taught kindergarten for a year, and then decided to pursue the healing arts and yoga as a profession. She taught yoga at a studio in Bellingham and at local gyms there, while continuing her training in yoga and healing medicine.

"I've taken probably 1,500 hours of classes in the last nine or 10 years related to massage and yoga," she says.

Two years ago, Galis, a Spokane native, moved back to Spokane and converted her basement here into a hot yoga studio with the help of her boyfriend, who's a contractor.

"I was drawn to come back here because I kept having this vision that I opened a healing center here," she says.

Eventually, her business outgrew the basement studio and she moved the venture to the space on Boone.

Last spring, Galis says she also began offering yoga instructor training here under the business name Yarrow Yoga Teacher Training Program. Through her affiliation with the Yoga Alliance, a national education and support organization for yoga, she says any instructors she trains are certified to teach yoga. Two of the instructors she trained through that venture now teach at Yarrow.

Besides the Bikram-inspired yoga classes, Yarrow also offers massage therapy and energy medicine. Galis says she's been a licensed massage therapist for about eight years.

Galis charges $65 an hour for massage and energy treatments, which typically last about 90 minutes. She says she can bill some forms of insurance.

Yarrow Hot Yoga & Wellness Studio employs three certified yoga instructors in addition to Galis, and will also soon have two massage and physical therapists practicing there, she says.

The studio's name refers to the flowering plant Yarrow, a native medicinal plant to the Northern Hemisphere with a tall, soft stem, feather-like leaves, and bunches of tiny white blossoms. Galis says she incorporated it into the studio's name because "it's a hardy plant that grows in disturbed areas to bring balance to the soil. After I chose the name I also learned that Yarrow is used to induce a sweat and is an anti-inflammatory."

In the near future, Galis says she'd like to see the business flourish as a community yoga and wellness center, and hopes eventually to open additional studios here.

She says she's also been asked to teach yoga classes for patients with Parkinson's disease and multiple sclerosis for the benefit it provides through gentle and slow movements.

She also plans soon to offer some basic yoga classes for children, to be taught in the smaller studio so parents in the Bikram-inspired class can bring their kids, too. Some of her clients also have suggested that she offer meditation classes at Yarrow.