I hate to sweat, can I practice yoga in an air-conditioned room ?

As a teacher I always got question like this. I remembered when I turned off the air-condition and left one fan turned on at the back of the room. Some students rolled their eyes.

Well let's explore why I do not want to practice under the cooling air from a/c.

When we practice pranayama ( breathing ) together with the body movement. Our body will be heated up. In fact certain pranayama techniques’ purpose is to increases body heat. So why we need to heat up our body ? Our muscles can stretch better when is heated up and when we have more oxygen in the blood ( it will be another write up about not holding our breath while practicing asana - yoga postures)

When our body is heated up, our pore are opened. Some people would get sick when the cool air from the a/c went direct into the body through the wide opened pores.

Another reason is, when we have the cool air around us, our body would cool down and it will be harder to stretch the muscles again. That would limit some of the mobility and flexibility we needed for certain asanas.

Or let’s think of it this way. Yoga is originated from India few thousand years ago. The ancient sage would not have the luxury of a/c in the cave where they practice.