Jared McCann Went From Partying to National Yoga Champion

Piotr Redlinski for The New York Times

Jared McCann incorporates an industrial chain into his yoga routine at home. More Photos »

When Jared McCann was 12, he was the only kid in his Southern Baptist church in Hawaii not to be baptized. One Sunday, during the traditional altar call, his mother whispered, “Jared, don’t you feel Jesus calling at your heart?”

McCann listened respectfully, but when he heard no voice, he refused to bend.

“I’ve never been one to follow along,” he said.

In 2007, at 26, he chose his own style of baptism — a 105-degree heat bath with his own sweat serving as holy water.

McCann left family in Hawaii and a Japanese and business degree in Texas to live in Manhattan, a lifelong dream. He worked at a SoHo boutique by day, feasted at Prune by night, and partied around the clock with his drug-addict boyfriend.

“I was exploring every dark corner that I wanted to,” he said.

Until he was sick of it. One morning, he rolled from the bed to the floor in a posture similar to one he would soon know as virasana, or hero pose.

“On my knees, I said, ‘God, whatever, I don’t even know if anyone is there, but I need help because I’m miserable, and I want to change this,’ ” he said.

Three days later, a friend took him to Bikram Lower East Side, a yoga studio known for its intense heat and its more intense owner, Tricia Donegan, a local organizer of USA Yoga Federation’s annual yoga asana competition. In that steamy furnace, McCann’s conversion began.

McCann, now 31, grew into the 2012 national yoga asana champion. He will represent the United States this weekend in Los Angeles at the Bishnu Charan Ghosh Cup, the international yoga asana competition founded by Rajashree Choudhury, the wife of Bikram. Yogis from more than 20 countries will compete for titles in men’s, women’s and youth divisions.

“I saw he had something special from the first moment I saw him onstage,” said Mary Jarvis, a coach of seven world champions since 2003, when the competition began.

“But he was definitely rough around the edges.”

McCann has no serious background in athletics; he is a classically trained pianist with a pop album called The Dungeon. He is not a Bikram instructor, like most competitors, but teaches at Yoga to the People, a studio being sued by Bikram for copyright infringement.

He never studied with a single teacher or a single style continuously. While he enjoys his kooky competitive yoga friends, as he calls them, he often trains alone at his tiny studio, which is furnished with little more than two yoga mats, a keyboard, a blender and an industrial chain in the kitchen from which he hangs, restoring like a bat after a night of flying.

These days McCann concocts ways to turn a six-month supply of coconut water — a perk of being a national champion — into a cocktail party and wonders how best to inspire others.

“I used to be a monster and that caused a lot of suffering,” he said. “Being accountable is painful in a different way.”

After McCann won the national title in New York in March, USA Yoga — whose goal is to one day have yoga asana represented in the Olympics — assigned him a publicist, offered two endorsement possibilities (jewelry and ice packs), and sent him to a media-training course where he learned to praise yoga’s potential positive impact on Americans’ health.

In April he flew to San Francisco to train with Jarvis, a former college cheerleader and a 28-year Bikram instructor. Her assigned regimen of daily practices sounds like a wayward circus menagerie: one-handed peacocks, full cobras, rabbits and scorpions.

“My practice has improved so much in just two months, but I’m no monk,” McCann said. “Some days I just want to hang out, smoke pot and play music, and then I just don’t have time to do those drop-backs in the morning.

“Maybe one day I’ll be there, but for now I just really enjoy life.”

One might question that assessment, considering McCann has lemon water for breakfast, a smoothie for lunch, tablespoons of almond butter for sustenance and trains for several hours in between.