Bikram Choudhury (born February 10, 1946) is an Indian yoga teacher and the founder of Bikram Yoga, a form of hot yoga performed in a series of 26 hatha yoga postures done in a hot (40 °C (104 °F)) environment. Bikram Choudhury began studying yoga at the age of 4. At 12 he was the youngest ever national champion of India, holding the title 3 consecutive years until Bishnu Ghosh, his guru, asked him to stop competing for the sake of the other participants. Bikram went on to pursue an athletic career as a marathon runner and a champion Olympic style weightlifter, setting world record lifts and competing in the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo.

At the age of 17, an injury to his knee during a weightlifting accident brought the prediction from leading doctors that he would never walk again. With the guidance of his guru, Bikram created his 26 pose series which restored his health. Quickly he...

“Yoga is the only exercise in the world you can do at any age. There is always some posture that will improve your health, mind and soul.” “No matter how old or sick or out of shape, you can still stretch and have a new beginning with yoga.” “While it energizes 100% of the body, it strengthens and develops the mind as well.” Bikram’s yoga class is a fun, demanding and physically challenging 26 pose (Asana) series that works the entire body. It is a beginning yoga series that is suitable for all levels, health conditions and ages. It is a 90 minute class performed in a room heated to approximately 105°F. It is designed to systematically move fresh oxygenated blood to every cell in the entire body, as well as work the entire spine through which the entire nervous system operates, thereby restoring all systems to their natural working order. Bikram’s basic premise behind the yoga is: if you...

Yogiraj Bikram Choudhury is the founder of the worldwide Yoga College of India™. Born in Calcutta in 1946, Bikram began yoga at the age of four with India’s most-renowned physical culturist at that time, Bishnu Ghosh, the younger brother of Paramahansa Yogananda (Author of the most popular book on yoga, The Autobiography of a Yogi, and founder of the Self-Realization Fellowship in Los Angeles).

Bikram practiced yoga at least four to six hours every day at Ghosh’s College of Physical Education in Calcutta. At the age of thirteen, he won the National India Yoga Championship. He was undefeated for the following three years and retired as the undisputed All-India National Yoga Champion.

At seventeen, an injury to his knee during a weight-lifting accident brought the prediction from leading European doctors that he would never walk again. Not accepting their pronouncement, he had himself...

Bikram Choudhury–the short, chiseled and youthfully radiant 62-year-old inventor of “Bikram Yoga”–it could be one of his several dozen Rolls-Royces or Bentleys, fine complements to his 8,000-square-foot mansion in Beverly Hills. His taste in food is more modest: Choudhury says he subsists on one small high-protein meal after midnight and less than three hours of sleep, though he does have an appetite for diamond-encrusted Rolex watches.

As he tells it, he started his first studio in the U.S. in 1972 with the help of President Richard Nixon, who, after following Choudhury’s advice for coping with phlebitis (by doing poses and taking near-scalding baths), granted him a U.S. visa and found taxpayer money to build his first three schools.
Choudhury’s yoga routine involves a 90-minute series of 26 poses and two breathing exercises performed in 105-degree rooms. About 350 U.S. studios market...