31/05/2011 The ‘hot yoga’ guru loses his cool | The …

The ‘hot yoga’ guru loses his cool

Damian Whitworth
Last updated May 31 2011 12:01AM

Bikram Choudhury, the founder of ‘hot yoga’, claims

to have millions of devotees and taught a pope and
cured a president. So why did he lose his cool with our
writer?
I hold my hand up. I made a mistake. One should be wary of approaching an interview
with preconceptions and that is what I had when I met Bikram Choudhury, one of the
world’s most famous yoga gurus. I expected to find someone who radiated calm and
inner peace; a serene, humble, wise man who would guide me gently through his world
view and offer a sense of why millions of people are devoted to his brand of hot yoga. I
wanted a glimpse of the path to physical and mental wellbeing that he promises.

I certainly came away enlightened, but by the time the great yogi had showered me
with verbal abuse and thrown me out of his hotel suite I was still some distance away
from achieving perfect spiritual tranquillity.

It had all started so promisingly. Bikram Choudhury is the eponymous hero of the hot
yoga phenomenon that has swept the globe, creating legions of devotees while dividing
the yoga world. Indian-born, he arrived in America almost 40 years ago after his guru
sent him out to spread the word about the benefits of yoga. He began teaching his set of
26 yoga poses on the West Coast in rooms heated to 105F.

His followers (and there are two of them sitting near me in my office) swear that
Bikram yoga builds a fit and supple body, can cure all manner of physical ills and
brings peace of mind. Other yoga practitioners believe that the competitive element he
stresses and the commercialisation of his brand are not true to the spirit of yoga.

During our interview he will make the extraordinary boast that “half a billion people
have benefited from Bikram in the past 50 years. Now 100 million people do Bikram
yoga on this Earth today. Directly, indirectly, legally, illegally”. He claims to have
healed a president, travelled with a pope and worked with Nasa.

He suggests there are about 5,000 studios worldwide run by people he has trained (his
website lists 550, including 16 in Britain and others on the way). He says that there
could be 20,000 “illegal” copycat studios. Even if he is exaggerating there is no doubt
that he has a huge following. Fans of Bikram yoga reportedly include Elle Macpherson,
Daniel Craig, George Clooney and Andy Murray.

Not everyone in the yoga world thinks that hot yoga is good for you and I found the
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prospect of twisting myself into knots in a sauna unappealing. The Fulham studio I
visited was lined with mirrors and had a whiff of stagnant sweat. Some 40 women in
bikinis and men in shorts lined up on mats. The young male teacher told me that in my
first session I should take it easy and aim to stay in the sweltering room for the full 90
minutes. He took us through the poses, which are performed in a strict order to a
precise script. It was a constant job just to mop off the sweat and I had woozy moments
when I had to lie down and skip an exercise. But I was pleased to go the distance while
a couple of others fled.

By the time I arrive at the Grosvenor House hotel, on Park Lane, Mayfair, I am not
exactly ready to dedicate my life to the Bikram way, but I am feeling positive about
yoga and keen to meet the man behind the contortions.

I find Bikram in his suite with Olga Allon, the welcoming owner of three London Hot
Bikram yoga studios, and Richard Brooks, her friendly PR man.

Bikram arrived this morning from Johannesburg. He is sitting with his feet up on a
sofa, his legs tucked under a blanket, wearing a T-shirt and a bling-tastic watch
encrusted with diamonds, eating a room-service chicken sandwich and French fries. “I
am done,” he says, passing the plate to an assistant. “Half a sandwich in 24 hours.
That’s my life.”

We chat about my morning session. “You pretty good shape,” he says. “You are a
healthy man so you will not feel that bad. Sleep tonight like a baby. You might be
hungry. You feel energised. Hell is the only way to reach Heaven.”

Born in Calcutta, Bikram began yoga at the age of 4. His teacher was Bishnu Ghosh,
brother of Paramahansa Yoganda, the famous guru and author of Autobiography of a
Yogi. As a teenager Bikram won a national yoga contest three times and then began a
career as a weightlifter. He says yoga cured a knee injury that had threatened to stop
him walking. He began teaching yoga and took to closing the windows in the Calcutta
room to make it hotter so that students could stretch farther.

Gradually he developed the routine of 26 positions that he insists must be performed in

exactly the right order with the teacher keeping rigidly to a script. “It’s the only way it
works: 99 per cent [right] is 100 per cent wrong. Lie once [you] are a liar. Lie a million
times, still a liar. So one little mistake means everything wrong in the biochemistry.”

His is “the hardest physical work out in the world. I make Olympic gold medallist. I
make world champion. But when they come to my class they die”. He chuckles. So what
are the goals that Bikram devotees are working towards? “You want to live longer, yes?
How long you wish to live?”

“Er, 80?”

“Hundred. I will make you 100. I have proved it. Like you are still 30. That’s Bikram.
That’s why all come to me.”

He is 64 and still in impressive shape. He doesn’t remember the last time he had a
temperature. But there follows a strange outburst, which, in hindsight, I should have
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taken as a warning, when he describes his anger at the flight attendants on the plane
from Johannesburg over their failure to turn the air conditioning down. “Leaving today
I told them: ‘You guys will never learn’. I said: ‘You will all die. Look at your fat body’. I
yelled at them, I said: ‘You are 300lb, you can’t even walk. Why do you keep this god
damn f***ing air condition? I told you three times turn it down’. ‘We did’. I said: ‘No
you didn’t you, lie.’ You can put ten blankets doesn’t matter you inhale the cold air. My
nose closed, my throat choked.”

He explains to me that while yoga has been flourishing in India for thousands of years
he was the first guru from his country to research “medically” how each posture affects
internal organs. He claims to have spent ten years working with Nasa scientists on
research into the beneficial effects of hot yoga on those with reduced bone density.
Later, a Nasa spokesman tells me that this claim “keeps coming up. We are not aware
of any research that Mr Choudhury has done with Nasa scientists here regarding the
effect of his brand of yoga on bone density”.

Bikram certainly tells some amazing stories about his life. He says that the reason he
first went to America, from Japan, where he was teaching, was to treat President
Nixon, who was meeting Prime Minister Tanaka of Japan in Hawaii. Bikram says that
Nixon was suffering from phlebitis thrombosis in his left leg and that he [Bikram] was
flown in by military aircraft. “No passport, no visa, from Tokyo to Honolulu. Seven
hours later I am sitting with President Nixon. There’s all world famous doctors. They
say [we] will have to amputate [or] he will get gangrene, he will die. I give him seven
treatments in three days — he forget which one is the bad one. Who can explain this?
No doctors, no scientist. God cannot explain. But I prove every single day and because
it is a famous person it become big news.”

Tracking down records of this treatment is hard. It is well documented that Nixon was
treated for thrombosis in 1974. In his memoirs, Nixon’s personal physician John
Lungren refers to the President saying that he had suffered swelling in his leg during a
trip to Hawaii and a blood clot was diagnosed. But the President’s daily diary, in which
his day is meticulously recorded, contains no references to interactions between Nixon
and Bikram during the President’s 1972 trip to Honolulu. There are no documents at
the Nixon Presidential Library or the Richard Nixon Foundation relating to a meeting.
State Department records in the US National Archives contain no documents about
arrangements to bring Bikram from Japan to Honolulu.

Critics of Bikram yoga say that it is a decent workout but by turning it into a global,
profit-making brand he has lost the essence of yoga. Does it provide a fusion of the
mind, body and spirit? “Only Bikram get that,” Bikram insists. “Nothing works in your
life — body, mind spirit, business, family — you come to me. Indira Gandhi my student
from 1956 — my godmother. Indira used to say: ‘When you go to Bikram you reborn
once again’.”

I tentatively ask about the spiritual element of yoga. “I don’t even talk that subject. I
taught Pope. Pope Paul: 1962, one month he travelled with me all over India. I never
heard in English language anybody in the world can tell me what is definition of
spiritualism. So when they talk about spirit ‘don’t waste my time’.”

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The image of a teenage yogi and a pope travelling India together is an arresting one.
Pope Paul VI, who was elected in 1963, did make a pilgrimage to India, but it was for
three days to Bombay in 1964. Perhaps he spent a month on the road with Bikram at
some other time. Father Theodore Macerenhas, an Indian priest in charge of the Asia
department at the Vatican’s Council for Culture, says that he has no knowledge of such
a trip and nor do other veteran Vatican experts I contact.

Last week The Times asked Bikram for further information about his contact with
Nixon, his papal journey and his Nasa research but his office said that we had not given
him enough time to respond.

Bikram makes his money from training courses for yoga teachers who pay $7,000
(£4,250) for his nine-week programme. He has also started a process of selling studio
franchises. Bikram lives in Beverley Hills, with his wife Rajashree, an Indian yoga
champion, and their two children, in what is often described as a mansion, with a fleet
of luxury cars, including a Rolls-Royce that he says belonged to the Queen Mother and
a station wagon that belonged to George Harrison.

Yoga has made him wealthy. “Uh, not very wealthy. I don’t have any money because
over 50 per cent of my earning I do charity all over the world. Millions of dollars a
year.”

He thinks that some of the resentment of him comes from his success and high profile.
“People come to my class and tell me ‘I used to hate you.’ Why you hate me, you don’t
know me? ‘Oh, you are not a real yogi.’ What do you mean I am not a real yogi? What
good is the real yogi living in Himalaya cave meditating for 50 years? I live in society. I
give my whole life in this subject and I help millions of people. I am real yogi.”

I ask him what he makes of those people who have learnt from him and then set up
their own forms of yoga. Suddenly, he flips. “I don’t like to talk the negative things. My
every second is billion dollar. People get cancer and people die in chronic disease. You
know who is responsible for that? The media. You guys are kind of sick people. Only
you talk the bad things. Why people get chronic disease? High blood pressure? Thyroid
problem and cancers and Aids? Because they constantly see and listen negative things
that depress people and that destroy the biochemistry. Yoga controls that.

“I don’t give a shit what the f*** people think about me. They sick people. They are
idiot people, they are stupid people. I educate them. They don’t know who I am. They
are not me. People talk bad about Jesus. So what? Muslim doesn’t like Christian. White
people kill all the black people round the world. I don’t care. I only care I can keep you
alive a hundred years. That’s my job. That’s why pope come to me. Presidents come to
me. Whole world come to me. You came here with a negative attitude.”

I try to interject that we have talked about a lot of positive things, but he’s having none
of it. “I don’t have time to waste. I read human mind. I look at your eyes I know you
more than God knows you, your mother knows you, your father knows you. That’s my
speciality. You follow me? I know how is your stomach right now. I know how you are
going to ask the next questions. Thats how Bikram is. You follow me?”

Err, not really. He is ranting at me from the other end of the sofa so fast now that it is
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hard to keep up. He describes a medical invention he claims that he has made “so
nobody will die in breast cancer in the future. That’s my creation. You can’t even think
of it. I do something good for society. I don’t need this story. [I can] get million story a
day.”

I seek to divert him by asking about Andy Murray, who reportedly has used Bikram
yoga. “So interview Andy Murray. Interview the Williams sisters. I created them.
Interview Kobe Bryant, they will tell you.”

He launches into a story about how, years ago, a US journalist started asking questions
he regarded as negative. “I said ‘You know what, I don’t think a fat bitch [he spits out
the words] can write a good story about me. So come to my class, lose first 60lb then I’ll
give you interview’. She thinks because she’s a reporter I’m going to kiss her ass. But
she don’t know Bikram Choudhury. Mrs Gandhi also scared of me.”

He says the reporter took 120 lessons and lost 60lb. “Then she realise who is Bikram.
Because I kick her ass in my class. Jump on her. We become good friend. She write the
best story in my life and then her life change — she become another human being.”

I observe that it’s a beautiful day and suggest that we take a break and a walk over the
road to the park. “For you maybe beautiful, but you didn’t make my day. You are
young, nice, gentleman. You should have good life. But this kind of attitude you will
have shit life.”

The photographer is sitting in the room and I ask if we can do a photograph now. “No.
I’m not interested. It’s done. I don’t want you to write a story on me. I don’t need it. I
don’t like you. Have a nice day.”

As I am gathering my things he has an idea. “Do yoga for two years, come back again to
me, I’ll give you interview. Then I’ll make you best writer in whole Europe.”

“See you in two years,” I say. No doubt the omniscient Bikram knows I am lying. His
offer is tempting but one I can resist. I would be concerned that every time I pressed
my nose down to the mat and inhaled the stale sweat of the hundreds of Bikram
disciples who had previously prostrated themselves there, I would inevitably be
reminded of my meeting with their angry, egotistical and thoroughly disagreeable
guru.

Click on the ‘play’ button on the image above to hear Damian’s encounter
with Bikram

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