Bikram Choudhury

Bikram Choudhury was born in Calcutta, British India in 1944. He claimed to have begun studying yoga under Bishnu Charan Ghosh,[2] and to have won the National India Yoga Championship for three consecutive years in his teens.[3] However, the first ever Yoga competition in India took place in 1974, long after he had left the country.[3] Recent evidence from interviews for the podcast series "30for30" on Choudhury (2018, ESPN) and from Jerome Armstrong's book, Calcutta Yoga, have proven his claims both of early training under Ghosh and of winning the National India Yoga Championships to be false.[4][5]

Choudhury developed a 26-posture series, by piecing together existing sequences from over 500 poses and variations created by Ghosh, and put it into his signature series which takes about ninety minutes to perform.[3] The 104 °F (40 °C) heat in which Bikram Yoga is practiced is, according to Choudhury, meant to mimic the climate of India.[3] Choudhury was closely associated with America's competitive yoga from its inception; the annual Bishnu Charan Ghosh Cup is named for the man he claimed was his teacher.[6]

Choudhury leading a Bikram Yoga class in Utkatasana at the Los Angeles Convention Center in 2003

In 1971 Choudhury emigrated to America and began to teach yoga. He opened his first studio in Los Angeles, teaching his own style of yoga.[7] The author Brigid Delaney describes the atmosphere around him as "fawning":[8] he was, she writes, treated reverentially, as if he were a guru, though he was a "braggart" openly boasting about the film stars he had taught and the money he had made.[8] He was rude and insulting to students;[8] in Netflix's 2019 documentary film, Bikram: Yogi, Guru, Predator directed by Eva Orner, he uses abusive language and jeers at overweight pupils.[8] The critic Adrian Horton writes that the film "visually synthesizes decades of archival footage with first-person testimony and filmed court depositions into a devastating portrait of an abusive narcissist protected from consequences by his own inflated cult of personality, wealth and professional power within the niche world of hot yoga."[1]

All the same, Bikram Yoga expanded rapidly across America. In the 1990s, he began offering nine-week teacher certification courses, training thousands of instructors. Bikram Yoga studios were founded in many countries around the world.[9] Choudhury taught celebrities such as the pop singers Madonna and Lady Gaga, and the footballer David Beckham, and claimed to have taught yoga to American presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton.[10]

From 2009, Choudhury claimed that the series of 26 postures of his yoga practice, Bikram Yoga, was under copyright and could not be taught or presented by anyone whom he had not authorized.[11] Choudhury began making copyright claims on Bikram Yoga in 2012. In 2011 Choudhury started a lawsuit against Yoga to the People, a competing yoga studio founded by a former student and with a location near one of the Bikram Yoga studios in New York City. As a result of that lawsuit, the United States Copyright Office issued a clarification that yoga postures (asanas) could not be copyrighted, and that Yoga to the People and others could continue to teach the series.[12]

Choudhury assisting a pupil in Paschimottanasana in his own style

Choudhury has faced lawsuits alleging sexual harassment, assault, racism and homophobia.[13][14] By January 2014, five women were suing Bikram Choudhury with allegations including sexual harassment and sexual assault.[15] Two lawsuits accusing Bikram Choudhury of rape were filed in May 2013, with other counts of sexual battery, false imprisonment, discrimination, and harassment. One suit describes a cult-like atmosphere where members of Choudhury's inner circle help him find young women to assault.[16] Another suit claims that Choudhury recruits volunteers from overseas who are "so in fear of defendant Bikram Choudhury's wrath that they will travel to the US and risk violating immigration laws in order to serve him."[10] In 2016, Choudhury was ordered to pay a $6.5 million judgment for similar charges.[17]

Minakshi Jafa-Bodden served as Head of Legal and International Affairs from Spring 2011 to March 13, 2013, when she was "abruptly and unlawfully terminated". During the two years that Jafa-Bodden worked closely with Choudhury, she was both the victim of and witness to Choudhury's "severe, ongoing, pervasive and offensive conduct" toward women, homosexuals, African Americans and other minorities. Bikram Yoga teacher Sarah Baughn filed a sexual harassment suit in March, just before Jafa-Bodden was fired.[18] On January 25, 2016, a jury awarded Jafa-Bodden $924,500 against Choudhury in actual damages, finding that Choudhury acted with malice, oppression and fraud.[19] On January 26, 2016, the jury awarded Jafa-Bodden an additional $6.4 million in punitive damages.[20]

In May 2016, Choudhury returned to India where he began opening yoga studios.[21] In October 2016, Choudhury's attorney stated that his client would not return to the United States to defend himself in person at the other pending court cases.[22] In a late 2016 interview on Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel, Bikram responded to the accusations by asking, "Why would I have to harass women? People spend one million dollars for a drop of my sperm", and calling his accusers "trash" and "psychopaths".[23]

In May 2017, a Los Angeles judge issued a warrant for Choudhury's arrest, on the grounds that he had fled the country without paying any of the $7 million owed to Jafa-Bodden in compensation and punitive damages.[24] The New York Daily News reported that luxury vehicles and other items of Choudhury's had been moved out of state, and that a court order preventing him from moving any of his other possessions out of warehouses in Florida and Nevada had been issued.[25]

Despite Choudhury's departure in disgrace, people continued to attend his teacher trainings, such as in Murcia, Spain and Acapulco, Mexico in 2019. The yoga teacher Jessamyn Stanley called it "bizarre" that people would still take his trainings after all the rape allegations against him.[26]