Bikram Yoga and Bikram's amazing story

The founder of the worldwide Yoga College of India, Bikram Choudhury was born in Calcutta 58 years ago.



He started learning Yoga at the age of 4 with Bishnu Ghosh, the brother of Yogananda Paramahansa, author of "Autobiography of a Yogi" and founder of the Self Realization Fellowship. Bikram practiced yoga four to six hours a day with six thousand other students at Ghosh's College of Physical Education in Calcutta; and at the age of thirteen, he won the National India Yoga contest. He was undefeated for three years.

As a result of an injury to one of his knees at 17, leading European doctors said that he would never walk again.



Refusing to accept their verdict, he had himself carted back to Bishnu Ghosh's school. He felt that if anyone could help heal him, it would be his teacher. 6 months later, his knee totally recovered, Bikram was on the road to success.



The first man to scientifically document Yoga's ability to cure chronic physical ailments and heal the body, Ghosh was a celebrated physical enthusiast.

Ghosh asked Bikram to start Yoga schools in India, where Bikram came into his own. The schools were so successful that Bikram had to travel to Japan and open two more schools there, at Bishnu's bidding. Since then, his techniques have led to curative methods of Yoga therapy the world over.

Hailing from a poor village in Bihar, Bikram Choudhury made a name for himself as Hollywood's fitness guru and earned millions from his worldwide yoga franchise. But the path to worldly success earned him a number of enemies as well. Wearing a pair of short gold spandex shorts and a diamond studded Rolex, at 60 Bikram Choudhury, sits enthroned behind an enormous ivory-inlaid desk in the office of his world headquarters at Beverly Hills.

Draped in an orange and black tiger-striped towel he sits almost victoriously on a royal chair. He says it reminds him of the wild animals wandering about the forests around his native village in Bihar. Today he reclines under framed photographs of movie star pals (Elizabeth Taylor, Shirley MacLaine), discussing his vast wealth and multi- talents; his long black hair rolling down his naked, muscled shoulders. He has reason to feel amazed at his own fame and fortune. For, even though he sits in Hollywood, at the hub of the brash new world that is capitalist America, Choudhury has earned millions of dollars from a 5,000 year-old Indian tradition through promoting spiritual rather than worldly aspirations. He has made it in the world of Yoga.