Bikram Choudhury

I read this out of curiosity about Hot Yoga, and thinking that I might find some inspiration for my own practice in his sequence. I wound up being impressed by the end portion of the book, where he talks about ethics and the stages of life.

But by the time I had reached that point in the book, I was thoroughly disenchanted with Bikram. He takes full credit for all of his student's successes, but takes no responsibility for their failures (sure, he says, some are injured in his classes, but it's because “...students overdo it, trying to accomplish too much too soon..." (page 74). That's dangerous.

And, I have done some additional reading about him. Seems he's got a copyright on his sequence, which the U.S. Patent office is now saying they should never have issued, but the past is past. On this basis, he is suing a former student for millions of dollars for copyright infringement. In interviews on the subject, he says that he will crush his former student like a bug (but using language that I will not repeat here). Frankly, it sounds very out of step with what he writes about ethics, and it's very unbecoming of a yoga teacher. (He makes millions of dollars a year, can hardly claim to be hurting financially, and the copyright should not have been issued – he might well win on the technicality, but an enlightened person would drop it!)

In the end, I probably could have learned from this book, could have taken a few lessons for my own practice. But it's not worth the effort to separate wheat from chaff here: there are other, far more respectable teachers out there.… (mere)