If you’ve read anything about Bikram yoga in the past year, it probably hasn’t been good. Newspapers everywhere have been devoting column inches to its founder Bikram Choudhury’s current crusade to sue all those he believes to be using his name in vain – setting up schools he hasn’t approved and taking liberties with the 26 poses in the specific sequence that he has copyrighted.
He famously told Business 2.0 magazine: “I have balls like atom bombs, two of them, 100 megatons. Nobody fucks with me.” Not a typically yogic attitude, you might think.
But what is Bikram yoga?
The sequence of 26 poses, comprised mostly of balancing and back-strengthening exercises with no upper body poses, is performed twice in a room heated to around 100 degrees. The idea behind the hot room is to allow muscles to remain relaxed and also to rid the body of toxins and helps you to get deeper into the poses. Bikram invented this sequence when his career in weight-lifting was cut short due by an accident that crushed both his knees when he was only 20.
He had been studying yoga since the age of four and, after the injury, he returned to his guru, Bishnu Ghosh, and, under his guidance, created the series of 26 postures that returned him to full health. His system is the result of three years of work with scientists at the Tokyo Unversity Hospital and combines Eastern philosophy with Western medical knowledge of the body.
It works on the concept that you cannot know the spiritual until you can control the physical. This may explain why his classes seem to be part yoga and part aerobics, with the teacher calling intsructions at you from the front of the room rather than guiding you through the postures. In recent years Bikram has overtaken Ashtanga as the yoga to be doing. Everyone from Alexander McQueen to the late George Harrison and even Michael Jackson are supposedly enjoy getting sweaty in the name of yoga. But has Bikram’s success gone to his head?
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In January last year, Bikram paid out $500,000 for a lawyer to trademark his sequence of postures and the word-for-word dialogue explaining how to do them. His style of yoga is now copyrighted and Bikram has been sending letter to studios across the States fining those who he believes are infringing this copyright. Every infringement will cost the perpetrator $150,000. They include not going by the name Bikram’s Yoga College of India, teaching with music or taking liberties with the order of the poses and failuire to pay the fines will result in a lawsuit. Bikram told Business 2.0 that “people were doing illegal things. I had to stop them.”
It does seem that more and more studio owners across the States will be left with no option but to beg if Bikram plans to see these “cease and desist” orders through to the courts. Though interestingly lawyers are now saying that although Bikram may have obtained copyright that doesn’t mean his claims of infringement will stand up in a court of law. As his sequence was passed on to him by his guru, Bishnu Gosh, it could be said that this information was in the public domain rather than the intellectual property of Bikram himself. According to copyright lawyer Ken Swezey, of New York firm Cowan, DeBeats, Abrahams & Sheppard “copyright doesn’t mean that Choudhury’s assertions will hold up in court. Copyright law protects ‘expression’, not ideas or processes. A court would have to be convinced that a sequence of the exercises is original, protectable ‘expression’ rather than merely a collection of factual material.”
How was it for us?
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Laura McCreddie (regular astanga yoga practitioner)
" I’d done yoga before and thought I was reasonably fit but nothing you have ever done before prepares you for bikram yoga. First there’s the room, its hot. Sounds obvious but until you walk into a room heated to 105 degrees you have no idea how hot. After just five seconds you feel the sweat start to prickle on your skin and you get an overwhelming desire to remove your clothing. I can now understand why Bikram takes his classes dressed in nothing but a pair of rather skimpy trunks. The instructor doesn’t so much guide you through the poses as order you through them. Standing at the front with a microphone headset on counting the seconds you have to remain in the poses I feel like I am in yoga boot camp.
Ten minutes in and you can’t remember what fresh air felt like. The room has reached Sahara like temperatures and all you can think about is the length of time you have to hold a pose. Hearing the count down that accompanies every posture makes you feel like you are in a really cruel aerobics class. Half an hour through and everyone is glistening like spit roast pigs. It is becoming harder to breathe and the heat has intensified and, become humid with the sweat of 20 people.
Every movement induces nausea. You begin to understand why Bikram refers to the room as a torture chamber. The strange thing is that the poses aren’t actually that challenging on the whole, but in the heat everything becomes an effort, even lying down. After about forty minutes it stops being about the yoga and instead becomes a psychological battle between my desire to run out of the room and throw a bucket of ice water over myself and my bloody minded determination to stay in there for the entire 90 minutes.
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The rest of the class passes in a blur of sweat, nausea and pain. All I want to do is lie down and die quietly. The teacher keeps telling us how many poses we have left and how well we are doing. I feel like I am hallucinating. When we are allowed to lie in savasana I can’t face a moment longer in the room and head to the shower. For the rest of the day I feel like I am going through the menopause as hot flushes alternate between bouts of feeling exceptionally cold. In hindsight I felt that while the class was gruelling, it didn’t give my body the stretch I usually get from an ashtanga class. There seemed to be no real continuity and I really wasn’t sure about the bouncing forward bend that you had to do in between every seated pose – I thought everyone had decided in the 80s that bouncing into a stretch wasn’t good for you at all. "
Alex Jenner-Fust (regular Sivananda practitioner)
"My first Bikram class was, as the teacher promised, "living hell". It's not like any other yoga I have tried, and felt more like an aerobics class as the teacher gave instructions through a headset microphone to the dutiful attendees. As a beginner the pace felt brisk, which helped in that the pain didn't last too long, but also meant I didn't feel I was getting deeper into the poses. The heat is relentless, the bottle of water I tried to replace the sweat with was soon warm beyond refreshment. The positions are complemented with a running commentary from the teacher that is yoga philosophy mixed with pop psychology. We are reminded to 'focus on one thing you like about yourself' in one particular pose. At another point the teacher promises 'nice immune system, nice body, nice life', showing that Bikram isn't just about the physical and can benefit mind, body and spirit. However these meditative moments are few and far between. Pranayama breathing exercises are done at the beginning and end of the class, but these also felt rushed. By the end of the class my clothes are drenched in sweat and hardly have enough energy to pick myself up and walk to the shower. My face has reached a shade of puce I never imagined possible. But I've pushed myself and reached the end without giving up completely which is satisfying. Apparently the second time is easier. It must be a bit like childbirth because just one day later, despite the aching reminders of what happened, I'm considering subjecting myself to the heat once again."
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Jamie Heseltine (regular Bikram practitioner)
"I practice Bikram for a number of reasons. One is the health benefits, it is the easiest way to give a good massage to my internal organs. The heat makes me feel good, I feel I am detoxing thoroughly and I am taken deeper into postures because my muscles are really relaxed. Also I have noticed that I find it quite easy to meditate in the classes which is a really pleasing development since meditation is normally difficult for me. On the other hand, once a male instructor reprimanded me over a microphone in front of the class for doing a slight variation on a posture. I have attended literally hundreds of yoga classes and I have never heard a yoga teacher tell someone off before. I don't think a professional yoga teacher should do that, it brings in the ego. Since then I have started to think of Bikram as an exercise, not yoga. One of the instructors also described it as 'no nonsense' yoga which implies that all other yoga is nonsense, which, to me, is not very yogic. However I enjoy the discipline of set postures and the discipline of the practice - some teachers can be quite military on occassions which keeps you going and I get a real sense of achievement from finishing classes."
Where to do Bikram
Bikram Epping - recently re-opened
Bikram Chiswick Offering 27 classes a week in an attractive studio. Owner Francesca has also just opened Bikram Ibiza.
Urban Bikram, Dalston Appropriately located in an old sweat shop. Great showers, changing and chill out facilities.
Bikram Brighton/Sussex Classes take place in an old perfume factory. Offer two daily sessions Monday – Saturday, only one on Sunday.
City Bikram Most popular studio in London. Limited changing facilities try to arrive early as there is usually a big crowd to get in.
Bikram West Located near to the very centric Queens Park you have to pay for parking until 6:30pm, after that it’s free!
Bikram North Affiliated to the the City and West branches of the Bikram Yoga College of India.
