••••••••Bikram Choudhury
Yogiraj Bikram Choudhury is the founder of the worldwide Yoga College of India™. Born in Calcutta in 1946, Bikram began Yoga at the age of four with Bishnu Ghosh, brother of Paramahansa Yogananda (Autobiography of a Yogi, founder of the Self Realization Fellowship in Los Angeles). 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.

At seventeen, an injury to his knee during a weight-lifting accident brought the prediction from leading European doctors that he would never walk again. Not accepting their pronouncement, he had himself carried back to Bishnu Ghosh's school, for he knew that if anyone could help to heal his knee, it was his teacher. Six months later, his knee had totally recovered. Ghosh was a celebrated physical culturist and the first to scientifically document Yoga's ability to cure chronic physical ailments and heal the body.

Bikram was asked by Ghosh to start several Yoga schools in India. There Bikram came into his own. The schools were so successful that at Bishnu's request Bikram traveled to Japan and opened two more. He has since brought his curative methods of Yoga therapy around the world.
••••••••The Yoga
Back to Top By Design

Nothing about Bikram's Beginning Yoga Class™ is haphazard. It is a twenty-six asana series designed to scientifically warm and stretch muscles, ligaments and tendons in the order in which they should be stretched. To hop into Cobra Pose, for instance, without having prepared the necessary muscles, could have the same unhappy results as doing an over-hasty back flip.

So follow the exercises in order, exactly as Bikram directs, and you won't go wrong. Bikram's twenty-six exercises systematically move fresh, oxygenated blood to one hundred percent of your body, to each organ and fiber, restoring all systems to healthy working order, just as Nature intended. Proper weight, muscle tone, vibrant good health, and a sense of well-being will automatically follow.

Your Progress

How quickly you progress will depend entirely on you -- upon your natural ability to a small extent, but mostly upon the honest time and effort you give to Yoga. It will have little to do with how "perfectly" you can do the poses. (Few of us ever do the poses "perfectly.") Instead, it will have to do with how well you understand what you are trying to accomplish in each pose, how honestly you try to accomplish your goal, and how supple your muscles and joints have become in comparison to the point at which you began. In Yoga there is no standard of comparison except yourself. Perfect is the best you can do that day.

Bikram teaches you not only the ideal pose - how you will eventually be able to do it - but also the reality - telling you what problems you will have as you try to do the pose, what clues will help you make rapid progress, and where you might be tempted to "cheat," thus depriving yourself of the benefit of doing the pose properly. Bikram explains to you, in his inimitable humorous and informative way, how his scientifically designed series of twenty-six poses will enhance mind and body, relax, strengthen, reshape, and heal all of you in 90 minutes.


The Benefits

You may be wondering what Bikram means when he says he can "cure" people with his yoga. In reality, he explains, there is no such thing as a cure. Doctors say they have cured a patient when they have removed the symptoms of a particular problem. But if you are cured of the flu on Monday, no one in the world can guarantee that on Friday you won't get the flu again.

And so when Bikram speaks of curing chronic diseases such as arthritis or slipped disc, he is saying that if you faithfully follow his directions, you will be relieved of your symptoms of discomfort. That is the only "cure" anyone can offer.

But Yoga offers two guarantees with the cure:
Guarantee One: If you continue to perform Bikram's Beginning Yoga Class™ regularly-all twenty-six poses--exactly as directed--the chronic symptoms will not return.
Guarantee Two: If you don't continue your Yoga faithfully, fully, or as directed, your symptoms will return.

It is for this reason that the Benefits of each separate exercise will be given no great emphasis in the body of "Bikram's Beginning Yoga class"™ book. Bikram does not wish to tempt readers to laziness or half measures. For instance those poses marked as good for slipped disc are, it is true, specifically good for correcting that condition. Done alone, however, they will not cure slipped disc. It is Bikram's complete series of exercises that "cures."
Visit the Bikram Yoga website: www.bikramyoga.com

For more information on the Benefits of each pose click here.