Although many gyms and yoga studios may offer "hot" yoga classes, the real hot yoga phenomenon began with teacher Bikram Choudhury, whose personal story of adversity and healing through yoga led him to create a yoga practice. Hot, or Bikram, yoga features a heated room where your muscles are loosened for deeper stretches and you sweat profusely.
Beginnings
Bikram Choudhury was born in Calcutta, India, in 1946, according to Mind Body Sanctuary. He began practicing yoga at age 4 and won the National India Yoga Contest at age 13, according to Bikram Yoga, Choudhury's official website. A natural athlete, he also was a marathon runner and champion weightlifter who competed in the 1964 Olympic games in Tokyo, Japan.
Injury
At age 17, Choudhury experienced a knee injury while weightlifting that injured his knee to the point where physicians told him he would not walk, according to ABC of Yoga. Choudhury asked to be carried to Bishnu Ghosh, who is the brother of famed yoga practitioner Paramahansa Yoganada who wrote "Yoga, the Philosophy of a Yogi." He asked Ghosh to help him and used his yoga practice to strengthen his knee muscles and was able to walk after six months of intensive yoga therapy.
School and Principles
After moving to the United States, Choudhury opened the Yoga College of India in Beverly Hills, California, in 1974. He pioneered his hot yoga style, heating the yoga room to 105 degrees Fahrenheit with the humidity at 40 percent. This loosens your muscles and causes you to sweat, helping you to relieve stress and tension. Choudhury believes that when your muscles are warm, you can reshape them and keep your body healthy. He has franchised his yoga poses into a 26-pose practice performed over the course of 90 minutes, according to Time.com. The poses are based on hatha yoga. Pose examples include the triangle, bow and cobra, which are basic yoga poses made more difficult by the hot temperature. A hot yoga session starts with standing poses, backbend poses, forward bends and twists. Poses are repeated twice each session and teachers are not to offer physical, hands-on correction of poses, according to Bikram Yoga.
Certification
Choudhury and his instructors currently teach seminars and posture clinics, training instructors in the methods of Bikram or hot yoga. Only certified instructors are permitted to lead these classes. Bikram-approved studios must be called Bikram Yoga or Bikram Yoga College of India, according to the Bikram Yoga website. However, some yoga studios may offer a hot yoga class. This yoga class is inspired by Bikram's principle of heating a room before performing yoga poses. However, you may not necessarily be taking a Bikram yoga class.
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