Who is 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 India’s most-renowned physical culturist at that time, Bishnu Ghosh, the younger brother of Paramahansa Yogananda (Author of the most popular book on Yoga, The Autobiography of a Yogi, and founder of the Self-Realization Fellowship in Los Angeles).

Bikram practiced Yoga at least four to six hours every day at Ghosh’s College of Physical Education in Calcutta. At the age of thirteen, he won the National India Yoga Championship. He was undefeated for the following three years and retired as the undisputed All-India National Yoga Champion.

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. 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.

Bikram Choudhury has always spoken the truth…and the truth to this master teacher is yoga.  Bikram’s students, from Japan’s former Prime Minister Tanaka, and former President Richard Nixon, to a range of celebrities, including Shirley Maclaine, Raquel Welch, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, John McEnroe, Jamie Lee Curtis, Quincy Jones, and Brooke Sheilds, have extended their careers, healed themselves, and imbued their lives with energy, thanks to hatha yoga.  In addition to relaxing and strengthening the body, Bikram has seen yoga’s ability to cure the most terminal patients.  Although Bikram and his schools have taught over 25 million students worldwide, the yoga master is especially proud of his reputation with the top medical professionals from the world’s hospitals who send their cancer and heart patients for his unique therapeutic yoga treatments.