| Bikram Choudhury, the founder of the Yoga College of India™, was born in Calcutta in 1946. He began practicing yoga at the age of four with India's most-renowned physical culturist at the time, Bishnu Ghosh, the younger brother of Paramahansa Yogananda (author of "The Autobiography of a Yogi"). Ghosh was the first to scientifically document yoga's ability to cure chronic physical ailments and heal the body. Bikram practiced yoga 4-6 hours a day at Ghosh's College of Physical Education until at the age of 13, he became the youngest contestant ever to win the National India Yoga Championship. He was undefeated for the following 3 years and retired as the undisputed All-India National Yoga Champion. At 17, he severely injured his knee during a weightlifting accident, leading European doctors to predict that he would never walk again. Not accepting their diagnosis, he returned to Bishnu Ghosh's school under whose guidance his knee completely recovered within 6 months. Bikram was then 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. Bikram arrived in the United States in 1973 at the invitation of President Nixon and opened his first school in San Francisco before moving to Los Angeles. He devised a standardized series of Hatha yoga poses that would address the most common health problems and still be easy enough for beginners in the West. Hot yoga, which would later be known as Bikram Yoga, proved enormously popular, even life-changing for many practitioners who loved its intensity and its discipline. Bikram's first book Bikram's Beginning Yoga Class was published in the late seventies, and he continued to successfully teach his yoga to professional athletes, celebrities, politicians, and others. It was not until 1994 that he began offering a full-time, intensive training course for future Bikram Yoga instructors, laying the groundwork for the rapid expansion of his unique series of asanas across the globe. Today, Bikram Yoga is one of the most popular forms of yoga practiced, with over 500 certified branch studios worldwide spanning all continents. For further information, please visit www.bikramyoga.com.
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