Bikram Choudhury

Yogiraj Bikram Choudhury is the founder of the worldwide Yoga College of India™. Born in Calcutta in 1946, Bikram began practicing 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 pronouncements, 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 completely healed. 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 Ghosh‛s request Bikram travelled to Japan and opened two more.

Combining Eastern doctrine with three years of working with Western doctors and a scientist at Tokyo University Hospital, Bikram perfected his comprehensive system of 26 postures.

Bikram has scientifically demonstrated that yoga can regenerate tissue and heal chronic ailments. Bikram has been teaching his method of classical Hatha yoga for over 40 years and today you can find his schools over the world.