My Hollywood Guru

Jean R. Brink

Bikram Yoga takes its name from its founder, Bikram Choudhury, who was born in Calcutta, India, in 1944. This yoga, now renamed hot yoga, very likely in the interest of avoiding Bikram’s name, is practiced in a heated environment (104 degrees F +), hence the name, hot yoga. Netflix is now playing a documentary made in 2019 and enigmatically entitled, “Bikram: Yogi, Guru, Predator.” The documentary film with its contradictions, “Yogi” and “Guru,” and then the antithetical “Predator” epitomizes Bikram but does not do justice to his success. He managed to attract literally thousands of would-be teachers and studio owners to his teacher training sessions. In my 2003 session of Teacher Training, there were over a thousand participants including a barrister from London as well as participants from all over the United States. I was pals with a woman who went by the epithet “Rainbow Child” and slept on the beach while attending the University of Hawaii and with businesswomen from New Hampshire and Arizona who wanted to open their own studios.

I grew up in the Midwest—Indianapolis, Indiana—where animals sweat, men perspire, and women glow; women never did anything like weightlifting. I received an A in physical education because I made a sufficient, albeit very modest, effort. Women surely never sweated. By the time I grew up, times had changed, and there were more options for women. None of those options suited me: I never liked aerobics or step classes because of the loud music. I was hopelessly bewildered by “exercise” based on steps for dances which I had never learned. Loud music distracted me; my challenge was always to figure out what I was supposed to do—despite the noise generated by the music or tapes. My experience with yoga classes was more positive because there was less loud music. I liked the emphasis upon flexibility, but I was put off by pop psychology masquerading as spirituality. I don’t go to an exercise class to listen to someone preach inspirational aphorisms at me or encourage me to “love myself.” When the nurturing talk starts, I want to be somewhere else.

I began by taking yoga classes at Caltech in order to get exercise into my daily routine. I grew to enjoy Bikram yoga more than other kinds of yoga because the class took exactly ninety minutes and content-wise was always the same series of poses so that I could track my improvement. The heat was okay because I used to jog the canals in Tempe, AZ. I also liked the uniformity in the classes of Bikram yoga; Chicago classes were just like those in Scottsdale and Pasadena.

I do not recall when I decided to apply for teacher training or why some kind soul did not warn me that teacher training wasn’t a good choice for me. In my application, I wrote that I wanted to be able to manage my own workouts. I said something to the effect that I had purchased an assortment of exercise and yoga tapes, but never succeeded in watching a tape more than once. Without teacher training, I am not sure that I could profitably practice Bikram yoga on my own. In short, I wrote that teacher training would give me autonomy.

Probably no one read my successful, as it were, application for Bikram’s Yoga Teacher Training program; a merciful person would have cautioned me that I was being delusional. On the application I wrote the truth, that I expected to learn many of the things in teacher training that I probably would have learned had I ever been trained as an athlete. I even wrote that earning certification would “seal” something for me in the form of commitment to disciplining the body as well as the mind. When it comes right down to it, I probably did not want to miss the opportunity to study with a guru—even if I knew that Bikram Choudhury was a Hollywood guru.

At teacher training, the room was filled with acolytes who introduced themselves. When it was my turn, I said that I had started practicing at 58—and was now 60. Bikram paid me the compliment of saying that I looked 43 and then took back his compliment and said that I would look 43—in nine weeks. I replied in kind— “stating that my goal was to have his waist size” (in fact, my waist was smaller than Bikram’s, but he had talked a lot about his waist size before the introductions began) and “to grow two inches taller.” The very next person started crying and announced that she had been cured of lupus by Bikram yoga—she had a sunburn and other indications of SoCal beach-life, that made her recovery seem especially extraordinary. Anyway, her tearful testimonial successfully undermined my attempt at wit.

Things were less commercial at Bikram training than I had expected. No Tee-shirts for sale as we moved in and out of the locker rooms. Ninety minutes of yoga occurred twice a day, which meant three hours of intense exercise daily in 110-degree heat; Saturday was half day. We had forty-five minutes for lunch and dinner, which I usually ate alone in my car. Leisure activity took place in a parking lot, where we also hung up our rinsed-out yoga apparel on a clothesline. I had relocated from Pasadena to the west side for the nine weeks of yoga training, and the bright side was that I spent very little time in my rooming house, which seemed like a zoo. The landlady said “no drama” in her ad, and, by the end of nine weeks, I heartily agreed. She should create less drama; she evicted two people in two months and two people left on their own. She awakened me once to have me help her put one of the tenant’s clothes outside.

During the day there were interminable lectures by Bikram. We were treated to “Bikramite” discussions of western culture. We learned that one of the things Bikram likes about western culture is a Big Mac. He hates Tofu and adores automobiles and knows the names of numerous makes and models. He is also thinking about embarking on a career as a singer since he has survived three operations for tumors on his vocal cords. During most of these “lectures,” Bikram sat on a huge white throne-like cushion and had his hair—what remains of it—combed or massaged; people also brought him “new” or “fresh” tea when whatever he was sipping got stale.

Midway through training, Bikram went to India; he returned in good spirits. His mother’s operation had gone well. Bikram “knew” that the class was thrilled to have him back. We lined up so that we could express our appreciation by kissing him—or he could kiss us.

Most of the class probably thought that his lectures were preferable to posture clinic. Posture clinics were not really about the physical postures; they were supposed to be about learning the dialogue that every teacher recites in every Bikram yoga studio everywhere, but they weren’t really about that. The posture clinics were in fact a ritual form of humiliation. It was decided, for example, that I was shy and reserved and so I was forced to repeat things and yelled at for not being more commanding. I was told to let out the “bitch within.” I didn’t cry and resisted losing my temper, and so I wasn’t subjected to personal or “confessional” analysis; it just went on and on. It must be painful to watch public humiliation. Fortunately, my blanking out was probably attributed to my age and overall reticence, and so I was not subjected to the psychoanalytic/pop psychology interrogations that many people were. One of my fellow trainees helpfully told me that the brain was a muscle and that it improved with exercise. I resisted saying that the analogy should have been with electricity. A studio owner from San Francisco named Jeff told me that I was too boring to teach anything and that he would never hire me. That relationship was to have a bizarre conclusion.

The dialogue itself was not a dialogue but a monologue, and it was written in broken English—a kind of ungrammatical Indian-English patois. Many of my fellow trainees were massage therapists who wanted to upgrade their careers and become yoga instructors. Most of them seemed to me to be speaking a foreign language; “like” appeared to be used every other word and everything was “like—awesome.” No wonder the US State Dept used the word “awe” in the Iraq military plan; awesome is an adjective of choice for much of this new generation.

Near the conclusion of training, Bikram gave a lecture on the parallels between garbage collection and digestion. That particular lecture left me wondering if I would ever eat—let alone overeat—again. About that time, the “detox” myth was exploded. Supposedly trainees go through a “detoxification” process because they are in heated rooms, and toxins pour out of them. There was a terrible flu accompanied by sore throats and lung congestion that spread like wildfire in the heated rooms. Even the experienced teachers, however, caught this flu. One was even allowed to leave and go to the doctor. Overall, we were kept closeted from the rest of the world.

Maybe if it had not been for the ever-vigilant Jeff Renfro, I could have just slipped through the cracks as an average trainee. Renfro is involved with yoga because of injuries to his back but seems to be an extremely successful manager and owns five studios in San Francisco. Who knows what was going on? He was married. Maybe it seemed to him that I had untapped potential that he was going to bring out. I do know that my classmates thought he singled me out—I was repeatedly asked if it did not make me angry. It really didn’t. (Exercising intensely at extreme heats may have benefits—maybe self-control is one of those benefits). I also found that I was able to do with much less sleep. Of course, I wasn’t trying to write or to think through or code lots of material—just get through the day.

If I had any notion of what I was getting into, I would not have signed up; however, once I was in, I didn’t want to give up or quit. My husband had recently passed away, and so it is likely that I needed increased physical activity. The tuition money amounted to a handsome $5000, but it was probably irretrievable after being paid. I did conclude that Bikram knew things about yoga. I was genuinely impressed by his knowledge of how to correct postures and to adjust people who had unusual proportions or disabilities. He knew things about the body almost intuitively. When he talked about what he knew, he was sensible. For the most part, his lectures were incredible. One that he gave during the last week could be summarized as follows:

The yoga expo scheduled for fall 2003 is not on track. Of course, he could raise money—millions in fact. He raised millions for Bill Clinton. All of this would take only an afternoon of phone calls, but he doesn’t have the time. Even so, Bikram was able to cheer himself up by reflecting on the women who killed themselves because he wouldn’t sleep with them—three left suicide notes to that effect. Also, everyone must be loyal to him because the gods love him. Much as he regrets it, people who are disloyal or who oppose Bikram are punished by the gods. Probably as many as eighty or ninety people are now dead.

Anything is an anti-climax after listening to that. During the last week, I was put in the “Final” on Tuesday along with seventeen other poor souls. Of course, we were only told on Monday evening at 11 p.m. that we would be taking a “Final Exam”; alternatively, we could retake the entire nine weeks with no prejudice. If we opted for the final and did not pass it, we would fail period. About a third opted out. I didn’t sleep, not because I was studying—just general helpless anxiety. The next day I did pay extra attention to what I wore, and half-way blowdried my hair in the parking garage—niceties of grooming that tend to go by the wayside when a woman knows that she will be soaking wet with perspiration every few hours. I also chose a difficult posture and made a concerted effort to be charming. Of course, no one gave us a score or anything—for a day or so we didn’t know the results.

Jeff, my erstwhile mentor, finally said to me after regular yoga practice: “Gee your face does get red. Any chance of your coming to San Francisco? I would hire you to teach in one of my studios in a New York second.” I deduced that I had passed!

At the graduation ceremony, Bikram launched into one of his incoherent diatribes: “You were born at the wrong place and at the wrong time….” My brother, who, along with my two sons came to see me graduate, thought that Bikram was a jerk. For me, the telling part was that my classmates and I could complete his sentences when he paused— we had heard so many of these tirades, peppered with insults. On the public stage, however, it made for awkward public relations. Maybe he needs more sleep than he thinks he does—maybe Bikram needs more yoga.

I never became a true believer, but I think that must frequently happen. Either my fellow trainees were going to open studios, and so regarded certification as essential to their future livelihoods, or they intended to become teachers. The entire business troubled me. Not least because I felt that I had not learned enough to be really qualified to teach Bikram yoga. Even though I had received A’s on anatomy exams, I should have learned more physiology; I knew just enough to sense my limited knowledge and to perceive instances when the patter or dialogue was wrong. Maybe no one ever taught me to teach English Renaissance literature, but I never felt ignorant about my subject matter.

I freely admit that lack of financial incentive was also a factor in my deciding not to be a yoga teacher—even after being certified. After taxes, beginning teachers make $10 per hour for sitting in rooms heated to 110 degrees. No benefits. Now, if I had relocated to San Francisco to teach for Jeff, I suspect that everything would have been run on the up and up. Jeff had a successful plumbing business prior to opening his yoga studios. He wouldn’t have wanted to risk the IRS stepping in. Somehow, though, the thought of being forceful and energetic with a huge room filled with scantily clad people in San Francisco was even less appealing than working at my local South Pasadena studio where thirty is a large crowd. At least massage therapists, who seem to be roughly equivalent to yoga teachers, work on one person at a time.

Tempting as the continuing contact with my inimitable Hollywood guru might be, just after I completed Bikram’s Teacher Training program, I wrote to my financial advisor to confirm that I wouldn’t be withdrawing my retirement money and opening a Bikram Yoga Studio. Also, I didn’t practice yoga for two or three months. Why, I don’t know.

All in all, it could have been worse, I suppose. I could have become so intrigued by one of the L. Ron Hubbard displays that I joined a scientology group.

Sometimes I wonder about the Creator of the Universe.

Kurt Vonnegut