Bikram Choudhury was born in Calcutta in 1944, and as reported by The New Yorker, he claims that he was trained by the yoga master Bishnu Charan Ghosh in his youth. He also claimed that Richard Nixon (who the yogi said he cured of phlebitis) brought him to the United States, per a report from The Guardian. What we know for sure is that he eventually taught yoga in Japan and San Francisco before he opened a studio in Beverly Hills in 1973. It was there that his Bikram yoga (also commonly known as hot yoga) began to garner a celebrity following.
Hot yoga takes place in a steaming hot studio where for 90 minutes students are taken through 26 poses and two breathing exercises. It's a punishing experience that many of Choudhury's followers find rejuvenating and life-changing — but the extreme conditions also allowed the yogi to lead his classes with a disorienting mix of humour and verbal abuse. He was known to single out one person to take the brunt of his punishing verbal attacks during class. Still, he was praised for being an attentive teacher and according to a ESPN's 30 for 30 podcast he would sometimes end classes by singing Indian lullabies. In the podcast, writer Benjamin Lorr said that Choudhury "healed and helped tens of thousands of people at minimum" but he has also "hurt and destroyed thousands of lives."