Bikram Yoga
Bikram Choudhury is the founder of the Bikram’s Yoga College of India. Bikram began yoga practice and studies at the age of four with India’s most-renowned physical culturist at that time, Bishnu Ghosh, the younger brother of Paramahansa Yogananda, an Indian monk, yogi and guru who introduced millions to the teachings of meditation and Kriya Yoga through his organization Self-Realization Fellowship. He was known as the “Father of Yoga in the West”. Yogananda is a Sanskrit title meaning "divine union with God through yoga."
Yoga means ‘union’ or ‘to join’. In Sanskrit, the word ‘yoga’ is used to signify any form of connection. Yoga is both a state of connection and a body of techniques that allow us to be more aware of ourselves and our divine connection to our Spirit and God, our creator.
Hatha Yoga comprises both asanas, physical postures, and pranayama, breathing exercises, which scientifically create balance and health within the body by enhancing circulation, creating more strength and flexibility, and flushing away waste products and toxins. A balanced and healthy body is essential to the path of finding greater union or connection with the mind and Spirit.
Bikram mastered the original 84 postures of Hatha Yoga at the age of thirteen and won the National India Yoga Championship for three consecutive years thereafter. As a young man, he eventually devised his signature program of 26 sequential yoga postures and two breathing exercises widely known around the world as “Bikram Yoga”. This is a 90-minute meditative yoga class facilitated by a certified Bikram trained instructor in a 105 degree heated room. These 26 postures are designed to systematically work every part of the body, giving all the internal organs, circulatory system, connective tissue, and muscles everything they need to maintain optimal health and maximum function. Bikram Yoga combines both Hatha and Raja Yoga designed to help us become more spiritually awakened and enlightened with healing and balancing our physical bodies enabling us to find deeper connection to our Spirit and with our God through inner communion. There are more than 1700 affiliated Bikram Yoga Studios worldwide that teaches this exclusive style of Hatha Yoga.
The physical and mental demands Bikram Yoga places on us helps to develop greater awareness and clarity when facing an emotional, mental, or physical challenge allowing us to remain focused, calm, and centered under such stressful and potentially dysregulating situations.
As Bikram Choudhury writes in his book, “we put incredible pressure on you to teach you to break your attachment to external things and go within…mediation is the practice of focusing and calming the mind in order to communicate with God inside you, your Self, or Spirit, eventually leading to true communion with your Spirit, or Self-Realization”.
“At its most practical level yoga is a process of becoming more aware of who we are. Yoga techniques facilitate balance and health, and unfold our dormant potential. Yoga allows us to be more aware of ourselves and feel connected. As such, yoga is a process of self-discovery. This leads us to self-mastery and self-realization”. www.bigshakti.com