"What is Hot Yoga?
Hot yoga can refer to any yoga class done in a heated room. The room
is usually maintained at a temperature of 95-100 degrees Fahrenheit.
Most often, hot yoga tends to be a flowing, vinyasa
style of practice in which the teacher instructs a series of linked
poses. As you can imagine, a vigorous yoga session at high temperature
promotes profuse sweating and makes the body very warm.
What is Bikram Yoga?
Living yoga master Bikram Choudhury is a hot yoga innovator. His method is a set series of 26 postures, including two pranayama
exercises, each of which is performed twice in a single 90-minute
class. Choudhury, who was born in Calcutta, India in 1946, was a yoga
champion in his youth, as was his wife Rajashree. In 1974, the
Choudhurys founded the Yoga College of India in Beverly Hills,
California, to teach his method, which soon became one of the most
popular styles of yoga asana practiced in the west.
In 2002, Choudhury successfully copyrighted his series of 26 poses
done in a hot room and has since been involved in a number of legal
disputes, both over the unauthorized use of his name, and, more
recently, the use of his method under a different name. Choudhury
successfully sued a Los Angeles yoga studio in 2003 for copyright and
trademark infringement. He became the defendant in 2004, when he was
sued by a San Francisco-based collective of hot yoga teachers who had
received cease-and-and desist letters over their unlicensed use of the
Bikram method. The plaintiffs argued that yoga cannot be copyrighted,
but reached a settlement in 2005, in which Choudhury agreed not to sue
them and they agreed not to use the Bikram name. Choudhury filed another
high-profile suit in 2011, this time against the New York-based studio
Yoga to the People, which offers yoga classes by donation in several
U.S. cities. Bikram remains a very controversial figure in the yoga
world.
In a Nutshell
All Bikram yoga is hot, but not all hot yoga is Bikram."
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