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Who doesn’t know Bikram Choudhury? The flamboyant yoga guru has revolutionized this ancient practice with his famous Hot Yoga. He owns the famous Bikram’s Yoga College of India, a fabulous mansion in Beverly Hills, scores of classic cars which he lovingly restores — and a reputation for suing spas and health clubs using his techniques without his authorization.
Q. A lot of people have tried to imitate you and you’ve unleashed your lawyers on them. Can yoga poses really be copyrighted?
A: One hundred and ten percent! The individual posture cannot be copyrighted – it’s in public domain like ‘do re me’ or ‘sa re gama’ – but the same yoga posture, when I put it in a sequence, I own it. I have my own way of teaching, so the whole subject is copyrighted. You know I won the case in federal court.
Q. So now nobody can teach yoga the way you do?
A: They cannot copy it; before people think they could teach my yoga without learning it from me. I proved that my intellectual property could be copyrighted. I created history. I proved it and now it’s become law. If you want to teach Bikram Yoga or Hot Yoga anywhere in the world, you have to have a license from me.
Q. To practice your brand of yoga, they have to learn it from you?
A: Just like people have to go medical school to learn medicine or to a driving school to learn driving or to law school to pass the bar – it’s exactly the same thing. If you want to teach Bikram Yoga, you have to learn from me and be a graduate.
Q. Do they have to give you some franchise fee?
A: People think I am an idiot; they are using my name and making millions of dollars. Up to now, I never take anything from them, I don’t take a penny. Soon as I get the final stamp from the federal government, the franchising will be done. Then people will have to pay my franchising fee. I spend so much money to protect my intellectual property for whom? To protect my students. So when I’m franchising, they will pay a small fee which we’ll use for policing and marketing. I don’t need the money.
Q. What if spas offer to pay you to use the Bikram name?
A: They have. One of them said we want to buy Bikram Yoga and I told them who told you it’s for sale? They offered me a quarter of a million and I said “No, thank you.” I’m loyal to my students and to my class. They are my family and my child.
Q. What would your turnover be like? And how many students do you have?
A: I really don’t know. Maybe 20,000, maybe 50,000. I cannot calculate. Who knows? Different newspapers quote different figures. I really don’t know how they get them.
Q. What is the value of Bikram Yoga?
A: You answer my question: what is the value of one human life?
Q. Well, I guess it’s priceless. You can’t put a value to it.
A: That’s it, you already answered the question. I save people’s lives. So what’s the price of Bikram Yoga? It’s priceless, because I save people’s life.
Q. You are 61 but you don’t look like it at all.
A: No, everybody says I look 35 – and I feel like 17. My body is not more than 25. University of California Medical Center checks me once a year and they say my body is like that of a 20 year old athlete.
Q. What are your exercise and diet secrets?
A: I do yoga three times a week and the other days I workout in the steam room. I eat one meal a day and it’s a very small meal. I don’t eat breakfast or lunch. I eat only four things – meat, fish, eggs and chicken.
Q. So you eat no fruits or vegetables?
A: No fruits or vegetables because they are all chemicals. The body never accepted them, and never digested them. There’s a Hindi saying — Ched wale matke mein pani dal rahe ho — you are putting water in a pot with a hole in it.
Q. But won’t one get heart disease?
A: Not if you workout like me. Vegetarians die quickly. Look at what buffalos eat and what tigers eat — and then think of what the tiger looks like and what the buffalo looks like!
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