Bikram Yoga is an offshoot of the Kriya Yoga lineage. Bikram’s guru, Bishnu Ghosh, was trained at the Ranchi School for Boys which was founded by his older brother, Paramahansa Yogananda, author of “Autobiography of a Yogi.” Paramahansa Yogananda was an early and major contributor to the introduction of hatha yoga to the West.
Yogiraj Bikram Choudhury is the founder of the worldwide Yoga College of India. Born in Calcutta in 1946, Bikram began Yoga at the age of four with India’s most-renowned physical culturist at that time, Bishnu Ghosh, the younger brother of Paramahansa Yogananda (Author of the most popular book on Yoga, The Autobiography of a Yogi, and founder of the Self-Realization Fellowship in Los Angeles).
The Ghosh/Bikram lineage of physical culture hatha yoga. The Yoga Challenge is a system of hatha yoga based on a series of 84 classic asanas originating from a series codified between the 5th and 10th century AD, by the Nath sect.
Followers of the Nath believed “the main objective of hatha yoga is to create an absolute balance of the interacting activities and processes of the physical body, mind and energy. When this balance is created, the impulses generated give a call of awakening to the central force which is responsible for the evolution of human consciousness. If hatha yoga is not used for this purpose, its true objective is lost”. [Swami Muktibodhananda Saraswati, Commentary, 1985 translation, Hatha Yoga Pradipika, Yogi Swatmarama]
Bikram, accomplished student of Shree Bishnu Charan Ghosh, is founder of the Yoga College of India and author of Bikram’s Beginning Yoga Class. He was trained at Ghosh’s College of Physical Education, (est. 1924) in Calcutta, India. In the late 1960s he was sent to Japan to establish a school and teach their method of yoga. In the mid-1970s, he established a school in San Francisco, then settled in Los Angeles near the headquarters of Yogananda, his teacher’s brother.
Sree Bishnu Ghosh, Bikram’s teacher, was trained at the Ranchi School for Boys founded in 1917 by his older brother, Paramhansa Yogananda, who later founded the Self-Realization Fellowship and authored Autobiography of a Yogi. Bishnu became a physical culturalist and worked with Swami Sivananda Saraswati to develop a system of hatha yoga asanas for health and fitness, based on the original classic 84 postures. He established Ghosh’s College of Physical Education in 1924, in Calcutta, where his son, Bishu, is now the director.
Paramahansa Yogananda founded the first “yogoda” (hatha-raja yoga) school in Ranchi, Bihar, India, in 1917. Today, there are many schools of yogoda throughout India that provide training in physical, moral, mental, and spiritual ideals for youth. Yogananda was a pioneer, sent to America in 1920 by his teacher, to introduce kriya yoga. His book, Autobiography of a Yogi, continues to inspire millions of people around the world.
Sri Yukteswar, Yogananda’s teacher, established several ashrams in India to teach kriya yoga, and authored The Holy Science. He was a disciple of Lahiri Mahasaya, the first non-sadhu to learn kriya yoga.
Lahiri Mahasaya was initiated into Kriya yoga (raja-yoga) by Babaji Nagaraj in 1861. Babaji was a “sanyasing” or “sadhu”, but Lahiri lived the normal life of a householder and worked for the Indian government. He inspired hundreds of people to practice kriya yoga during his lifetime by demonstrating that it was possible to keep self-realization without giving up city life.
Sivananda’s teachings originate from Yogi Matsyendranath, regarded as the first human teacher of hatha yoga. Matsyendranath’s chief disciple, Gorakhnath, was guru to Yogi Swatmarama, who compiled the wisdom and techniques of hatha yoga in the Hatha Yoga Pradipikas.
Unlike Buddhist and Jain scriptures, and Pantanjali’s Yoga Sutras, the Hatha Yoga Pradipika does not impose yamas and niyamas (self-control, rules of conduct and observances). Yogi Swatmarama considered them to be more religious than spiritual. He was also aware that trying to follow yamas and niyamas created more mental stress than peace of mind. The Hatha Yoga Pradipika advocates discipline and purification of the body through hatha yoga, which will develop self-discipline and self-control and, ultimately, induce natural spiritual development.
Bikram practiced Yoga at least four to six hours every day at Ghosh’s College of Physical Education in Calcutta. At the age of thirteen, he won the National India Yoga Championship. He was undefeated for the following three years and retired as the undisputed All-India National Yoga Champion.
At seventeen, an injury to his knee during a weight-lifting accident brought the prediction from leading European doctors that he would never walk again. Not accepting their pronouncement, he had himself carried back to Bishnu Ghosh’s school, for he knew that if anyone could help to heal his knee, it was his teacher. Six months later, his knee had totally recovered. Ghosh was a celebrated physical culturist and the first to scientifically document Yoga’s ability to cure chronic physical ailments and heal the body.
Bikram was asked by Ghosh to start several Yoga schools in India. The schools were so successful that at Bishnu’s request Bikram traveled to Japan and opened two more. He has since brought his curative methods of Yoga therapy around the world.
