The Overheated, Oversexed Cult of Bikram Choudhury: Critical Eye : Details

The Overheated, Oversexed Cult of Bikram Choudhury: Critical Eye : Details: "Others object to Choudhury's decision in 2002 to patent his sequence of 26 postures and two breathing exercises, which has made him very rich (all Bikram studios must pay a licensing fee to open, along with a new, much-protested monthly fee) and, in the eyes of many, an apostate. Yoga is thought to date back 5,000 years, and for Hindus, claiming it as intellectual property is akin in Christian terms to copyrighting the Lord's Prayer. 'Call it exercise. Call it a good workout. Call it what you like,' says Dr. Aseem Shukla, cofounder of the Hindu American Foundation. 'But don't call it yoga. It's a cynical appropriation of Hinduism.'"