Bikram Choudhury is an Indian-born American yoga instructor known for creating Bikram Yoga, a form of hot yoga practiced in a heated room. Despite his success, he has faced legal troubles and controversies in recent years. This article explores his net worth, career, and personal life.
Bikram Choudhury’s Net Worth & Controversies
As of recent estimates, Bikram Choudhury has a net worth of $75 million. At the peak of his career, he earned between $7-10 million per year through his yoga empire, which included training programs and studio franchises worldwide.
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Bikram Choudhury was born in 1944 in Calcutta, India. He claimed to have been a yoga champion and a student of Bishnu Charan Ghosh, though some of these claims have been disputed. In the 1970s, he moved to the United States and opened his first yoga studio in Los Angeles in 1974. Over the years, Bikram Yoga gained massive popularity, attracting celebrities like Madonna, David Beckham, and Lady Gaga.
By the 2000s, there were more than 1,600 Bikram Yoga studios in over 40 countries. Choudhury developed a training program for instructors and tried to copyright his sequence of 26 yoga postures. However, the U.S. Copyright Office ruled that yoga poses could not be copyrighted.
Bikram Choudhury has faced multiple lawsuits, including accusations of sexual harassment and assault. Several women came forward with allegations, leading to lawsuits and financial penalties. In 2016, a court ordered him to pay over $6 million in damages for wrongful termination and harassment. Instead of paying, he fled the United States and returned to India.
In 2017, an arrest warrant was issued against him, and he filed for bankruptcy. Many yoga studios distanced themselves from his name, rebranding as ‘Hot Yoga’ instead of ‘Bikram Yoga.’ In 2019, Netflix released the documentary Bikram: Yogi, Guru, Predator, further exposing his controversial actions.
Bikram Choudhury married Rajashree Chakrabarti in 1984. She was also a yoga practitioner and played a key role in promoting competitive yoga. In 2015, she filed for divorce, citing irreconcilable differences, after multiple women accused Bikram of misconduct. As part of their divorce settlement, she received properties in Los Angeles, while he kept an apartment in Hawaii.
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Despite his legal troubles, Bikram Choudhury continues to teach yoga internationally, holding workshops and training programs in different countries. He has lost much of his influence in the yoga community, but his style of yoga remains widely practiced.
