Yogiraj Bikram Choudhury is the founder of the worldwide Yoga College of India™. He is an East Indian Yogi from Calcutta who immigrated to the USA some 30 years ago. He was a child prodigy who started training at age 4 and was recognized as Yogi Raj, King of Yoga at the age 14. He is the most famous Yogi of his generation and was sent to North America by his teacher Bisnu 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), to teach true yoga to the world. That has been his goal for the past 30 years.

His teachers were among the most famous Indian Yoga teachers of the 20th century. Bikram practiced Yoga four to six hours a day at Ghosh's College of Physical Education in Calcutta; and at the age of thirteen, he won the National India Yoga contest. He was undefeated for three years. As a young man, Bikram worked with Ghosh curing disease in the people of Calcutta.

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 and yogi. 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. There, Bikram came into his own. 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.

Bikram Choudhury, the founder of Bikram Yoga, worked for five years with Western doctors to develop his own system of 26 classic postures. They are practiced in the exact same order in a room heated to 95-105 degrees. The heat promotes more flexibility, detoxification and realignment of the body.

Bikram Yoga is rigorous, but each posture in the sequence, is designed to safely stretch and open the body in preparation for the next posture. When he came here in 1971, the common belief was that Western society wouldn't and couldn't do yoga. However, Bikram believed that the United States -- laden with chronic disease and stress -- was the perfect place for yoga. His vision has proved correct.

Bikram has dedicated his life to the healing powers of his yoga, testing its benefits in conjunction with the worlds leading medical research centres. He has schools all over the world with over 3 million students.