Editing Bikram Yoga (section)

==Origins==
{{further|Bikram Choudhury}}

[[Bikram Choudhury]] was born in Calcutta in 1944. He began studying yoga in 1969.<ref name="Schickel 2003">{{cite news |url=https://www.laweekly.com/body-work/ |title=Body Work |author=Schickel |first=Erica |date=September 25, 2003 |work=[[L.A. Weekly]] |access-date=21 November 2019 |publisher=[[LA Weekly]]}}</ref> He arrived in America in 1971, and soon began to teach yoga in health resorts in California.<ref name="Syman 2010">{{cite book |title=The Subtle Body: The Story of Yoga in America |url=https://archive.org/details/subtlebodystoryo0000syma/page/268 |url-access=registration |year=2010 |first=Stefanie |last=Syman |publisher=Farrar, Straus, and Giroux |location=New York |isbn=978-0-374-23676-2 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/subtlebodystoryo0000syma/page/268 268-279] }}</ref> In 1974, two pupils, [[Shirley MacLaine]] and Anne Marie Bennstrom, helped him to open his own school at 9441 [[Wilshire Boulevard]] in [[Los Angeles]].<ref name="Syman 2010"/> He attracted celebrity pupils including the Hollywood dancer [[Marge Champion]] and the actors [[Keir Dullea]], [[Martin Sheen]], [[Susan Sarandon]], and [[Raquel Welch]].<ref name="Syman 2010"/> Yoga classes were initially free, with a donation box. Maclaine told Choudhury he could not run an American yoga school like one in India, and he began to charge $5 for classes; attendance started to grow at once.<ref name="Syman 2010"/>

Choudhury later devised the 26-posture sequence of Bikram Yoga, based on the teachings of B. C. Ghosh.<ref name="Schickel 2003"/><ref>{{cite AV media |last=Henderson |first=Julia L. |title=Bikram. ''30for30'', season 3, episodes 4&5 |publisher=[[ESPN]] |date=2018 |url=https://30for30podcasts.com/bikram/}}</ref>