Would you please raise your right hand?
You do solemnly declare the testimony you shall give in this matter
shall be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
Yes, I do.
Uh, good morning, Mr. Choudhury.
Good morning.
I want to shift gears for a moment.
You claim that the women who are suing you for rape and sexual assault
are just out to get money from you. Is that correct?
I'm instructing you to assert your Fifth Amendment privilege.
I take Fifth Amendment not to answer that question.
This is what's happening in Beverly Hills. It's quite a topic of conversation.
There's a Yoga College of India,
and the man who runs it is Yogi Bikram.
I haven't seen nothing like that in my whole life. Right?
Yoga is free!
It belongs to the earth,
but I picked up a piece of it,
and I created something.
My first student in America is Elvis Presley.
My second student is President Nixon.
Then my next student is George Harrison,
Shirley MacLaine,
Barbra Streisand,
Frank Sinatra,
Quincy Jones.
Electric. Very tough, you know. Street.
I know where he's coming from, you know?
When you are in my class, everybody the same.
It doesn't matter who you are, where you come from,
how famous you are, how big you are, how rich you are.
-Everybody's equal. - Everybody's equal?
Joining Bikram now is his wife, Rajashree,
National Yoga Champion of India.
And she's how old?
-Twenty. -Twenty.
Yoga means we cure all the chronic diseases:
heart problem, back problem, emotional problem,
arthritis, lumbago,
sciatica, stiffness, gout, rheumatism.
I can name 20 more.
You get all those things from doing that?
All of it!
Did he talk through the whole honeymoon?
-Pretty much.
I started with nothing. Zero.
I gave you everything.
And this is the reward?
I'm a rapist?
Good morning, everybody.
Welcome to Bikram's Beginning Yoga Class,
to kill yourself for next 90 minutes.
So, you guys ready?
Inhale, keep your head down and arms up.
Start, please.
Full lungs.
Bring your chin down more.
Try to look at the light in the Hollywood Hills.
Half moon pose.
Don't blink your eyes.
Bend your body to your right side.
Look in the mirror.
Well, in 1998, I had my first Bikram Yoga class,
and it was hotter than you can imagine,
and it had floor heaters, smelled horrible.
Halfway through, I literally thought I was gonna die,
so I said, "I'm getting out of here."
When I'm out in the waiting room and I began to feel better,
and I thought, "Well, everybody's in there still doing class,"
so I decided to go back in and finish.
And that was it. I was hooked.
It just felt so good.
So good.
I was enamored by the fact that this was one of the last living yogis.
He brought a very powerful series to this world.
There are 26 postures and two breathing techniques.
One, two, three, four,
five, and six.
Hold it.
He's got a powerful teaching voice.
And that's one of the things. When you're in the room, it's like a lion.
When he's teaching class, he's just this--
It's a force.
Everybody, chest up, lean back, fall back, more back,
way back, go back, go back, go back.
Change. Keep your arm there.
When I started,
it was people who were kind of in the know.
There was zero advertising, there was zero social media.
There wasn't any.
There was no marketing. He did nothing. It was only word of mouth.
Awkward posture.
Open your feet exactly six inches apart.
-Do you trust me? - Yes.
Do you have a choice? No.
It's an Indian marriage. No choice.
There was no chanting. There was no saying "Aum."
This was a beginning series meant for anybody willing to come and try.
Eagle posture.
Sit, sit, sit, sit.
Left leg, zoom!
One of the many reasons people loved to come to Bikram's class,
he saw potential in you that you might not see.
He will look you in the eye,
and you just feel like he's speaking to your soul.
Don't give up. Listen to me carefully. You can trust me.
Your back is going to hurt like hell.
People found this yoga sometimes at their most broken.
I'd actually been given some really bad news about my hip,
that I was gonna need a hip replacement.
I was only 28 years old at the time.
So when I started, I kind of skipped this one posture,
and he came over and he said, "What the fuck you doing?"
And I said, "I have arthritis."
And he kind of very gently--
So, it's like you had to differentiate what he was saying,
which was really entertainment for everybody else,
and how gently he helped me grab my knee and gently pull my knee down,
but that was the day I walked out of class without a limp.
Bikram has an amazing gift of looking at somebody's body
and knowing, without touching it, what it can and cannot do,
and he knows whether you are holding back
because of your own fear or laziness.
He can almost pick your thoughts.
He was not there to coddle you.
He was not there to say, "You look great."
If you were a hundred pounds overweight,
he was gonna say, "What are you doing for that fat fucking stomach?"
But Americans loved it.
Go forward more.
Go forward more. What are you waiting for, somebody's gonna help you?
His way of making fun of you cut through you
and gave you a chance to see something in yourself
that you might not have known was there.
He was like a big kid.
There was this innocent, adorable way about him.
Standing properly.
Five fingers together, nicely.
Tell me, "Mama, give me money." Go.
"Mama, give me money."
Look at your hands. You have the money.
Now please don't drop the money.
I'd done yoga for 25 years,
and you've never really done yoga until you've done a Bikram class.
I nearly died.
Prepare for triangle posture.
This is the hardest posture of all.
Are you ready with me?
I wanted to go to the police after class to tell them what they'd done to me.
I couldn't believe it.
I did it 'cause I'm pushed, you know,
but I shook for three days.
It was like an awakening.
He opens your body,
and it starts a detoxing process.
Puts you in a place mentally that is completely uncomfortable.
You have to really dig and find something inside yourself
to actually stay and be able to bear it.
That was the real magic.
If anybody feeling dizzy, nauseous, throw up, it's a good news.
You must be happy, that's what you pay for.
You just died in that room.
You just stayed until the class was over.
You've just pushed everything out of every pore.
Wiping the floor up with my own workout and sweat
just gets that extra energy out.
At least you didn't give up this time.
Here you've done this body-wrenching class.
You're just Jell-O, and then he would sing and your whole body would tingle.
I mean, he had a beautiful voice.
♪ Don't look so sad ♪
♪ It's not over ♪
♪ Long way from home ♪
♪ To kill yourself ♪
♪ That's why you pay for ♪
♪ That's why I am here ♪
So, you know, class would end.
Not everyone loved it.
I'm not saying there haven't been some bad classes and some bad moments
where he shows a really ugly side.
But still, to this day, the classes I did with him,
my back bends were deeper,
my standing bow was held longer...
and there is something about that
which is why so many people to this day won't even discuss anything negative,
won't discuss any of the issues.
You know, a lot of people tell a lot of stories, and that becomes their truth.
So, I think he has his own truth.
This is a far cry from Beverly Hills.
Yeah, you'd better believe it!
Although he's been living in America
for more than half his life,
for Bikram, India, the birthplace of yoga,
will always be home.
I remember...
all the Bengali kids used to play a little ball.
And somehow I crossed the alley,
I saw Ghosh's College of Physical Education.
About 15 to 20 kids,
they are doing the posture.
So I said, "Wait a minute.
I can do those things much better than you are doing it."
There's a man who was sitting.
He said, "Hey, you, come here. What's your name?"
I said, "Bikram."
He said, "Wow.
Come every day here. I will teach you more."
That day, my yoga started with Bishnu Charan Ghosh,
the greatest health culturist of the twentieth century.
I was an All-India National Yoga Champion three times.
Eleven, 12, 13 years old.
Unbeaten.
The whole country complained
that if Bikram competes, nobody ever win.
So they make me retire.
So I started weightlifting.
The most difficult sport in the world is Olympic weightlifting.
Sixty-four, I was going to Tokyo Olympics.
One hundred and ten percent I'm gonna get a gold medal.
Seven days before,
my catcher, you know who catch the barbell?
They drop the 465 pounds on my left leg.
My left leg was crushed, hundred thousand pieces.
Dust.
Everybody said I have to cut my leg off.
So I went to Howrah Bridge to jump.
I don't want to live with one leg.
So my guru said, "You tried everything?" I said, "Yes."
So my guru said, "Come back tomorrow morning, six o'clock."
My guru fixed my knee by doing yoga.
Eight hours, ten hours, 12 hours a day.
Six months later, I lost the muscles
and I can do lotus again!
So I told my guru, "The rest of my life,
I go around the world,
and I am to fix bad knees and bad legs."
Fourth of July, 1972.
I went to the Air Force, Seahawk 130,
bigger than jumbo plane,
to Honolulu, to meet Nixon.
President Nixon, he has phlebitis, thrombosis.
They want to amputate his leg.
As a president!
Four days, I give him seven hydropathic treatment.
Bikram Yoga in the bathtub.
And fourth day morning, I asked, "Mr. President?
Which leg is the bad one?"
He said, "Right, left, left, right, I don't remember."
I said, "If you do yoga every day,
you will never remember which leg was the bad one."
I never even applied for a green card.
The green card was a gift from Nixon.
I wasn't looking for a guru, you know what I mean?
It was that classic "When the student is ready, the teacher will appear."
It was one of those kind of things, you know?
I'd found a magazine, it had an article about Bikram's teacher training.
Had the information.
Come to Bikram's yoga studio,
his beautiful facility in Beverly Hills
where Bikram and his superior teacher-training staff
will teach you his beautiful healing yoga series.
This was in October of 1999.
So I get out of LAX and they take me to the address.
And I open the door,
and there was 60 people from all over the world to take the yoga,
and everybody's yakking and yelling,
and behind the counter was this lady,
and she was on the phone.
And so, she takes the phone and she puts it on her shoulder and says,
"Shut the fuck up!"
And I said...
"Welcome to Bikram's Yoga College of India, baby."
In those days, if you became a teacher,
you could practice for free all over the world.
So I thought, "I'm down."
Went in, sat down,
and suddenly, this, "Oh, oh, Bikram's coming!"
And then they all start clapping and, yeah, like this,
and shouting and screaming.
And it was like, holy Jesus, you know?
He was a bit of a... I suppose a celebrity at that point,
in my eyes.
He was a showman.
He was the original marketer of himself.
Eee, yeah!
I did it in one chance!
He always wore tiny black Speedos
that, you know, you were wondering a few things.
And the Speedos.
Stop!
People would say, "What's he like?"
And I would say, you know,
"He sees himself as a cross between Mother Teresa and Howard Stern,"
or something like that.
Come on, sweetheart, kick. Trust me.
You need pedicure.
All that kind of appealed to me,
and the yoga was so lovable, and refreshing, and healing.
What else can I tell you?
It was a posture clinic, and there were hundreds of people there.
Finger came down and pointed at me and said, "You, come up here."
It freaked me out, but I thought, "This is your chance, girl."
Straight. Straight. Straight.
Bikram was pulling on one end of me
and Jim Kellett was pulling on the other.
And he said, "You need to become a teacher."
And I went up to him and said, "You know, I'm thinking
about doing teacher training."
And he got in my face with that finger and was like, "You would be the best one."
I literally had no plan because I felt that strongly
to share this powerful practice that had done so much for me.
It's really one of the best things I've ever done.
When I did teacher training in 1998,
there was 38 people.
And there was another one that fall that I believe had about 60 people.
And for several years, they literally were doubling.
It was just exponentially growing.
When you're in Rome, you must do what Roman does.
You have to franchise your yoga school!
And so he has,
with plans to open more than 600 studios
that carry his unique style.
Something about the yoga, Bikram Yoga,
started to put yoga on the map.
America's obsession with good health and exercise
is leading to a boom in yoga.
And one person at the forefront of the movement
is turning up the heat
with his torture chamber approach to the practice.
He whips his class into shape
dressed in nothing but a Rolex and a Speedo.
With more than a million students served,
Bikram Yoga has earned the nickname "McYoga."
Do you like that analogy, the McDonald's of yoga?
Why not? What's wrong with that? I eat Big Mac.
Bikram has argued in federal court
that his precise sequence of yoga postures and breathing exercises
should be eligible for copyright protection.
So if we--
So I picked up 26 postures.
I put in the sequence, like a melody. I created that.
And his business strategy has made Bikram Choudhury a rich man,
living the life of a star,
complete with a whole fleet of classic cars he's restored himself.
It doesn't seem very Yogi-like.
Depend which kind of yogi. I'm American yogi.
Beverly Hills Yogi, to be exact.
The way Bikram marketed himself
was very much as the bad boy of yoga.
When I arrived, I said to them,
"Maybe nobody's told you guys this before,
but this is not the way to run a yoga college."
Gotta use your strength to begin with.
If you are one second late, it's over!
But it fit in with what I wanted to do.
The idea of combining the yoga with the law.
Pull your heels and lock them in. I want...
One of the first things I did was then take myself to training
to try to observe.
Ms. Pink, you don't like me?
Huh?
You paid.
I didn't pay you.
Teacher training is a feeder system into the Bikram franchise.
That's basically like the cash cow for Bikram Yoga.
The only way you can open a licensed chain Bikram studio
is by going through training.
And Bikram would hold these trainings in various hotels around the world.
I've seen rooms with up to 500 people in them,
and the tuition was around $10,000.
That's what keeps Bikram in his fedoras and leather jackets,
python shoes,
Bentleys and Ferraris.
I'd seen flashes of megalomania in Bikram,
but I didn't know at the time
how bad he was gonna turn out to be,
how diabolical he actually was.
Here.
Wipe your hands on your butt.
The first three weeks of the teacher-training
is the most important,
It's devoted to Bikram.
Part humiliation and part sort of benediction
by the guru.
It's what they pay for, it's what they come for.
The first week, he had every one of us at the training stand up
and just give a little bit of who we are, where we're from, how old we are...
and, kind of, how the yoga had helped us.
And I looked him in his eyes at the training and I said,
"Bikram, you are better than chocolate."
I hadn't felt good in a long time,
'cause I'd had the back injury from scoliosis,
and it felt finally like,
"Oh, yes, I have this thing in common
and this deep, deep connection with you,
and this understanding that this yoga is gonna make it all go away,
that we all get that if we just suffer through these next nine weeks.
And we're not just together here, but we're together in this."
They describe it as "the family."
And I understand why,
because going and being on this common ground
with so many different people
and having this sort of, like, leader that created this thing for us...
it was amazing.
Bikram would feed a lot of one-liners to the group.
And then everyone would repeat back, you know, their part of it,
like, "My way or the..."
And everybody would say "highway," you know?
Or "The best food is..."
"No food."
My way or...
Highway.
I felt so instantly connected to this person.
He always called me Sarah,
and everybody else he called Ms. Pink or Ms. Paris.
All these nicknames for everybody else, and I was Sarah. I was Sarah.
I wanted to be a teacher so badly,
and I wanted to be a good teacher so badly,
and the way that they shaped that world for us,
we grew to understand
that the only way that you could be a good teacher was through him.
You know what's the meaning of Bikram?
- What? - What?
Leech.
-You know "leech"? - Yeah.
We suck the blood.
I'm gonna suck the last drop of blood you have.
Even after you die.
When I went to training, I was really fat.
I was about 300 pounds.
I still remember the very first class that I took with him,
and I was maybe in the second or third row,
and I remember we were in awkward pose,
and he looked right at me
and said, "Suck that fucking fat stomach in,
I don't like to see the jiggle-jiggle."
And I needed to be cursed and screamed and yelled at,
and that's what got me into shape,
and I think that's what got me to become a really good teacher.
I needed something in my life.
I needed guidance that I didn't have.
And I think Bikram saw that right away from me,
was that I was someone that would be loyal to him.
But looking back, there were, like, red flags
that this guy might not be mentally stable.
In the morning, they'd be like, "Make sure you're drinking enough water,
make sure you're hydrating, make sure you're eating well,
make sure you're getting enough electrolytes."
And then, the first thing Bikram would tell us at the lecture,
"If you have a dick, tie a string around your dick,
and if you have a pussy, put a cork in your pussy,
because you're not allowed to pee."
There was a guy in the training who...
he just got up in the middle of the lecture,
and he just walks over to the corner,
and in a water bottle,
pees inside of his plastic water bottle in the corner.
And then Bikram is like, "Oh, see, he gets it."
Bikram was so good at getting inside of our brains.
It's a very dystopian environment.
You were not allowed to wear any green.
The color green was banned.
When he's teaching class, everybody else is sweltering at up to 120 degrees,
but he actually has a personal air-conditioner
blowing cold air to the back of his head.
Which is, like, that's Bikram for you, right?
The abnormal becomes normal.
Ask someone who takes Bikram Yoga about Bikram Yoga
and chances are they will try to convert you.
And the reason for that, one man with one very big plan.
We caught up with the 65-year-old yoga guru
during a recent Bikram teacher-training program in Los Angeles.
You have gotten so many people to embrace you and embrace this practice.
Why do you think that is?
That's why I'm Bikram.
I'm a real Yogi.
Open your lungs and fill your...
I work 24 hours a day, no food, no sleep.
That's not just something you say. You don't sleep very much?
No. Hardly.
Not even 30 hours a month.
-Come on! -Yeah.
-You don't even sleep 30 hours a month? -Not even one hour every night.
You will never meet another human being in this earth more pure than me.
I sell the truth.
Spine straight.
Start.
I had probably been there four days total.
Bikram called me out of class and into his office.
Right out of the bag, he just asked,
"What are we gonna do about this?"
And I thought, "What are we gonna do about what?
'Cause--
Well, what?"
And he said,
"What are we gonna do about us?
Should we make this a relationship?"
And it was just like...
Oh... my God.
I don't know how I even found my way back to the big room.
I took a step in...
and realized,
"Oh, my gosh, my mat is up at the front."
During the posture clinic at the end of the night,
Bikram watched my routine.
And he gave me all of his corrections.
There's one posture, standing bow-pulling pose,
and you grab your back leg and kick up.
Basically, you do the standing splits, and you drop your heart down real low.
And he got out of his posture, which he frequently did,
and he grabbed my body and...
opened me up real hard,
just pulled everything apart
and dropped my body down, which wasn't...
abnormal for him to do to people,
but then he pressed himself into me,
and started whispering into my ear,
"What are we gonna do about us?"
I'm split in half...
with my heart dropping down real low.
So, emotionally, I just broke,
and I had to stand up,
and as soon as I did,
he continued the class.
The next day, I went to one of the senior staffers
and said,
"Bikram asked me if I would be with him."
And he didn't look shocked at all.
And he, in fact, said,
"If you decide to stay,
then I recommend you do what I do,
and that is separate the man from the teacher."
Party time.
Drink your water.
Party over.
Standing head to knee.
Thirty seconds that posture better than eight hours' sleep at night.
I did actually two years of Bikram Yoga...
from his voice cassette in my house with a heater, um, you know, in a room.
Don't look so sad.
Don't look lonely.
I'm not your enemy.
I'm the only friend you ever had in your life.
I told him, you know, being the very modest little me,
and I said, "Oh, well, I've been doing your tape at home
and I love your singing."
Oh, wow. Wrong thing to say to Bikram,
'cause, literally, he's, like, this close to me in front of my face
and he proceeds to sing me a song, right, this close.
Everybody in the community knew me as the medical personnel.
In that nine weeks, you're gonna have...
a certain segment are gonna have upper respiratory infections.
We had people passing out during class. We had dehydration.
At the end of that first teacher training,
Bikram pulled me up on stage in front of 400 people, and, like,
"This teacher trainer
would like to thank the one person who helped the most."
So, you know, when you receive applause in front of 400 people
and you're seen as being closer to Bikram,
you start being looked at like...
somebody special.
I look at this in the way that Bikram and Rajashree are both like,
"We're your family now.
We're a community, and we're family."
And if you know about families and abuse...
...you start out...
loving the father figure,
and this is Bikram.
You know, you have to understand this is nine weeks of yoga
and people are wearing nothing but a bathing suit.
Come on the toes and sit on your heel.
And so, it's like this hyper sexually-charged atmosphere.
Arms up parallel with the floor.
They all call it... week five is, like, sex week.
With long legs.
Shit.
Okay, come up from that.
Look at that.
This is very, very difficult pose.
At the end of the class,
people would gather around massaging his feet.
Massaging his legs, massaging his back.
I mean, I massaged Bikram at headquarters on the floor
when the chauffeur was tired of massaging him.
One particular incident, I was in a posture clinic,
and one of Bikram's, um, gentlemen assistants came down,
and said, "Bikram wants to see you, and you, and you."
And he picked, I think it was three,
and they just jumped up like a jack-in-the-box.
They couldn't wait to go and see Bikram,
and this is ten o'clock, eleven o'clock at night.
And my thinking is, "What are you doing?"
As a mom,
that disturbed me.
For me, he was a guru.
He was a teacher who was gonna make me perfect.
So I told my family that I have to go to US teacher training.
I was, like, biggest decision for me to leave my child with my mom,
because he was very small.
But I want to just do something
to make me stand on my feet.
Like, "Okay." Like, "Let's do this, Mandeep. Let's do this."
Turn the lights off. Open the door, please.
Bikram was teaching the class at that time.
All the... all lights.
Voilà.
So, he saw me.
"Ask that girl if she knows how to do massage."
And there was only one answer, "Yes, of course I know."
After one or two days,
one of the teachers said, "Bikram is calling you."
Like, "Okay, what time?"
"Now."
"Not now, it's two o'clock in the night."
I entered in the suite room.
I just said the greeting, like, "Hello, sir."
And he's like, "Yeah, come."
And then he went to the room.
His personal room, and he was lying down on the floor.
And, "Now go take this oil and, you know, massage me."
"Okay, fine."
And I was just massaging the shoulders,
combing his hair,
massaging his hand.
And he keep continue, he talks a lot.
I have to just listen.
And then he's like, "Nobody's here to handle my empire.
I have done so much for everybody.
Nobody's taking care of me.
Not even my family."
"Okay. Okay."
And he was just telling me now,
"Do it from here. All right, do it from here. And do it..."
Then slowly, slowly, he's guiding me, "Now do it here, do it here."
And go to the, like, you know, the main.
Like, "Okay, now do it.
Go, put your hand in my inner thighs and do it."
Then he actually said, "Yeah, okay, okay. Do...
Massage my dick."
I was like... I was like...
blind.
He put-- He grabbed my hand and tried to put his there.
And then I said...
"I...
I can't do this. Like, you're my guru.
I have...
I have different..."
Um, what do you say? Image.
"You know? Different image as a guru.
So, I'm sorry, I can't do that."
Your hips like this, not like this. No...
What is he gonna do next now with me?
Chest up. Elbows straight.
He came.
Then, "What happened? Why do you want to leave the teacher training?"
Like, "You know what happened."
"Nothing happened, Mandeep."
"For you, maybe not.
But for me, yes.
I can't take this."
Like, "Okay.
Don't worry.
It's not gonna happen again.
You continue with teacher training."
Bikram was very, very, very good at knowing when to turn the whole crowd.
So he'd be your best friend in one second,
and the next minute, he is, like, screaming insanely at someone.
I mean-- Can I swear?
Yeah, you sure can.
Like...
like, "You fucking bitch."
Take a deep breath. Now drop your head back.
Now arms back! In a half a second, drop it!
Arms back, touch the wall. Touch the wall!
Touch the fucking wall!
Now go down! Go down! Go down! Go down!
How can she do it now?
Bitch.
Don't you understand English?
How do you do it now?
Chickenshit.
Now go down.
So I'm seeing this with my own eyes,
but you don't imagine that you're seeing it.
When you think about these people are, like, starving,
and they're sleep-deprived,
and then this yoga just wipes you out.
You're ripe for whatever wants to be entered in next.
Remember, it's nine weeks.
The students are living in the hotel.
That's basically their dorm for nine weeks.
They're doing all their classes and all their lectures in the hotel.
They're not allowed to leave.
And Bikram, although he has a home in Los Angeles,
lives in the hotel, in the presidential suite.
It was disturbing for me to discover
that there was this tendency
to watch Bollywood movies very late at night
in Bikram's bedroom.
I came back over and over again
expecting different results,
and I know that's the definition of being an idiot.
We were all supposed to stay up late with Bikram. He never slept.
We'd get a call sometimes at three in the morning,
"Where are you? Come to my room.
I need company. I'm lonely."
So, um, we were watching a movie,
and he asked me to come sit with him.
And I just started massaging his hand.
Yeah?
And then I laid my head on the side of the couch and...
and fell asleep.
One of the other senior staffers woke me up,
and he said that, you know, "The movie's over and we're leaving."
And I got up and realized I didn't have my shoes on,
and I had my bag also.
And so I went to go look for my shoes and look for my bag
that I'd set down earlier in the night somewhere in his huge suite,
um, out in the living room,
and he said, "We're leaving now. Let's go."
I said, "Just a minute, I have to find my shoes."
And I heard the door click, and they'd left.
And I hurried to the door,
um, and Bikram was already there.
And I went to open it, and he pushed himself up into me.
And he only had his underwear on,
and, um, I could feel him.
I kept trying to push down the door handle,
but the door opened in.
And he had his pressure against the door,
and my body was up against the door,
and he started kissing all over my neck and all down my chest,
and he was pushing himself into me, and...
he just kept saying, "I'm gonna have you this time."
I thought, "He's going to rape me."
And I was able to use my elbow to move him off,
and I slipped under him and I slipped out.
And I remember, as I left, I said goodnight to him, even.
I said, "Goodnight, boss."
Sarah and I came up through the Bikram world together.
We just had this fun little chemistry that was just great.
And I do remember it was very early on in our relationship,
Sarah had told me that she was first assaulted by Bikram.
And Sarah wasn't the first woman to tell me this.
One of my friends at training
was also...
hit on by Bikram.
So, Sarah telling me wasn't the first time.
However...
my reaction at the time was,
"That sucks."
But I think my reaction also was...
"What are you gonna do?"
If we wanted to professionally advance
in the Bikram Yoga world,
we had to go back to his trainings.
So, Sarah had no choice but to go back.
Her goal was to be able to make money leading these seminars
and getting on this elite list
of the 25 teachers that can go around and teach seminars in Bikram's name.
If we didn't go back
or we started speaking out about these things
that we were seeing,
we would be professionally exiled.
See you next year!
My impression of him was very god-like.
Even more so than a guru.
Like, he knew everything about everything.
After teacher training, I really, really wanted to have my own studio.
But you have to get approval from Bikram before you sign the lease.
He kept telling me that he wanted to make me famous
and that I just had to stay close with him.
I was invited to go to Los Angeles
and stay at Bikram's home.
That was kind of the start of where I became close with the family
and became part of the inner circle.
Eating the food and hanging out with the kids,
helping them with their homework, and spending time with Rajashree,
doing a lot of yoga, of course.
And two nights before I left,
Rajashree had gone up to sleep.
The kids were up in their bedroom.
Bikram started a Bollywood movie...
...and I was massaging his feet.
I told him I was very tired and I needed to go up to sleep,
and he said, "Just stay a little bit longer."
He goes, "Sit down here."
Thank you very much.
He was trying to tell me about the movie,
and I couldn't really hear what he was saying
because he had the volume up very high.
And I turned to look at him
to see what he wanted to share with me,
and he grabbed the back of my head and started to kiss me.
I immediately pulled away,
and he said, "It's okay. It's okay."
And then he grabbed my head and pulled me back in,
and, like, stuck his tongue in my mouth.
And I was trying to pull back,
and I was able to create some distance from him.
And I said, "Bikram, I don't want this with you."
And he said, "Okay, okay, okay, you know. I'm sorry, it's okay."
He stood up and he grabbed my hand
and brought me to the family room next to the kitchen,
and I thought he was going to apologize and say that he was sorry
and it would never happen again.
Instead, he lifted my skirt.
He pulled down my underwear, and he pulled down his boxer shorts,
and he raped me.
I felt like my physical body was completely limp,
totally numb.
I just know that I was up here looking down.
He finished, and he pulled his boxer shorts back up,
and he walked over to the other couch and sat down.
And I stood up and put myself back together
and walked over and kissed him on the forehead,
and I said, "Goodnight."
And I walked upstairs to the bedroom and closed the door...
and prayed that he wasn't gonna come in.
The next morning,
I just kind of pretended like nothing happened.
I went home, and my girlfriend came in,
and I said, "I have to tell you something,
but you have to promise me
you will never say anything to anybody, ever."
I said, "He raped me."
She said, "Well, what are you gonna do?"
And I said, "I'm not gonna do anything.
I'm not gonna tell anybody, you're not gonna tell anybody.
I just want to teach yoga.
That's all I know.
I just... I don't want anybody to know about this."
Soon after that, Bikram approved me opening up a school.
You've built an empire.
I built an empire.
Why not?
Half a billion people has been benefited directly, indirectly,
from Bikram Yoga around the globe.
-Half a billion? -Half a billion people.
Right leg over the left leg.
This is called natural Viagra.
Do you do yoga or any of that stuff, Bikram?
I haven't yet. You know what, I did that once and it was so hot.
-The Bikram? -I fell asleep.
I was doing a position on the floor
-and I fell asleep. -Stop.
Sandy and I did a lot of Bikram Yoga together.
Hey, let me tell you something. It's just stretching in a hot room.
-That's all it is.
I was doing that one where you...
I mean, what Bikram's hook is is that he turns up the heat so high...
Right. That's what I've heard.
...in his studio,
that if you were confused that you were in Hell,
he makes it very, very clear.
I'm the most spiritual man, David,
you ever met in your life,
but today you are not old, educated,
smart, intelligent, wise,
experienced enough
to understand who I am.
I was never shy about what was happening to me.
Um...
I was careful,
because I wanted to make sure that I still was able to teach,
but I didn't...
I don't know how to describe it. I was, like...
I don't want to say it.
I don't want to say that I was brainwashed, but that's...
the sickness had, like, found me.
And then my husband and I got pregnant.
One of my only remaining goals was I was gonna be a good mom.
So, one day, I was teaching a yoga class,
came out of the class, and my daughter looked up at me.
She wasn't even three years old yet, and she said, "Mommy,
I want to be just like you someday.
I want teach yoga."
And all I could think when I looked into her eyes was,
"You can't do that. You'll get raped."
And that night, I didn't sleep.
I thought, "I have got to find somebody to represent me
so that I can make this more public."
Explosive allegations
against one of the richest and most famous yoga gurus on Earth.
Tonight on Nightline.
He absolutely chases women.
He victimizes women.
And someone can look him in the eye and say, "No,"
and it doesn't matter.
So, here's the story.
Sarah rushed towards the door with her shoes in her hand,
at which point Choudhury attacked her, pinned her against the door,
and sexually assaulted her.
Not truth.
It's not truth.
I don't do that. I don't have to.
If I want to have sex with the women,
I don't need to attack them or rape them
or abuse them or assault them.
There'll be a line of millions of women in the world,
as a volunteer.
I do remember when the allegations came out
and my co-workers said,
"Oh, my God, someone is saying that Bikram's a rapist."
And I still remember this trip,
and I looked, you know, between flights.
I was flying a domestic trip, and between flights, I looked,
and I was, like, "Oh, holy shit."
And it's Sarah.
A lot of people in the Bikram community were like,
"Hey, did you hear what happened with Sarah?"
And...
I, um...
That's when I realized it happened to somebody other than me.
He's a person that...
has based a lot of truths on a lot of lies.
He's built an entire empire on...
how he tells everybody the truth.
This whole veil had just been lifted off of every--
Every belief that I had was just shattered.
How did I not see this?
Because I knew Sarah.
Sarah was like a daughter to me.
So, I made a decision to post this case of Sarah's
to the Bikram Yoga Teachers Facebook page.
I was immediately met with such, like, vitriol and hatred.
People that were friends of mine would say,
"How dare you do this?"
You know, "You were friends with their family."
"How dare you go against Bikram?"
Liz Winfield went on,
I mean, I'll call it, I guess, it was a fishing expedition on social media
to find other women.
I hated Liz Winfield for this.
There was a camp that was going to hang him by his nails,
and there was a camp that was saying, you know, these girls asked for it.
They might have been young, but they weren't stupid.
Naive? Maybe.
Opportunistic? Maybe.
I was going back and forth with,
"I can't teach with a studio with Bikram's name on the wall,"
to, "Oh, my God, Sarah's such a bitch.
I can't believe she would say this against Bikram."
And it was like these two voices,
and it was driving me insane.
They were going back and forth in my head.
I came down to Los Angeles to make a report with the LAPD.
The detective asked me what was I wearing.
Was I drunk? Was I high?
He asked me why I went back.
You know, and I explained to him
Bikram is a deciding factor of your livelihood,
so you don't really have much of a choice.
I needed to speak.
The young women who...
want to believe in something so badly,
he sees it.
Those are the people that he targets, because they're vulnerable.
When I went, he said, "Now massage there.
Now massage here."
Then, eventually, he said, "Massage on my private parts."
Like, "Oh, no."
He raped me.
In his own house?
Yes.
-His wife's sleeping upstairs? -Correct.
And their daughter sleeping upstairs?
And his son.
When the sexual harassment allegations started to escalate,
I telephone Bikram in Hawaii,
and I could tell that he was getting increasingly unhinged, angry.
He was blaming me for all of, uh...
basically the woes of the business and his personal woes.
And there was another case that we were trying to settle.
Pandhora Williams,
she spent about $11,000
to attend his teacher training course in 2010,
and was offended by some of the things she says Bikram said.
"Women are bitches and whores.
They're here for one thing, to spread their legs."
This was not about rape or sexual assault,
but it did involve very severe racial abuse.
"We don't sell love here, you bitch! Get out.
Get this black bitch out of here, she's a cancer."
I was served with a subpoena by Pandhora's lawyers,
and Bikram went, like, completely ape.
I was summonsed to a meeting with him where we had to do a conference call.
I was used to meeting him in the living room part of the suite,
but he went into the bedroom,
got into bed, crawled under the covers and...
patted the bed,
and sort of beckoned
for me to come over and sit on the bed with him.
I didn't really know what his intentions were,
but it was very, um, frightening and disturbing,
because by that stage,
I knew Bikram was a sexual predator
and I was uncomfortable being alone in the room with him.
I told his wife that I thought the time had come
where Bikram needed to be removed from power.
He was just untenable, having him at the helm of Bikram Yoga.
And she basically said to me,
"Be careful.
Think about your daughter.
Don't rock the boat. Let him have his girls."
And it was a few days after,
I got brutally and mercilessly hauled into his room and told...
unless I resigned there and then,
bad things were going to happen to me.
Micki called me and told me what happened,
told me she got fired
and told me a little bit about the circumstances,
and I said, "I will take your case on the condition that you commit
to going to and through trial,
And you can't settle, no matter what they put on the table."
And to Micki's eternal credit,
she said, "I agree."
That's a very difficult conversation to have with any client,
but it was particularly difficult,
because, at the time, Micki had no job,
she was thousands of miles away from home,
having been brought here from India for this job.
He had yanked her visa, he had turned her lights off,
he repossessed her car.
Bikram is a dangerous man.
He's a clown in a lot of ways because he's an idiot,
but he's a dangerous clown.
At first, I really didn't understand.
How could smart people, but especially women,
endure weeks and weeks and weeks with this guy.
They were pre-conditioned.
They were told,
"Don't question anything that Bikram says.
Trust the process."
The way teacher training works is
if you want to have the privilege
of going to a Bikram Yoga teacher training,
you have to be recommended by your own studio owner.
After a couple of classes, I may be told,
"Oh, you look really gifted.
You should go to teacher training."
And so it's this closed, incestuous system
that, unfortunately, ensures
not only that Bikram would get rich and become more powerful,
it ensures that he will continue to have
a crop of women
who are held captive during this training.
He had people around him
who their financial livelihood
depended upon keeping the silence.
Rajashree, his wife, in particular.
She wanted to continue to carry her Birkin bag and drive her Bentley.
She knew exactly what her husband was doing.
From the time we decided to bring the lawsuit,
it took three years to get the case to trial.
He's always resisted any pre-trial stuff.
Bikram used to always say to me,
"Famous people don't do depositions."
He would always be on my case to get his depositions postponed
or canceled.
We knew that they would use all of the tactics,
which was delay, delay, delay.
I think he went through, like, seven different sets of lawyers.
Because Bikram considers himself to be above the law.
You're here today. I'm here today to take the deposition.
If you think you're going to suspend the deposition--
Then go ahead and stop it now!
Go ahead and stop it now,
'cause we're gonna say what we're gonna say.
Please don't interrupt me and--
-I'm going to say what I'm going to say. -Please don't raise your voice.
I'm not raising my voice.
I'm simply telling you that you're not going to tell me--
Please don't interrupt me.
You were interrupting me!
If they could provoke me and goad me
into calling the deposition or walking out,
it would be to their advantage and to my client's detriment.
I know you are very much hoping
that you provoke this to the point that I'm going to suspend the deposition.
Let me tell you, we've waited for a year...
- Great, then take it. Go. -...to get this deposition.
We've had to go to court.
We've had to get your client sanctioned to get here.
You've now wasted ten minutes of your deposition time.
-So you won't provoke me-- -Go ahead.
And he didn't like being forced to sit in a chair and answer questions,
particularly from a woman.
Don't stop me when I'm talking.
Mr. Choudhury.
This is where the judge...
Please. Please, don't stop me.
-...for poor behavior. -You--
Behavior.
Whose behavior? Talking about behavior?
Do you know how to spell behavior?
You are the most misbehaved person I ever met in my entire life.
I thought...
"This is great. Keep going."
You can take brass and polish a thousand years.
It's never going to be gold.
Would you like to take a break, Mr. Choudhury?
You cannot take a donkey and train for a hundred years.
It never could be a horse.
So, that's your problem.
That's why you've got divorce in this country.
And that's why you need Bikram.
So, I guess having been called the donkey by Mr. Choudhury
will go off the record.
When he would...
engage in those kind of personal attacks,
I thought, "This is what's going to happen at trial.
He cannot control himself."
Uh, you have said that there are three things you don't like.
No, you are wrong. Not three things, four things.
What are they?
I always said I don't like...
cold weather,
cold food,
cold heart,
and cold pussy.
Uh...
So you didn't complete. I complete it.
Thank you.
You're welcome.
The founder of Bikram Yoga was in an LA court.
He's accused of firing his lawyer
for investigating claims of sexual harassment.
Micki's case involved claims primarily for sexual harassment,
gender discrimination, wrongful termination.
Those were what I'll call the core claims.
When I was questioning various witnesses,
I would often stand behind Bikram,
which he didn't like,
and he had four or five lawyers,
and they would try to position their chair so I couldn't get close to him.
At one point, he demanded that his lawyers ask the judge
to prevent me from doing that.
And, of course, the judge said,
"Miss Minnard can go wherever she wants in the courtroom."
I remember one of the lawyers actually said to Carla,
"It would be malpractice for us to allow Bikram to testify on his own behalf."
His prior testimony had been, "I'm bankrupt,
I live on borrowed money from my family.
I haven't earned any money in the last three years."
We had pictures of his children, you know, on shopping sprees,
on Rodeo Drive in their convertible Ferraris
taking selfies,
saying, "Thank you, Daddy, for the new car."
I asked him, I said, "Well, if you don't have any income,
how is it that you bought your wife a $350,000 Bentley two weeks ago?"
I could see the wheels turning when he realized he was sort of trapped.
He said, "But those cars are not my cars."
So I said, "Well, if you don't own them, who does?"
And he said,
"The State of California."
"So, okay. Well, how is it that the State of California
owns all these cars in this warehouse?"
And he goes, "Well, I have a deal with Jerry Brown."
I said, "Jerry Brown, the governor?" He said, "Yes."
You can see the jury is leaning forward in their seat,
and the judge is sitting there like this.
I'm like, "Okay, so what was the deal you had with Jerry Brown?"
And he said,
"I promised to give all my cars to the State of California."
And I go, "Okay, and in exchange for that, what did you get?"
And he said, "Jerry Brown and the state agreed to build a school in my name."
I go, "What kind of school?"
And he said, "An engineering school".
Well, I said, "What's the name of this school?"
And he goes, "It's the Bikram...
School of Engineering for Children, so that they can build Bentleys."
He was making it up as he went along, and that's when the jury started laughing.
And then he went on this whole rant about having healed President Nixon.
And that in return for that,
President Nixon got Bikram a visa
so that he could become a United States citizen.
We actually contacted the Nixon Library,
gave them the time frame when this allegedly happened.
The name Bikram Choudhury did not come up once.
No evidence of that at all.
In his head, I think he thinks what he says is the truth,
even though the evidence is right there,
clearly what he's saying is not true, he'll say it.
In many ways, he really is dumb as a post.
He stepped down off that witness stand and gave his lawyers the thumbs up.
Not kidding.
Uh, that's how disconnected he is from reality at times.
First, reports started coming in
of what was going wrong with his empire.
When I started my research into Bikram's roots in Calcutta,
the more I dug into it,
the more I was intrigued and drawn to it
because I was not getting the right answers.
One of the last interviews that he gave was for Elle Magazine.
And I spoke to the journalist.
I asked him, "So, what did you think of him?"
He said, "I don't know. He seemed to be like this typical character
from North Calcutta
that you read about in storybooks."
There would be this guy sitting in a North Calcutta...
chai shop
and talking about, "Oh, you know, in the year 1939,
I went on an expedition to the Amazon forest.
Guess what happened?"
We grew up with characters like this.
To actually find someone in flesh and blood
who was capable of spinning these yarns
was quite something.
So the world has President Nixon to thank for Bikram?
One hundred and ten percent.
Listen, in India,
when you teach 10,000 people, you said, "I taught ten million people."
Bikram three times served as national yoga champion of India.
I don't know what yoga championship he's talking about.
At that time, competitive yoga didn't really happen.
There was no formal yoga contest
that he could have won for five times in a row,
because still, 19, 20 years of age,
he was still doing things like bodybuilding
and stunt shows.
I'm the smartest man in the world you ever met in your entire life.
I make a package.
Twenty-six postures, two breathing exercises.
It works!
After talking to some of his contemporaries here,
this 26 plus two that he keeps talking about,
these postures were not created by him.
Everything he taught...
was the lesson of his master.
Bishnu Ghosh actually was a giant.
Perhaps the greatest yoga therapist.
When I heard that Bikram declared my master's yoga as Bikram Yoga,
that made me a little bit...
annoyed.
I can teach something which I learned from my master,
but it is my ethics
that I must tell my student that it is not mine.
He told that 26 plus two yoga is Bikram Yoga.
That is wrong.
That is basically based on my master's booklet.
That booklet very fortunately has now been published.
And I was the catalyst,
because I had the only one, single copy perhaps in the world.
How many times I demonstrate?
Almost every week, right?
Still, you're cheating.
English way.
And American way. Why?
Compensating.
Americans nice, sweet people. They don't call it cheating.
They call-- You don't call it stealing. You say, "Just take it over."
Arms over the head!
He's been playing hopscotch with facts and the truth
for all his life.
The jury deliberated for little more than a day and a half.
They found in Micki's favor
on every single claim
unanimously,
which is extraordinary.
A Los Angeles jury hit Bikram Choudhury
with nearly seven and a half million dollars in damages
to his former legal advisor.
What I wanted to show my daughter was that I could stand up,
and through the fear...
so, work through the fear and still stand up.
Their verdict concluded that he had acted
with malice, oppression, or fraud.
It was deeply satisfying
to see him run out of the courtroom.
Mr. Choudhury.
He was hot-stepping it like he were on fire.
- Can we speak with you? -Please don't bother me. Please.
Can you say anything about any of the other lawsuits
that are being filed against you?
He was on his heels for a change after all he had done.
That felt so good.
The founder of Bikram Yoga
accused of hiding assets and now fleeing the country
amid allegations of sex assault.
Bikram Choudhury never paid the judgment against him.
Authorities believe the 69-year-old Choudhury has hidden assets,
and he has left the country.
He and his wife filed a...
what we believe to be a sham divorce,
where all of the assets that he had
went into his wife Rajashree's name
to shield it from the verdict.
What the judges said to us was
wherever he is, I don't care if he's in Timbuktu,
go and find him and serve him,
and he needs to know that I've made this order.
When my process servers served him in Thailand,
they were faced with brutal attacks.
-Get out! -Get the fuck out of here!
Get the fuck out of here!
I'm gonna throw you out right now! Get out!
- Those are legal documents. -Legal documents, my ass! Fuck you!
It's my toilet paper.
- You've been served. -Go, fucker!
-You've been served. -Served my ass, asshole. Get out.
There's probably been several thousand hours spent
trying to collect this judgment.
But Micki herself hasn't collected a penny.
The civil court can only do so much
with a debtor who has fled the jurisdiction.
I don't know why he hasn't been charged criminally.
I think there's a tremendous reluctance
on the part of the District Attorney to go after powerful men.
So I sent Jackie Lacey a letter
asking why,
after more than half a dozen women came forward,
why her office
chose not to prosecute him.
Why didn't they do anything?
She didn't have a satisfactory answer, to me.
Well, if Jackie Lacey were to wake up at some point
and decide to pursue Bikram...
...one of my top priorities...
...all of the testimony that Bikram gave in his civil case
would be admissible
in the criminal trial.
I take Fifth Amendment.
Bikram pled the Fifth Amendment
-multiple times in his deposition. -I take Fifth Amendment. Thank you.
When you take the Fifth Amendment in that manner as Bikram did,
you know, there is an inference of guilt.
Is it true...
that...
you had sex with female trainees
when those students, according to you,
said they would kill themselves unless you had sex with them?
I'll take Fifth.
You had female students masturbate you
during teacher training at the LAX Radisson.
Isn't that right, Mr. Choudhury?
I'll take Fifth.
All of that testimony would be admissible in a criminal case.
I take Fifth.
I take Fifth. I take Fifth.
I'll take Fifth. I'll take Fifth.
So, I'll take Fifth.
In my mind, there's absolutely no reason
that a criminal case can't be pursued.
I wanted to sit in court and look him straight in the eye.
And I wanted him to see me and what he did to me.
Micki's case was the first case.
And then you have all these other cases coming up behind,
and those victims have to make a decision.
"Are we gonna go in and try our case against Bikram
who's not here anymore because he's fled the country?"
And you gotta say, "Why do I wanna do that?
If and when I win, I'm not going to collect."
And I think that's what happened with some of the other cases
that were behind Micki's.
You know, my option was to go to court and get re-traumatized,
and he wasn't even gonna be there.
Or...
you know, I settle,
and I'm able to actually move on in my life.
But when you choose to settle, you're not really getting justice.
The sum of money that we settled for didn't cover very much.
I didn't imagine that I would ever settle.
And, in fact, I turned down multiple settlement offers...
um, wanting to continue to fight.
And I would still be fighting,
but he's gone.
The whole experience for me
reminded me of one of those old-fashioned Polaroid pictures.
You'd pull it out of the camera, and it slowly develops in front of you.
And you see a little more detail, and a little more detail,
and a little more detail.
And so you're waiting to see.
And finally, it had developed. I had seen enough.
I even realized that I have a characteristic
of staying too long in situations that I probably should have left sooner.
I had moved to New Orleans in 2015,
and I was teaching at a studio in New Orleans.
And one day, I had taught a class,
and I had fully come to terms with the fact
that I can't teach it anymore.
I know for a fact he abused a lot more than six women,
because I've talked to many other women who he's abused.
It--
Sorry, it was really hard because--
Sorry.
He was always so good to me.
And I wouldn't be the person...
I wouldn't be the person who I am today without him,
and for them to go by the...
for them to go publicly and say this was, like--
It was like they were trying to, like...
...publicly annihilate my father.
And then I get a private message from Jill.
She was in Las Vegas teacher training.
She came there when she was 18 years old.
When you have a young girl...
Sorry. Um...
When you have a young girl send you a seven-page letter
that tells you
Bikram pulled his dick out and wanted her to lick it,
and he is holding you down and forcing you to have sex,
and you're saying, "No.
No."
I lost it.
I was the medical volunteer at that teacher training,
and that meant that Jill didn't trust me enough
to come to me at that time.
That I was seen as the other side,
that I would have covered it up, you know?
I hope I wouldn't have.
It's heart-breaking how he has just let this community...
from his own greed, ego, narcissism,
has destroyed this community on so many other levels.
And me, along with many other Bikram Studios,
realized that we needed to actually have some evolution.
At the end of 2015, I did change the name to Hot Yoga Pasadena.
It's just sad. It's devastating.
But the main thing to me
and why I agreed to speak with you was because...
this yoga is magical.
It's a very powerful technique.
I'll never stop doing it. I'll never stop promoting it.
I'm happy he's still doing his teacher trainings.
For some reason, I get the feeling he's gonna make a comeback.
The only way that he gets away with it
is us letting him get away with it.
And anybody who knows about his actions and still goes to his teacher trainings
or carries his name or does anything under his banner...
I hope people wise up.
Do you think anything's changed?
He's back down in Mexico right now, opening up a teacher training,
and studios are still sending girls to him.
Hi, everybody.
This is Bikram, speaking from India.
Good news. Do you know what?
At last, I announce my next teacher training
to make it the best one and the biggest one.
♪ Don't look so sad ♪
♪ It's not over ♪
♪ Long way from home ♪
♪ To kill yourself ♪
♪ That's why you pay for That's why I am here ♪
Got it? Good back. Good back. We call that a good back.
-Is it good? - Yeah.
Are you solid? Touch your elbow.
No, on the floor. Floor.
Floor.
Ready?
-Are you ready? - Yes.
Watch. One, two, three, go.
One, two, three, go. What happened?
One, two, three, and go.
See?