Bikram: Yogi, Guru, Predator

Bikram Choudhury went from India to America and founded a method of yoga under his own name: twenty six postures in a fixed order in rooms heated to forty degrees. It spread fast; thousands of studios opened and Choudhury began running teacher training courses. The courses lasted nine weeks, were expensive, and counted as a turning point for those who took them. Then accusations from women who had attended began to accumulate. Eva Orner directs. The documentary was released on Netflix in 2019. At its centre are the statements of former students. Women speaking to camera describe what happened on the courses and the accounts support each other. The second strand is the legal process. Cases brought against Choudhury were decided and damages were awarded; the money was not paid. He left America and went on teaching abroad. What the documentary asks about is not the method but the structure of devotion built around one person, and why those involved stayed silent for years. Archive footage is used extensively; Choudhury's manner on the courses is visible in his own recordings. Its limit is structure; there is plenty of information but the chronology scatters at times. Who it is for: viewers who follow documentaries from real cases and accounts of abuse inside institutions. Who it is not for: the subject is heavy, the testimony is distressing, and the film ends somewhere without a legal conclusion.