Bikram Choudhury And Yoga Rape Culture: What Happens When The Student-Teacher Dynamic Becomes Twisted

Bikram Choudhury, the man behind Bikram yoga, is facing six civil lawsuits for rape and/or sexual assault. (Photo: Facebook/Bikram Choudhury)

Yet another woman has stepped forward accusing Bikram Choudhury, the guru and founder of the now-ubiquitous Bikram yoga, of rape.

Choudhury now faces six civil lawsuits. In the most recently filed suit on Feb. 13, a woman said she was assaulted and raped by Choudhury while attending a teacher training workshop in 2010, according to a report from The New York Times. The training workshop is run by Bikram’s Yoga College of India organization, which Choudhury leads and instructs.

Choudhury is not facing criminal charges. According to a statement provided to Yahoo Health by Choudhury’s attorneys, “Mr. Choudhury and the Yoga College will address the specific allegations made by women accusing Mr. Choudhury of sexual assault in a court of law, rather than in the press or social media. They are prepared to prove in each of the pending cases that Mr. Choudhury did not sexually assault any of these women.”

The statement goes on to say:

The Power Dynamics Of The Student-Guru Relationship

Teacher training for Bikram yoga — which itself is a series of 26 poses performed in a 105-degree heated room — is not for the faint of heart. As reported by Vanity Fair last year, the training programs are comprised of a “nine-week boot camp, featuring two 90-minute classes six days a week, plus anatomy lessons, posture clinics, and meandering Choudhury soliloquies.” Attendees spend hours memorizing precise scripts in order to teach Bikram-style classes themselves. They must ask permission to use the bathroom; they may not wear the color green because of Choudhury’s dislike of the hue. And electing to participate in this experience is far from cheap: Attendance fees are anywhere from $12,500 to $16,600.

Choudhury at a Bikram yoga seminar in NYC in 2007. (Photo: Flickr/Yaniv Nord)

The student-teacher dynamic in yoga is unique. “Traditionally, speaking in terms of pre-modern yoga, there was a guru-disciple model in terms of how yoga was taught and transmitted,” Carol Horton, PhD, a writer, educator and activist who studies the intersection of yoga, social science, and social justice, explains to Yahoo Health. “As a student, you are to submit yourself to a true guru — someone not just a teacher, but someone who has achieved a higher level of knowledge.”

This idea of the guru — someone who imparts knowledge in a deeply personal, spiritual way — has persisted in the modern American yoga industry. While many contemporary American yoga practitioners have turned to the practice as a means of fitness and health, “people often find themselves having different experiences than they originally thought about yoga,” Horton explains. For many people, it goes beyond just physical fitness — there may be unexpected spiritual and psychological effects. It leaves many yoga teachers in the position of figuring out whether their role is “more like a fitness instructor or more like a priest,” she says.

In Choudhury’s case, Horton speculates, “you have this unfortunate merger between the older idea of guru and the contemporary reality of celebrity culture. We tend to treat celebrities a bit as gurus in [American] culture: We look to celebrities as those who embody some form of life that is better, greater, and more valuable.”

Choudhury, with his fleet of Rolls-Royces and a Beverly Hills mansion, certainly fits the bill of someone with a lifestyle that, for many, seems worthy of desire. And then there’s the fact that many students turn to yoga to overcome physical ailments, addiction, anxiety, and depression. In working through whatever issues might have brought a student to seek out a yoga practice, there can be transference much like what happens with a patient and therapist, Horton says. Students may start to ascribe their own growth and transformation not onto themselves, but onto the teacher. “The student wants the teacher to be a larger-than-life figure who brings them greater things,” explains Horton. The problem is when “the teacher encourages this adulation.”

Elizabeth Rowan, an Atlanta-based yoga teacher and writer who also leads yoga retreats worldwide, notes that “by its very nature, yoga does not tolerate a manipulation of the relationship that sustains it: that between student and teacher.” Yoga teachers have an ethical obligation to establish and enforce healthy boundaries that support the students’ highest good, Rowan says.

“In a field involving spiritual guidance, physical touch and a student-teacher dynamic, there is zero room for gray area,” she tells Yahoo Health. “Sexual assault and teachers who prey on students have no place in the field.”

Sexual Assault In Environments With An Imbalance of Power

“This isn’t just something that happens in yoga teacher training,” adds Sharyn Potter, PhD, an associate professor of sociology at the University of New Hampshire and the co-director of Prevention Innovations, Research and Practices for Ending Violence Against Women on Campus. “With all the research that exists on sexual assault,” Potter tells Yahoo Health, “it’s so often about power and control. It’s not uncommon for people with important positions to use their position to commit rape.” Potters adds that in these circumstances, “the victims are in really vulnerable positions” because of the way that these relationships, whether they begin consensually or not, are “never equal.”

For example, on a college campus, “a student and a faculty member might think they exist in a relationship as equals, and might get into a relationship thinking that they are equals,” she posits. But “it’s really hard for the student if they don’t want any part of the relationship any more. There is real fear of retaliation.”

Related: What’s Really Behind College ‘Rape Culture’?

Potter says she sees similarities between the dynamics of a yoga teacher training program with the sexual assault cases in the military that have recently been brought to light. “People who decide to go to this kind of teacher training have made a commitment to pursue this and it’s a passion for them and they want to be there and learn,” she says. “And being at a teacher training with a person you admire can be so empowering in so many ways. In an intense class, we want to be pointed out for our abilities and we want to get attention from our teacher — but sometimes an instructor can use this power to commit sexual assault.”

Potter points to the recent decision by Harvard to implement an official ban on sexual relationships between students and teachers as further proof of the complexity of the power dynamics that can exist between students and teachers.

Why Sexual Assault Is Seemingly Prevalent In The Yoga Community

The kinds of allegations Choudhury faces are far from unique within the yoga community. Similar charges have been brought against the founder of Anusara yoga, John Friend, and other notable figures have also faced accusations of abuse.

John Friend, founder of Anusara yoga, at a yoga class in Las Vegas in 2011. (Photo: Flickr/The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas)

“I have for a very long time been frustrated and to a large extent disappointed with how rampant this is in the community,” Alanna Kaivalya, founder of the Kaivalya Yoga Method and a prominent yoga teacher-of-teachers, tells Yahoo Health. “I treat yoga as a deeply spiritual practice and this core principle of this sacred relationship [between students and teachers] within yoga is incredibly harmful to both parties and the entire community. It’s a psychological scar on the community … and we have no recourse for it at this time.”

A big part of the problem is that “yoga is an unregulated industry,” Kaivalya says. “We’re not psychologists who would be fired for sleeping with our patients or lawyers who would be disbarred for sleeping with our clients. There is no regulatory body that oversees the ethical behavior of yoga teachers and that passively makes it OK for people to continue to violate this sacred trust.”

In student-teacher relationships, “the student enters the relationship with inherent trust and expectation that there are boundaries in place,” adds Jennifer Marsh, vice president of victims services with RAINN, the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network. “If a student or teacher begins to slowly push those boundaries, the student may question their own sense of whether this is right.” It can make a student wonder if he or she is just not a good student or is lacking in talent — especially when it’s in pursuit of something they really want to accomplish.

Marsh notes that instances of abuse between mentors and protégées can be incredibly difficult for victims to report because “we hear from survivors that they blame themselves for putting themselves in this situation even though it’s obviously no fault of their own.”

“Many have complicated relationships where they’ve been manipulated or have a relationship [with the perpetrator] where they still feel real caring for the person who did this to them,” Marsh says. This leads them to “fear they would be ostracized from their peers and other who still support [this mentor]” should they come forward about the abuse.

An environment such as a teacher training program could yield dynamics “similar to those that occur in multiple perpetrator assaults or even gang rape, where there are others witnessing abuse and not doing anything about it,” Marsh says. Looking the other way can “reinforce membership in the group, show loyalty to a mentor or teacher, and can make people do things that they ordinarily wouldn’t do on their own.”

Related: 13-Year-Olds Push To Change Rape Culture — Starting In Sex Ed Class

In yoga, a core principle is for the student to surrender and become vulnerable to his or her teacher, adds Kaivalya, “As students, we are looking for teachers who are responsible and able to walk their talk and guide us in the right direction. But without proper regulation, many teachers may not know how to handle this responsibility,” she says. “The power setting feels very sexy for many, which then leads to the abuse of power. It’s crucial for both parties to respect boundaries, but it’s 100 percent the teacher’s responsibility to enforce them.”

Choudhury’s case, and others like it, do “change [the public] perception [of yoga] and it makes students weary” of starting a yoga practice, which is a shame, Kaivalya says. But she makes clear: “This is not how yoga works. Yoga does not work this way. As a teacher, you can only take someone as far as you yourself have gone. Clean up your own side of the street — clean up your own emotional and psychological well-being and do the things you teach. That’s how you’re able to show someone else the way.”

But Yoga Can Also Help Survivors Heal

But it’s unquestionable that yoga also has benefits for people working through past sexual abuse. For Lora Hogan, a sexual assault survivor, yoga was immensely helpful to her own recovery after her assault; she’s since become a yoga teacher herself.

Before yoga, “like many victims of sexual assault, I developed an eating disorder. I was filled with shame, low self-esteem, and body issues,” Hogan tells Yahoo Health. And her first yoga class was not easy — she calls it one of the “hardest experiences of my entire life.”

“I remember wanting to walk out of the room during my first savasana (final relaxation) because I felt so uncomfortable trying to relax when everything in my body and mind were so rigid and ‘in control,’” she says. And yet, something about yoga resonated with her, and she went back again the next day — and has continued going every day since. One of the studios that most helped Hogan during this time of transition was actually Bikram Yoga Decatur, in Atlanta, a studio affiliated with Choudhury’s Bikram’s Yoga College of India curriculum and teaching practices. “I am lucky that I had teachers who created an environment where I felt truly and completely safe,” she says.

Seeing the role a good teacher can play in creating a safe environment to grow and heal is what inspired Hogan to become a teacher herself. “Yoga changed my life,” she says, “Yoga brought me to me. My mission as a yoga teacher is to bring yoga to every body. I believe that yoga can help us all, no matter where we area in life’s stages. … We all need to be able to breathe, to love, and to let go.”

There may be students who want their teachers to be their best friends, or who want to go to them with their personal issues. But “we must be able to refer them to the proper avenues for help and admit that we are just yoga teachers,” she says. “Moreover, we also must be able to speak up if someone in the community makes us feel uncomfortable. … The teacher has to set the standard by being vulnerable, by communicating, and by creating healthy boundaries between students and teachers.”

Hogan credits yoga with her own healing after her assault and encourages others to also find healing in the practice. “Yoga taught me to be comfortable in my own skin, to love myself the way I am,” she says. “Yoga allowed me to safely learn to let go of my trauma so that I could let in new experiences. Yoga taught me to silence the nagging and worrying voice in my head and to focus on the present moment.  Yoga taught me that it’s okay to not always be OK.”

“Thanks to yoga,” she says, “I learned that my sexual assault did not define me as a person.”

This piece was updated Feb. 26, 10:30 p.m., with comment from Choudhury’s lawyers.  

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