Tag: Bikram Choudhury

Three men who were sentenced to death for their part in the Aum Shinrikyo cult’s 1995 Sarin nerve gas attack on the Tokyo subway may be called to testify in the trial of fellow cult member Makoto Hirata.

Hirata faces trial for the fatal abduction and confinement of a notary clerk.

Also: ‘Hot Yoga’ guru Bikram Choudhury faces a sexual harassment lawsuit. Plus, more trouble for Narconon Arrowhead: Lawsuits allege its counselors traded sex for drugs.

Plus: Citizens of a polygamous cult’s town are being watched by surveillance cameras.

The U.S. Copyright Office previously permitted yoga poses and their sequences to be registered, even if those exercises were in the public domain, Laura Lee Fischer, acting chief of the office’s Performing Arts Division, said in response to an inquiry by an attorney involved in lawsuits the founder of Bikram Yoga filed against three yoga studios.

Religion News Roundup for Wednesday, March 30, 2011. Today’s stories include: Moscow prosecutor refuses to ban anti-Semitic Protocols of the Elders of Zion; Geert Wilders ‘hate speech’ trial to go ahead in Amsterdam; and Jury selection begins in baby exorcism capital murder trial.

Plus: How to become an exorcist; a look at ‘Dravidian Christianity’; Why There Are Still Atheists, and more. Also, Today in History: President Ronald Reagan shot; William Seward reaches deal to buy Alaska from Russia; Actor James Cagney dies; Musician Eric Clapton born.

Bikram Choudhury’s sweaty techniques are a hit with yoga studios. Now he wants his cut, writes Forbes.

Yoga is big business, racking up $5.7 billion in sales last year, and Choudhury has built a cultlike following.

Recent training costs: $10,500 per session, including $3,000 for room and board in Palm Desert, Calif. At two sessions a year, each of which draw about 325 trainees, that’s $4.9 million in annual revenue. To that add 15 speaking engagements, generating about $20,000 each in ticket sales, plus another few bucks from books and dvds. “I’m a yogi, not a businessman,” Choudhury demurs.

Now he wants another revenue stream: franchising fees paid by studios that use his name.

An ageing pop star, a rear admiral in the Royal Navy and the head of Amnesty International have been included on a list of most influential Muslims.

A Bangladeshi Muslim journalist arrested in the past for advocating ties with Israel now faces charges of sedition, a crime punishable by death in Bangladesh, and will likely be put on trial by the end of the month, The Jerusalem Post has learned.

NEW DELHI: If the sheer numbers of those who gathered at the Sheraton Hotel in Los Angeles to celebrate Bikram Choudhury’s birthday last week are any indication, yoga is ready for its next big innings in the US. For yoga is no longer a muddled concept practised by a select few new-age Americans, but a mass brand that spawns millions of dollars in revenues each year in the US. Yoga perhaps has been India’s first offering that touched the American way of life in a such a big way. Today, scores of practitioners in the US access yoga through several