If you practice yoga, read this book. If you don't practice yoga, read this book. Well researched, beautifully written, insightful, and compassionate, it certainly wasn't what I expected. Training for a yoga competition? Paying $11,000 for teacher training with the maniacal Bikram? Please. However, the prose is wonderful. One moment the author exposes the love/hate relationship we all have with bodywork or exercise. The next moment the author recounts hilarious and strange moments with his fello...

Great book! I'm so excited about Yoga after reading this. But the Bakram (for whom this particular Yoga practice is named after) sounds like a disgusting, repulsive man who does nothing but discredit the discipline of yoga. At least the author was unbiased enough (most of the time) to write about his teacher honestly, and sometimes brutally. Apart from the biographical info on Bakram the yoga itself was also covered well. The history (only a little of it - perfect) was covered just enough to int...

Insightful. Clear-thinking. Well-written. Fascinating. Thought-provoking. Honest. Humorous. Intelligent. I'm not sure if this book will be as powerful for readers who don't do Bikram Yoga, but for those of us who do, it's a gem. The author takes a look at all the questions that come up for practitioners, and delves into thorough research on them. His conclusions are level-headed, and not black-and-white. There are so many excellent passages in this book, but here are a couple of my favorites:"Yo...

This is a great read for anyone who has tried yoga and why it sometimes feels so other worldly. It’s also a good example of how a good idea or practice can become warped in the wrong hands. Lorr doesn’t spend a lot of time on the man Bikram and I’m thankful for that but he does a great job explaining how close it gets to becoming almost cult like as everyone involved experiences the bonding of doing incredible things with your body and the way yoga works with pain

This is my first autobiography/memoir book that I've read. I cannot say much how good this book as memoir, compared to other similar books.Actually, I don't have any expectation when started reading the book. Majority of the book is the life of the author in yoga related activities, especially when the author practicing Bikram Yoga (BY) style.For people who doesn't familiar yoga or BY, this book could be read as an introduction what is a serious yoga practitioner's life, a ton of controversial s...

As a regular Bikram yoga practitioner, but not someone who has ever gone really "gung-hu" besides keeping up my bi-weekly practice and doing a 60-day challenge, I was very interested to read Lorr's account of the inside-world of the bikram elite, those who participate in competitions and go to teaching training. Lorr must have natural yoga talent to have so quickly progressed from yoga novice to national competitor. I thought that the strongest parts of the book were the sections where Lorr psyc...

I like yoga, but I'm not obsessive about it. I also like Benjamin Lorr's book, where he details his obsession with Bikram yoga, which is a series of poses done in rooms heated to 100 degrees or more. I have never taken a hot yoga class, and before reading this book I didn't realize that Bikram is the name of an actual person -- Bikram Choudhury. (More on him in a moment.)Lorr begins the book by discussing how he came to yoga in the first place -- he was trying to lose weight and get back in shap...

I started practicing Bikram yoga in 2006. Within a year or two I was practicing 5-6 days a week and considered going to the teacher training. I went to see what it was like in 2009, in Las Vegas, I got to take a couple of classes (one with the man himself) and easily decided that this was not for me. I later trained with Jimmy Barkan, who is quoted a few times in this book. I still go to my local Bikram studio, but it is not the be all and end all. The author puts his finger on something I'd nev...

This is a really interesting book that looks at bikram yoga, bikram himself and personal stories of lots of yoga people. I love yoga and although I haven't taken a bikram class I regularly go to hot yoga classes... this book made me scared of bikram yoga and also had me searching for the closest bikram class (about an hour away and costing £16 for an hours class).Bikram himself (he started the whole hot yoga thing and used a particular set of poses which makes it 'bikram yoga' rather than just h...

a sprawling, wide-reaching, and sometimes weird, complex book that defies all pre-conception. somewhat surprisingly well-written, and thoroughly researched, i feel it's to quickly become a watershed moment for the practice at large, and a potentially landmark one when the Bikram-shaped yoga landscape of the past 30 years, is; quite necessarily as it turns out, actually turned on it's head [pun intended]. the book delves intriguingly into the area's of our understanding of pain; up-to-the-minute

I have been practicing Bikram consistently for almost 6 months now, and almost immediately developed a deep appreciation and connection to the sequence and heat. B.Lorr does a good job at peeling back some of the layers for the new Bikram yogi, while remaining rather objective in his pursuit as a self-acclaimed admirer/advocate. I was first a bit put-off by the title, as it initially projects one to question it's critical qualities towards yoga, sounding an alarm for those who do not do Bikram y...

And then there is Bikram himself. Who says: "People come to me and think yoga is relax. they think little flower, little ting sound, some chanting, hanging crystal… No! Not for you! Waste of time! Here I chop off your dick and play Ping-Pong with your balls. You know Ping-Pong? That is yoga!" So, this is a must-read for all hot yoga practitioners that would react like Lorr when having a conversation about pain with his teacher:I asked my favorite instructor about it, she just smiled. One of thos...

This book is about yoga, but only about 20 pages are about competition yoga. Most of it is about Bikrim and what a total narcissist he is (my words. the author seems to think he's amusing, if annoying and hypocritical). (This is before he was convicted of sexual abuse and had to flee to Mexico.) I had hopes for this one, but it did not deliver.

Very good hot yoga expose'. The author's perspective -- having participated in the yoga community to the extent he did -- gives his story more weight than someone who just reviewed current literature.

An amusing but bizarre journey, and as well-written as I'd hoped.