What’s a yogi’s ride of choice? If you’re Bikram Choudhury–the short, chiseled and youthfully radiant 62-year-old inventor of “Bikram Yoga“–it could be one of his several dozen Rolls-Royces or Bentleys, fine complements to his 8,000-square-foot mansion in Beverly Hills.
His taste in food is more modest: Choudhury says he subsists on one small high-protein meal after midnight and less than three hours of sleep, though he does have an appetite for diamond-encrusted Rolex watches.
Yoga is big business, racking up $5.7 billion in sales last year, and Choudhury has built a cultlike following. As he tells it, he started his first studio in the U.S. in 1972 with the help of President Richard Nixon, who, after following Choudhury’s advice for coping with phlebitis (by doing poses and taking near-scalding baths), granted him a U.S. visa and found taxpayer money to build his first three schools.