Sweat, strain, laugh, and do more for your health, body, and general well-being than you even imagined possible as you take your beginning yoga class from Bikram. For more than twenty years, Bikram's Beginning Yoga Class has been among the preeminent and most beloved of all yoga guides-and now it has been revised and updated by Bikram, with virtually all-new photographs and an updated section on yoga's medical benefits.

With nearly two hundred vivid instructional photographs, Bikram's Beginning Yoga Class is the perfect guidebook for any student of yoga, either advanced or beginner-a reference that makes Hatha yoga fun, easy, and completely understandable.

Illustrated throughout with 160 black-and-white photographs by Biswanath "Bisu" Ghosh

Bikram, the "hot yoga" program, has been heating up the yoga world lately, and its founder probably has something to do with it: The outspoken, dramatic, and always controversial Bikram Choudhury has garnered a lot of attention with his version of hatha yoga that some yogis think unorthodox: In his classes, students are stuck in a room heated to at least 105 degrees doing a structured program of 26 asanas with a sergeant-like instructor, and they love it. With his take-no-prisoners philosophy, Bikram describes how the program can reap great medical, physical, and spiritual benefits - the poses work out every part of the body, all of which can help alleviate many common ailments, from asthma to back pain. (Photographs accompany each pose.) In addition, the book offers the best ways to incorporate eastern philosophy into a western lifestyle and tips on how yoga can cultivate "a union between body and spirit."

Bikram Yoga is designed to "scientifically" warm and stretch muscles, ligaments, and tendons in the order in which they should be stretched. This book, with a serie of 26 postures or asanas and 2 breathing exercises, promotes the cleansing of the body and release of toxins and utmost flexibility. The practice of Bikram Yoga can also help you develop muscles, although Bikram Yoga is not about being flexible, but about strengthening your body and your spine in all directions with the goal of creating a union between the body, mind and spirit. All that matters is to try the right way without pushing yourself too far.