The yoga industry is booming – but does it make you a better person?

​It’s now arguably more of a lifestyle than a form of exercise in the west​. ​And rather than becoming more enlightened and compassionate, I felt I was just pouring energy into ​myself

It was 2010 and the newspaper I worked for in Sydney commissioned me to interview yoga entrepreneur Bikram Choudhury.

He was in town to open the first of a chain of hot yoga studios. Choudhury’s brand of yoga – which he had trademarked and franchised – involved 26 poses in a humid, heated room with mirrors and carpets. When I visited the studio and caught the stench and the robotic instructions from a mic’d-up teacher, I thought: Yeah, this won’t take off.

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