Hell-Bent (44 page)

“The dialogue reflects Bikram’s genius for teaching a class that successfully gets inside the head of a struggling practitioner. …”:
For instance, when going into a certain front stretch, where the legs are four feet apart and the body bends forwards until the forehead touches the ground, weight needs to be pushed to the balls of the feet. The official dialogue calls for “Heels in one line, feet slightly pigeon-toed” because for most people it is only when they try to pigeon-toe their feet that they will actually get them parallel enough to push the weight in the ball of the feet and feel the proper stretch. When, during a seminar in Hawaii, one senior teacher asked Bikram what he meant by “feet slightly pigeon-toed,” the guru replied somewhat indignantly, “Pigeon-toed! So the feet become parallel!”

“The need to adhere to Bikram’s broken, often counterproductive,
phrasing …”:
Consider the phrase “Grab your
h-e-e-l
heel,” which every trainee must parrot incessantly during training. An essential Bikramism for Bikram because with his thick Indian accent,
heel
sounds almost indistinguishable from
hill
and therefore without it, people grab at all sorts of hill-like body parts and screw up their postures. However, when spoken by someone with any other type of accent, it produces at best quizzical looks from new students, and at least one “I know what a heel is, asshole” from someone clearly slipping right over the brink of exhaustion into rage.

“The demonstration consists of ninety-one postures …”:
The actual number of postures depends on who’s counting and how they count. It varies between 84 and 106, a range that might seem odd, considering it’s a static series performed with an identical series of motions every time. But as with most things yogic, certainty and exactitude are unhelpful. In the Advanced Series, many postures contain multiple movements, evolving in discrete stages, while other posed movements have precise instructions for alignment but are not considered “postures,” for reasons that probably hint at both the mechanism and practice of innovation within the series. These nonposture postures are referred to as “warm-ups,” “openers,” or in Bikram’s terminology, “masturbation.” At the low end, the number eighty-four is considered an auspicious number within Hinduism—historically many of the great yogic texts make mention of the eighty-four asanas—so there is a constant downward effort to conjoin postural movements to make the series conform to that goal. (Buhnemann,
Eighty-four Asanas in Yoga: A Survey of Traditions
, 2007.)

–
“Bikram Choudhury, on the other hand, will adjust a single posture in a thousand ways, or, if the case warrants it, throw the whole thing out. …”:
For example, consider a woman who tells him that her son always gets a headache when doing Locust pose. Bikram asks, “Always?” And when the woman affirms it, he announces triumphantly, “For him, fuck Locust, better he do Lotus! Better yet, maybe nothing … If every time the asana causes pain, why would you do that again and again? That is not the purpose of yoga.” The answer, entirely reasonable, feels totally at odds with almost everything we have heard from other senior teachers when confronted with people who describe aches and pains in postures.

“Nice boobs too. I have picture!”:
While I have no idea which picture Bikram is referring to, there is a whole series of photographs of Bikram doing Crow on women’s chests in his 1970s “Red Book,” including a young Emmy Cleaves and an icky Crow-on-chest of a preteen Justine Bateman.

Part VI: Sickness of the Infinitude

“A careful scrutiny of various schools of psychoanalytic psychology …”:
Robert L. Moore,
Facing the Dragon: Confronting Personal and Spiritual Grandiosity,
Wilmette: Chiron Publications, 2003.

“Only the third person Bikram allowed to teach his yoga …”:
It is worth noting that Linda’s teaching certificate—which still hangs proudly in her room of yogic hoardings—was not issued from Bikram’s Yoga College, but rather by his guru’s school in India, and is signed by his guru’s son. It took her seven years of daily training to earn, and except for the names, is identical to Bikram’s own certificate.

“A 1988 study investigating the personality traits of eighteen charismatic leaders …”:
Len Oakes,
Prophetic Charisma: The Psychology of Revolutionary Religious Personalities,
Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1997.

“The Romans had a similar concept, using the word
facilitas
to describe a hero’s ability …”:
As found in Oakes,
Prophetic Charisma: The Psychology of Revolutionary Religious Personalities,
1997.

“The aging, reclusive George Washington was dragged to the Constitutional Convention because the Framers believed his physical presence …”:
Washington oozed this quality his entire life, inspiring the greatest men of his age to fall into weird homoerotic spells when recalling him. We can find Thomas Jefferson waxing poetic on his erect stature on horseback, Gilbert Stuart fawning over his broad nose and deep eyes, the Marquis de Chastellux gushing that his physical proportions matched his moral perfection, and Dr. James Thatcher (practically defining charisma for the modern reader) relating his belief that “no one can stand in [Washington’s] presence without feeling the ascendancy of his mind.” This was not a simple case of sucking up before power either. At age twenty-five—
after
he resigned his military position—Washington was begged by a group of twenty-seven officers to come back to them. “Your presence only,” they explained, “will cause a steady firmness and vigor to actuate in every breast.” It is perhaps Washington’s greatest credit that he grew steadily distrustful of this effect on others, recognizing its potential for abuse, and repeatedly chose to remove himself from the public sphere to allow democracy to flourish. (Ron Chernow,
Washington: A Life,
New York: Penguin Press, 2010; James Thomas Flexner,
Washington: The Indispensible Man,
New York: Little Brown and Company, 1969; James Thomas Flexner.
George Washington: The Forge Experience,
New York: Little Brown and Company, 1965; “Rediscovering George Washington,” PBS.org, 2002.)

“We have a mere touch from Bhagwan Rajneesh described as incomparable bliss. …”:
Huge Milne,
Bhagwan: The God That Failed,
London: Caliban, 1986, as quoted in Oakes,
Prophetic Charisma: The Psychology of Revolutionary Religious Personalities,
1997.

“It creates a powerful, almost anti-intellectual instinct toward surrender. …”:
And thus, perhaps, the inevitable reference—definitely not to be misconstrued as comparison—to Von Ribbentrop. In Gustave Gilbert’s 1947 profile, he describes the former German Foreign Affairs Minister at his
trial in Nuremberg watching a film of Hitler. In tears, he shouts to the courtroom: “Can’t you see how he swept people off their feet? Do you know, even with all I know, if Hitler should come to me now and say ‘Do this!’—I would still do it?”

“To Weber, the energy between charismatic and follower was …”:
Max Weber,
Theory of Social Organization,
trans., A. M. Anderson and Talcott Parsons, New York: The Free Press, 1964; Christopher Adair-Toteff, “Max Weber’s Charisma,”
Journal of Classical Sociology,
2005.

“Heinz Kohut did not set out to study charisma. …”:
Charles B. Strozier,
Heinz Kohut: The Making of a Psychoanalyst,
New York: Other Press, 2004. Oakes,
Prophetic Charisma: The Psychology of Revolutionary Religious Personalities
, 1997.

“But Kohut was struck not by the pathos each patient eventually revealed. He was stuck on their first impressions. …”:
Heinz Kohut, “Creativeness, Charisma, Group Psychology,” in
Freud: The Fusion of Science and Humanism,
edited by John E. Gedo and George Pollock, New York: International Universities Press, 1976. Oakes,
Prophetic Charisma: The Psychology of Revolutionary Religious Personalities
, 1997.

“They glowed. …”:
Or as Kohut said, they were men and women who “without shame or hesitation, set themselves up as the guides and leaders and gods” of those in need. Kohut, “Creativeness, Charisma, Group Psychology,” 1976.

“A link was made clear … the professional charismatic can be stripped away to reveal a desperate need for attention. …”:
It is worth nothing that Kohut was careful to explain that although many charismatic personality types were rooted in a severe disturbance—“some no doubt close to psychosis”—that charismatics “come in all shades and degrees” and a reflexive negative judgment is not warranted, especially as the social effects of these personalities “are not necessarily deleterious.”

“‘Remember me! Remember who I am! You think I don’t know everything! I know everything!’”:
The drama in these encounters is almost as important as the encounters themselves. Another senior teacher who has been both in and out of the Bikram inner circle described it as feeling “like a movie. It really felt like he was channeling Pacino or something. Bikram had been screaming so long and listing so many crazy threats, it started feeling like we were acting out some scene. At one point my attention broke, and I looked to the side, looking for a director to feed me a line … like line, please? How do I get this to end? … Bikram didn’t even notice I wasn’t looking at him anymore. He just kept going.”

“And any construction I was involved with used illegal untrained labor.”:
Chad elaborates, “Bikram would brag to me about his contractor friends who could circumvent electrical meters and water meters so he could
have free water and electricity. Then he would ask me why I couldn’t do the same thing.”

“I went through this slow realization that he really and truly does not give a shit about other people. …”:
More Chad, expressed perhaps more eloquently, and channeling the clinical description of the grandiose narcissist who cannot see others as full humans, but merely extensions to fulfill his own needs: “There is a lot of rhetoric, but watch how he treats people. Bikram does not see his yoga students as ‘luminaries of truth,’ he sees them as vessels like toilets and trash cans for him to treat as he wishes. He will tell people to their face that they are worthless. He will discard them if they don’t do exactly as he wishes. They exist for him only as much as they practice his yoga his way.”

“We got over twenty-seven violations from the fire department in a single year. …”:
Apparently, failure to correct these violations became so acrimonious that Los Angeles City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo held a press conference to announce criminal charges in conjunction with ten of them. (Andrew Blankstein and Jessica Garrison, “City Charges Yoga with Safety Violations,”
Los Angeles Times,
June 30, 2006.)

“When we talk, Eleanor begins by addressing these concerns. …”:
While primarily based on an interview and email follow-up with Eleanor Payson, LMSW, works by the following people were invaluable in filling out this picture of unhealthy narcissism and how it develops in childhood: A. H. Almass (
The Point of Existence: Transformations of Narcissism in Self-Realization,
Boston: Shambhala Press, 1996); Diana Alstad and Joel Kramer (
The Guru Papers: Masks of Authoritarian Power,
Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 1993); Al-thea Horner (
Being and Loving: How to Achieve Intimacy with Another Person and Retain One’s Own Identity,
Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield Publishing Group, 2005); J. Masterson (
The Narcissistic and Borderline Disorders,
New York: Brunner, 1985); Alice Miller (
The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self
(Revised Edition), New York: Basic Books, 1997); Carol Lynn Mithers (
Therapy Gone Mad: The True Story of Hundreds of Patients and a Generation Betrayed,
New York: Addison Wesley, 1994); Andrew Morrison (
Essential Papers on Narcissism,
New York: New York University Press, 1986); Robert L. Moore (
Facing the Dragon: Confronting Personal and Spiritual Grandiosity,
Wilmette: Chiron Publications, 2003); Eleanor Payson (
The Wizard of Oz and Other Narcissists,
Royal Oak: Julian Day Publications, 2002).

“It turns out, not surprisingly, that people who experience a certain type of wounding in childhood are more vulnerable to the charismatic image. …”:
Payson,
The Wizard of Oz and Other Narcissists,
2002; Miller,
The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self
(Revised Edition), 1997; Morrison,
Essential Papers on Narcissism,
New York: New York University Press, 1986.

“Both are children who are not ‘seen’ for who they actually are. …”:
In both, the wounding is passed down, almost as legacy, from a narcissistic caregiver. This does not prevent positive childhood memories with strong displays of affection. “On the contrary,” psychologist Alice Miller writes in her essay “Depression and Grandiosity,” “the mother often loves her child as her self-object passionately, but not in the way he needs to be loved. Instead, he develops something which the mother needs.” The child learns to fulfill the parent’s warped expectation. Often this includes model behavior: extreme willpower, cleanliness, academic accomplishment, or expertise in dance, music, or athletics. “But,” as Miller continues, no matter how successful the outward reception of these talents, or how completely the child fulfills his parent’s grandiose expectations, his skills will “prevent him throughout life from being himself.” Alice Miller, “Depression and Grandiosity,”
Essential Papers on Narcissism,
edited by Andrew Morrison, New York: New York University Press, 1986.