STRETCHING THE DEFINITION OF A
THE JOURNEY OF A FEMALE-OWNED YOGA STUDIO IN A POST-BIKRAM CHOUDHURY WORLD STORY BY KAYLA RUTLEDGE | PHOTOS BY LUIS CHAVEZ
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n 2013, two civil lawsuits alleging rape were filed against yoga’s then omnipotent Bikram Choudhury. By the next year, more women came forward and another three lawsuits were filed, sending Choudhury into panic. He fled the country with off-shore benefits, leaving those he instructed who relied on the use of his famous name for business to fend for themselves against huge corporate yoga entities. “Back in the day all it took was a sign saying ‘Bikram Yoga’ in your window to get people to come in. But this changed everything about the yoga businesses and how we viewed our teachings,” says owner of Pasadena Hot Yoga Val Sklar Robinson, who was featured in the newly released Netflix documentary “Bikram: Yogi, Guru, Predator - Inside his Empire of Abuse.” There was a time of euphoria for instructors under his teachings before the surfacing of his mistreatment of women, homophobia and racism. Choudhury was known as a pioneer of the intersection between age-old yoga teachings and modern takes on the practice. Aspiring instructors would sometimes pay upward of $16,000 to endure a grueling nine-week seminar with the man himself. Hopeful students braved Choudhury’s teachings of hot yoga in 104-degree tents, sometimes with up to 500 bodies sharing a space. As one of the most renowned yogis at the time, Choudhury sat in the front with an air conditioning unit blowing on his back as he called instructions, only leaving his podium when necessary. It was a common occurrence to look around the room and see several students passed out in a pool of sweat during a session. “He was very brash and politically incorrect. He had a very tough-love thing going on. But when he spoke to you it was like he could see into your soul. He moved you,” Sklar Robinson says. In a time before her knowledge of Choudhury, Sklar Robinson suffered an undiagnosed hip injury at 13, which lead to her eventually breaking her hip. “I’ve carried it with me ever since that Western medical doctors don’t know everything about you, and we sometimes need to take some responsibility for ourselves,” she says. After her hip injury, Sklar Robinson was diagnosed with early signs of degenerative arthritis and would someday need a hip replacement when she was older. “When you’re 13, old is, like, 50. So I was shocked when at 28 I had severe pain in that same spot just from simple tasks like walking, and was put on three prescription medications,” Sklar Robinson says. The then-corporate head in the shoe industry was on a business trip to Denver, where her friend’s parents brought her to a Bikram class to kill time, “and I instantly found it fascinating.” “When I came back to LA I looked into it a little more and found Bikram’s studio was right down the street from me so I started going. What I found was as I started to learn how to breathe properly and do the stretches. What looked complicated was actually pretty simple, and I started to feel better,” says Sklar Robinson. Soon after, she began practicing regularly and was off her medication and her limp disappeared. Sklar Robinson was so inspired by her progress and her new, more positive mindset, she left her corporate job. “In 1998, people thought that I was insane and that I lost my mind. Seriously, my mother was a wreck. But I was single, I was 30, so I quit everything and moved out to Pasadena to pursue my dream of opening my own studio,” says Sklar Robinson. 26 | ARROYO | 02.20
