Interview with Bonnie Jones Reynolds

Freelance writer, Megan Doll, interviews Bonnie Jones Reynolds, author of Bikram’s Beginning Yoga Class.

M: How is it that you came to Bikram yoga?

B: I came to Bikram Yoga I believe it was late 1973 or 1974. I was married to Gene Reynolds who was the producer of Mash, and one night Loretta Swit, who was Hot Lips Houlihan, was a guest at our dinner and she had just started taking lessons with Bikram and she very excitedly spent the entire evening telling us how wonderful it was and insisting that I go and partake of his bounty. Which I did.

M: And what was the spirit of the practice like in those days? 

B: The spirit of the practice? The spirit of the practice was very warm, not in the temperature of the room.  Bikram was adored by all the students.  The classes were fairly small and you know maybe depending on anywhere between 30 to 60 people. And everybody knew everybody else. And it was just very warm and very congenial.

M: Was it the same practice that we currently know as Bikram yoga, the same 26 postures and breathing exercises? Was there anything different at all?

B: It was exactly the same, however what was missing was this hot yoga business. That was not at all a part of the protocol. When I started the room was warm. It was probably, I don’t know, 75/80 degrees. At the far end of the room he had electric heaters going and people who wanted to would work in front of the electric heaters to heat up their muscles even more but this was not at all a part of the practice…

M: And they were calling it Bikram yoga?

B: No! They were calling it Yoga College of India! It was not Bikram yoga. That term hadn’t even been invented. The Bikram yoga is something totally new.  It was the Yoga College of India and the people who were teaching were offshoots of the Yoga College of India.

M: You had mentioned before at the time you were practicing, Bikram was really adored by his students. Can you tell me a little bit about that, why that was, what was his relationship was with his students or the people in the studio?

B: There was always a joke that people have to bring him cookies and they would say, “Bikram, you are going to get fat,” and he would say, “No. No, my metabolism is perfect. My metabolism is absolutely 100% perfect. I burn everything up, I do. My body does not waste anything. I can eat all the cookies I want so you bring cookies!” And he would sit there and eat cookies during the class. I think I actually used–in what I call the red cover addition, the first version—I think I even used the description of the students giggling and laughing as if at a puppy, a lovably puppy. I felt toward Bikram as that during those days, as though he were a totally lovable puppy. (Laughter)

Not what you have nowadays huh? The puppy grew up to be a fighting pit bull.

M: Did he have a clearly expressed vision behind his yoga? Do you think that what Bikram yoga has become today is what he imagined today as in the 70’s?

B: No. In the 1970s he was totally about giving. I was always totally amazed at how he did all the classes in those days. He very, very seldom had anyone sit in for him… He would sit there patiently and work with everybody to try and help them to try and change their lives and to try to mend their health. When I went I was in such bad shape that I had to be lowered into bed and someone had to take me by the neck and pick me up because my back was absolutely disintegrating. I had polio when I was a kid and I thought I had gotten off scot-free from it but at that point even the chiropractors couldn’t help me. Seven days a week my chiropractor came and he was even coming in on Sundays because I was in such bad shape. That is one of the reasons I went in the very first time he looked at me he said “You. You come to me every day for two months and I will give you a new life.”  And I said, “You promise?”  And he said I promise and he kept his promise. He was totally about helping people. And I mean, the night he asked me to do his book I happened to be right beside him…he leaned over and said, “Bonnie I need your help.  I need you to write my book for me.  We have had other people and they just don’t come up with anything good.”  He said, “I need you to write it for me because…” he said, “we’ve got to give this”—this is interesting—“we’ve got to give it to the people.  We’ve got to give this to the world.  We’ve got to help people understand yoga.”  That’s what he was all about in those days.

M: Who would teach the few times that he wasn’t there? And what were his teachers like?

B: There was a tall girl who later, actually when I was living up in San Francisco for six months, I went to her school up there. A tall girl, long brownish hair, glasses, she was very good. As a matter of fact, when I was up in San Francisco, I was working with her and I think technically she did more for me then- and I wish I remember her name I don’t but you could look back at who in 19- I think it would have been- 75, had a school in San Francisco. But she technically was fantastic.  Bikram didn’t teach technique.  He just said do it and somehow you did it but you didn’t know how you did it. She was fantastic at dissecting the postures… Doing the postures I probably learned more about yoga from her than I did from Bikram.

M: Did he seem relatively established in any case?

B: He was getting very big in the Beverly Hills clique as the ‘guru to the stars’. You know this is what he was hyping.  That he was the yoga master to the stars and when you went into his class everyone from Shirley MacLaine down was there. There was a tremendous amount of celebrities who would take his classes and he was getting very popular in the Beverly Hills area. Now also, you know, like with this girl that I studied with up in San Francisco—I don’t know what her financial deal with Bikram was, but certainly he was not stopping his better students—and he didn’t really even have training classes then for teachers. They were just students who has gotten very good and began going out and opening their schools. He certainly was not stopping them. I guess he must’ve been encouraging them but at that point, besides the Beverly Hills school, there was one in San Francisco and I think there might have been one down in Florida… There might’ve been one in New York but that’s all there was at that point.

M: Previously you were describing Bikram as a cuddly puppy and that at the time of the book he was really about helping people. How do you feel like he has changed and do you think you witnessed that change take place?

B: No, because I have had nothing to do with him all this time. The only thing I know is what I read in the papers. All I know is what I read in the papers, what Will Rogers said. I have had nothing to do with him. I’ve read about it. I have read about the lawsuits. I have read about him trying to take a patent on something that belongs to the universe and I’ve been very, very, very sad. I love, love Bikram. I love the Bikram that I knew back then I am very sad about who Bikram has become.

M: Let’s talk a little bit about the first book. Was there any collaboration with Bikram when you were writing it or did you do it entirely on your own?

B: I did it entirely on my own. The only input from Bikram was that he gave me a couple of recordings from his classes but I didn’t even need them since I had taken so many years of classes. I did it from memory. And I was living in Australia at the time and in describing the postures I would go through them myself movement by movement and if I were writing a particular posture I probably would do that posture 100 times and I would stop and I would write down this step and that and ideas that came to my mind….My description of the poses and helping the student understand what it was going to feel like and what they were going to have to work their way through.

M: How did you try to reflect Bikram’s message and style in the book?  I feel like your tone is very distinctive… 

B: I definitely wrote it in such a way that people could almost hear him and understand the English, the sometimes hilariously funny way that he has with the English language, or at least that he had then. And I tried to give everybody the flavor of actually being in a class with him. That basically came out in the comments from students that were off to the side—from Bonnie comments, from Shirley comments, from so-and-so that would tackle a different side of the whole thing and give a student interpretation. In the original book I got anecdotes and stories and real-life happenings or feelings from my classmates, a lot of my classmates: Stories that they had told or situations that I knew that they were in. This one I called Lavinia who only came once a week and she was fat and Bikram was always picking on her and it finally came out that she was terrified of not doing things right and the fact that he complemented her on something meant the world to her. I’d have to look at the book again to even remember what the Lavinia story was but that was an actual woman in the class.

M: More than thirty years after the first printing of the book it is still widely read and yet a lot has changed in Bikram yoga. How do you feel about it in retrospect?

B: In retrospect Bikram said he would give me a new life and he kept his promise. He promised to give me a new life. I will be always grateful to Bikram because he did change my life.  I might’ve been in a wheelchair by now with what was happening to my spine. Instead at the age of 73 I am working circles around the teenagers that are employed here. I am in perfect health–the only thing that is wrong with me is a post-nasal that is very annoying, but aside from that I am in perfect health.  And whenever I feel like things are going a little bit bad with my body, I get back to my yoga and I do it straight every day for three or four months and then I can get lazy and go off for a few months.  But yoga is always there to rescue me. Bikram has always said,  “Yoga is money in the bank.  The money is in the bank you can’t take away, your body remembers.” There was one time I had laid off yoga for over two years and when I went back to it within one week I was doing the postures as well as I have done some at the peak of my practice. My body remembered and thanked me. And for that I thank Bikram. He was trying to give this to everybody and he did. Now, unfortunately, he is trying to put a fence between the yoga and people that he so desperately wanted to give it to so long ago and making it into a really ugly thing.

M: When and how did you first hear about the lawsuits that Bikram was filing against studios that were teaching hot yoga?

B: I think I read something in the newspapers. It would’ve been newspapers and magazines. There was a woman who contacted me, oh, probably five or six years ago who was very concerned.  She was teaching here in New York state and she was afraid that she would be sued if she taught it. She provided me with some articles and some of the updates of what was going on. That was my main source of knowledge.

M: Were you surprised to learn about all of that?

B: Yeah, surprised and very disappointed and very saddened. Very saddened, as I say, something that belongs to the universe that he was trying to say is his own. There is no doubt that his 26 postures do a very good job. They have kept me in tip top physical shape all these years even though I haven’t done it all of these years. It is a great boon to anyone who does it but I don’t believe he originated any of the postures. What he did was put together a sequence that he believes prepares the muscles and gets the optimum out of the body when done in that particular progression, and I’m not sure, to me that’s not a patentable thing.

M: What message would you give to young people who are struggling with the lawsuits and entanglements and distractions of the present day?

B: You mean young teachers?

M: Yes and studio owners

B: Well, my advice is continue to give. Continue to give yoga which is union. Yoga is union with God–that’s what its all about. He’s trying to patent union with God. I don’t know what God would have to say about that. I would have to say continue to give. I certainly hope the court rules against him on this…he has made it very difficult. He is putting a fence, he is putting a wall between something very beautiful that needs to be given to the world and people’s ability to give it, and that is tragic. It is worse than sad; it is tragic. It’s tragic for the teachers, it’s tragic for the people, it is tragic for Bikram.  He has become something that was not the Bikram I knew. But you know…even today, I’m sure, if I went into a class, even though we’ve had a falling out and we haven’t spoken and he’s probably very angry with me, if I went into a class and was doing the postures he would do everything he could to get the most out of me and to help me physically as much as he could help me in his class. We could then argue about money until the cows came home after class. But he would try to help me, he would give of himself in the class, in a way that has nothing to do with money. Am I making clear what I am trying to say there? There’s a difference between Bikram giving in a class and Bikram giving outside of a class—anytime you get into finances, hard cash finances. It’s almost a split personality there.

M: Bikram says that he is suing people in order to protect the integrity of the series. What are your thoughts about that?

B: No, that’s ridiculous. Once you’ve done the 26 postures and you realize how absolutely marvelous it is for you, you’ve seen your life change and you’ve got wonderful health and exuberance, you’re not going to change it anyway. That’s ridiculous. He’s just trying to make a lot of money for himself. The postures protect themselves. The results that one gets from doing the postures, that speaks for itself. I would not dream myself, whenever I practice, I wouldn’t dream of doing anything other than his 26 postures just the way I wrote them in my book. That’s also ridiculous because as Bikram always said, “Any yoga is good yoga. Any yoga you can do is good. Any amount, any kind of it, it is good.”  I mean, to say that he has to protect—and that is the only way humanity is going to be helped by him protecting those 26 postures—that again goes against his own advice that any yoga is good yoga.

M: It’s like you’ve hit on the struggle that so many people are facing, in terms that they love the man and they feel that they are taking a stand against him. Do you feel this is a stand against the man or a stand for the yoga?

B: What I am talking about? You mean me? No, I am not against the man. As I told you I love Bikram. I will always love Bikram. I will always, I consider him one of the angels of my life. One of the most important people of my life. He certainly gave me something that was a great treasure. He gave me back my health and my ability to move and function in the world.  Certainly I am not against the man. I am saddened. I am sad at the way he is using his great gift and sad at his tactics. There’s a big difference between being against the man and being against his tactics and against his actions.

M: I feel like a lot of people who are coming up against lawsuits against, with Bikram right now have sort of a similar attitude of genuine affection and admiration for the man and even love I would say.

B: It’s making a stand for yoga itself… This is just a beautiful yoga, go out and do it. It’s, yeah, I mean, it’s very difficult for me, loving him the way I do and being grateful to him as I am, for me to speak on as I’m speaking. But one has to stand with their principles and one has to speak the truth to what they are saying. As I say the truth is that he is erecting walls between this great gift that he started out giving to the world and wanting to give to the world and the actual ability to give it and share it.

M: Do you consider yourself still a member of the Bikram community or do you feel pretty distant?

B: Oh no, I’m definitely not a member of the Bikram community. He’d be the first one to say that I’ve been banished to the nether regions… I tell people when I give them a copy of my book that I believe in this with all my heart. I don’t believe in what Bikram is doing now but I believe in the basic 26 postures to do wonderful things for you. And so in that way I am a—how would one put it?–I’m a user of what I learned those many, many years ago to keep my own life on an even keel. But being a member of the community?  No.

 

You can learn more about Bonnie Jones Reynolds at www.bonniejonesreynolds.com and www.springfarmcares.org