Hell Bent: Obsession, Pain and the Search for Something Like Transcendence in Bikram Yoga

'Just when you thought yoga couldn’t get any hotter … Here comes a New York insider’s guide to the practice that is causing devotees to think again' - Daily Telegraph 'Witty and wise. If you don’t practice yoga, read it anyway – you may learn something about the impulse for self-transcendence. And if you do practice yoga, you will laugh and cry with recognition' - New York Times _____________________ Benjamin Lorr walks into his first yoga studio on a whim, overweight and curious. A run-in with a competitive yoga champion means his simple desire to tone up soon transforms into obsessive training for a national championship. But this is Bikram Yoga, distinguished from more ‘conventional’ forms by extreme heat, an overt, almost masochistic focus on pain, and the rabid materialism of its founder, the enigmatic Bikram Choudhury. Hell-Bent is a look at the science behind a controversial practice, a story of greed and corruption, and a mind-bending tale of personal transformation that will change the way you view both yoga and the inspirational potential of the human body. _____________________ 'Extraordinarily thoughtful … a wonderful, inspiring, maddening, complicated, edifying journey - and one that I was very happy to take' - Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love