Bishnu Charan Ghosh: A Hot Yoga Story for Turkey Day in the USA
One Thanksgiving a woman was preparing her Thanksgiving turkey, just as her mother always did, cutting off the legs before placing it in the oven.
When asked why, she simply replied, "That's how my mom did it."
The woman’s curiosity piqued, she called up her mom and asked about it, only to learn the recipe her mother followed came from her grandmother (who her mother had imitated).
So the two women decided to do a video conference with grandma - and they asked her why the recipe called for cutting off the turkey legs.
Grandma burst out laughing!
"I cut the legs off because my pan was too small!" she said.
How many things in our lives do we do this way - because it's how we were taught, or what we observed, without ever questioning the rationale?
Whether it's a recipe or a mindset, we often follow patterns that were handed down to us, even when they no longer serve the original purpose.
We all have memories of people who impacted us growing up: parents, teachers, older siblings, or grandparents.
Sometimes those influences taught us valuable lessons, and shaped us for the better, while other times they left us with habits or attitudes that no longer align with who we want to be.
Yet, these influences shape how we view and approach the world, tasks in our lives, and even the choices we make today.
You can probably recall the sense of the people who raised you: their tone, what they would say, their beliefs, and their perspectives.
But it’s not just those in our personal history who shape us.
The fathers and mothers of whole fields - science, athletics, movement, medicine, and art - also leave their mark on the ways we think and act.
If you've ever stepped into a hot yoga class, for example,
you’ve unknowingly encountered the influence of one of the grandfathers of yoga. But most people don’t remember what he taught.
Yes, in yoga, much like that turkey recipe, we often inherit ways of doing things without fully understanding their origins - or whether they truly fit our current needs.
So, it’s worth pausing to ask:
Are the traditions, methods, or even energies we carry still useful, or are we just trying to fit into a pan that no longer suits us?
And, conversely, do we have to throw out Thanksgiving entirely, just because we want to keep the legs on?
Otto Arco
Muscle Control Demonstration
Bishnu Charan Ghosh: The Yoga Grandpa Most Yogis Don’t Know
Bishnu Ghosh was the younger brother of one of the most famous yogis of the 20th century, Paramahansa Yogananda, the spiritual teacher known for Autobiography of a Yogi.
As a child, Bishnu was frequently ill, and it was during this time that Yogananda introduced him to muscle control techniques.
The concept was popular due to the upsurge of the physical culture movement in Europe. In India, there were traveling shows with strongmen and yoga demonstrations.
This sparked in Bishnu a deep interest in health, strength, and physical transformation.
In addition to his Indian influences - which spanned both the physical and the spiritual - Bishnu also learned from the style of European bodybuilders.
Around the late 1800s, bodybuilding was emerging in the world as a formal practice. This period also saw the development of “muscle control,” a method where individuals learned to move and isolate muscles through focused mental engagement.
Otto Arco
Muscle Control
Bishnu Ghosh became deeply interested in muscular contraction and dynamic tension - using muscular effort in deliberate ways.
He studied physical culture at the University of Kolkata.
Some notable figures from this era include Eugene Sandow, often considered the father of modern bodybuilding and an influence on yoga, and Max Sick, who - along with his partner - developed a style of muscular contraction called “Maxalding.”
In the United States, a later but widely known figure was Charles Atlas, famous from comic book and magazine ads in the 1970s. His system shared similarities with the earlier European methods.
By 1922, Bishnu became deeply involved in bodybuilding. He co-authored a book: Muscle Control and Barbell Exercise.
In 1923, he opened his Ghosh College of Yoga and Physical Culture, which later became known as Ghosh’s Yoga College.
Ghosh’s center operated like a healing clinic, fueled by his belief that weight lifting combined with yoga was the key to good health.
People who came to his clinic were given specific exercises and yoga postures to do, which were supervised.
Yoga With the Legs
Into this mix, at the age of 18, came one of Ghosh’s students: Bikram Choudhury, who would later become the founder of Bikram Yoga, a popular, heated style of yoga that gained fame in Los Angeles, California in the USA.
Notably, Bikram - who would later insist that his system be taught in a standardized way, according to a script that should never be altered - radically altered the yoga he was taught by his guru, Bishnu, eliminating both the use of weights and the customization that Bishnu Ghosh found to be key to his system.
Adapting to his circumstances, Bikram taught group classes, added heat from saunas (that he had encountered while working in Japan), and made the postures more suited to the body types of his students in the USA.
Though he insisted on an established template for teaching his classes, Bikram himself was an innovator who altered the system that he had inherited.
The poses are still taught - but is the rationale?
Interestingly enough, today, in Bikram Yoga classes, while the overall postures are taught, teachers no longer teach muscle control.
Bishnu Ghosh’s story reminds us that even thoughtful traditions - whether in health, movement, or family - can shift over time, sometimes in ways that lose sight of their original purpose.
The real value isn’t solely in repeating steps, but also in understanding the reasoning behind them.
As life changes, it’s natural to adapt. The key is being thoughtful about what we carry forward, what we adjust, and why.
In that process, traditions stay alive—not just by staying the same, but by continuing to make sense in the world we live in now.