Page 125 - Esquire - USA (Winter 2020)

man, thanks to the significant training fees he
charged instructors to teach his copyrighted
sequence of poses. He lived in an eight-thou-
sand-square-foot mansion in Beverly Hills. He
owned more than forty luxury cars, including
a monogrammed Rolls-Royce. He had grand
plans, telling Yoga Journal in 2009 that his
next goal was to “stop terrorism.” His down-
fall was still a few years away. In 2013, the first
of several lawsuits would be filed against him
by former female employees and students who
claimed he sexually assaulted them. He vehe-
mently denied the allegations, telling HBO’s
Real Sports in 2016, “Why would I have to ha-
rass women? People spend one million dollars
for a drop of my sperm.” He lost one case—
brought by his former attorney, who alleged
she’d been sexually harassed by him and fired
for refusing to cover up the claims of another
accuser—and was ordered to pay $6.8 million.
He’d become a pariah in the competitive-yoga
scene, and Rajashree filed for divorce. Rather
than pay the court-ordered damages, Bikram
fled to India, where he lives today as a free man.
Growing up in
Texas, McCann
struggled to
identify why he Twisted Staff
felt so different.
He sought refuge LOS ANGELES, JUNE 2011
in the piano. It wasn’t their decision to share a hotel room.
But the Yoga Federation had booked just one
room for McCann and Encinia at the Westin
near LAX for the 2011 World Champion-
ship. Given the choice, most humans prefer
not to sleep alongside a stranger, especially if
that stranger is the competition. Then again,
a hot-yoga class places you in extreme prox-
imity to the sweat of several bodies, so the fed-
eration’s logic wasn’t a far stretch. Anyhow,
that’s how McCann and Encinia got to know
each other.
McCann arrived first. He claimed one bed
and waited. He did his best to relax. This was
his first appearance in an international com-
petition—focus was paramount. His yogic
austerity was tested when Encinia arrived
with his girlfriend, Carolina, a modern dancer
and a part-time pitchwoman for a yoga cloth-
ing line, there to work the lobby booth. She’d
be staying in the room, too.
Encinia wasn’t bothered by the sleeping ar-
rangements; he was focused on winning. He’d
placed second in the past two world cham-
pionships and didn’t intend to do so again.
Shortly before it was his turn to compete in the
semifinals, he and Carolina left the room, she
to the lobby and he to the auditorium, where
he huddled backstage. There, he missed Mc-
Cann’s masterful performance. The eruption
of applause afterward? It was hard to miss that.
Encinia’s turn. At first, he felt his body
fall into a flow so natural that it required no
thought. For his balancing backbend, one of
the five compulsory categories, he performed
Standing Bow, which is sort of like a vertical

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