Hot yoga is a form of yoga as exercise performed under hot and humid conditions, resulting in considerable sweating. Some hot yoga practices seek to replicate the heat and humidity of India, where yoga originated. Bikram Choudhury has suggested that the heated environment of Bikram Yoga helps to prepare the body for movement and to "remove impurities".

Bikram Choudhury is an Indian-American yoga guru, and the founder of Bikram Yoga, a form of hot yoga consisting of a fixed series of 26 postures practised in a hot environment of 40 °C (104 °F). The business became a success in the United States and then across the Western world, with a variety of celebrity pupils. His former wife Rajashree Choudhury assisted him in the yoga business.