Anusara Controversy: Overview and Timeline · drwh0. The Vicious Vocal Minority vs. John Friend. “The show is not the show, but they who go.”
~Emily Dickinson It’s amazing how much can change in a year. This exact time last year, I was sitting next to a girlfriend receiving a pedicure and doing what I normally do: listening. Open to Grace Offerings. Anusara: The Great Chasm. ~ Richard Hudak. After reading Betsey Downing and Suzie Hurley’s Honoring Truth on elephant journal, and having had a few days to reflect Bernadette Birney’s Under the Influence, I had the distinct impression that a great chasm, or rather canyon, separates the Yoga Coalition and the Kula Evolution, the latter affiliated with the Interim Steering Committee that is trying to negotiate with John Friend over the eventual disposition of Anusara, Inc.
Letter from John. March 20, 2012. A letter by John Friend of Anusara Yoga.
But first, some context via elephant editor Waylon Lewis (feel free to skip):A month ago, leading yoga teacher John Friend was accused of various things by an anonymously-backed web site.After an initial calm phase, during which we sought to sift agenda-driven accusations and fact, elephantjournal.com has published some 90 articles representing different perspectives from former and current Anusara yoga teachers and students, as well as from outsiders. Nearly all of them are critical.I published the first and only interview with John Friend, where questions regarding his affairs (which he admitted to publicly for the first time) and the dissolution of the Anusara, Inc. pension (which I clarified through discussion with his anonymous accuser and nine pages of legal documents, which we released) were addressed for the first time.
Below, the new letter from John Friend. Dear Teachers and Community, John friend pulled from wanderlust festival 2012 lineup. John Friend at Wanderlust 2011 (image by JT Liss, via yogadork.com) In light of recent developments in the Anusara world, Wanderlust, North America’s leading yoga and music festival, announced that John Friend has been removed from the lineups of this summer’s events.
Yoganonymous posted the official announcement from Wanderlust today: Over the past 6 weeks, we have closely observed the situation unfolding within the Anusara community. Both Anusara Yoga and John Friend personally have played a positive role at Wanderlust over the past couple of years, and our heart goes out to the entire Anusara community during this time. Throughout this period, we’ve tried to take what Buddhism calls “the middle path” — to look at the situation from all angles and draw mindful and reasoned conclusions.Our mission at Wanderlust is to create community and it is our sincere hope that we can use our platform not only for joy and celebration but also healing.
Connecting to the iTunes Store. Connecting to the iTunes Store. Connecting to the iTunes Store. March Newsletter. Dear Ones, This letter is in response to the controversy now surrounding John Friend and Anusara Inc.
Philip Goldberg: Scandal in Yogaland: Let's Not Draw the Wrong Conclusions. The bustling world of American yoga is abuzz with the inevitable sex scandal.
John Friend, founder of Anusara Yoga, has admitted to numerous affairs with female students, some of whom were married. Because Friend is probably the best-known yoga teacher in America and the most successful yoga entrepreneur, the upheaval has attracted a good deal of attention. Dr. Who's Reading Room. William J Broad on John Friend Scandal: Yoga is a Sex Cult and We’re All Ignorant Minions. Swami Muktananda Subtitle: Are you effing kidding us?
After the ‘How Yoga Can Wreck Your Body’ debacle we cut author William J. Broad a break. Heck it wasn’t his fault the New York Times went for the shock value, and some reviews of his book actually made it sound worth reading. But his latest article on yoga and sex scandals, basically Broad’s response to the latest John Friend/Anusaragate, confirms that WJB is just as annoying in his delivery about sexifying yoga as he is about it wrecking your body. Wholehearted Devotion. If man [sic] cannot pray he is gagged; if he cannot kneel he is in irons. G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man via GK Chesterton Society of Ireland: On Kneeling. Among the many gifts of this practice has been Dina Charya, alignment with the Ayurvedic ideas about the “daily rhythm,” including rising early, and as indicated for my constitution, physical activity, which for me has been the morning walk. I’m reminded of this gift upon rising.
As I consider this crisis in Anusara yoga, I am reminded of the fifth niyama of Patanaji’s Yoga Sutras, Isvara Pranidhana, translated tantrically as “wholehearted devotion to the divine” (many thanks to my teacher, Sara Davidson Flanders, who offered this in the first immersion). Connecting to the iTunes Store. Connecting to the iTunes Store. My interview with John Friend regarding jfexposed accusations.
Update: two more key interviews/letters: Douglas Brooks, longtime colleague of John Friend’s, & Amy Ippoliti, senior Anusara teacher who recently resigned.
Update: my interview with an Anusara Yoga teacher who resigned today: an inside view re the Anusara teacher resignations and a conversation re: how to avoid repeating history. ~ ed, 5 Questions for Anusara Yoga’s John Friend regarding “jfexposed” anonymous accusations. You and I go back for a few years. I like and respect you, as many of us do. That said, there’s obviously a situation here that’s serious, in that it affects people and, since that jfexposed exposé web site and then Yogadork’s blog has had much of the yoga world talking. I hope you regard the below as tough questions that give you an opportunity to respond as fully as you are able.
So I’d like to ask you five succinct questions. Reporting gossip and anonymous accusations that hurt real human beings isn’t what we do. SITUATION 1. SECOND QUESTION WTF? About John Friend. Anusara™ Workshop - The Collective Makeover with Desirée Rumbaugh. Untitled. On beginning Anusara Yoga Teacher Training. I took my first yoga class in a gym called Body Blast my junior year of High School.
It was an accident really – a spillover from the kick boxing class I attended beforehand. For whatever serendipitous reason that particular day, I decided to stay and work on my flexibility. Sandwiched between exercise balls and middle-aged, upper-class women in pink velour sweat suits, I got my first taste of yoga. Looking back, I only remember one thing from that class. The teacher told us a story of yogis in India who went through a rite of passage where each sat in the middle of a frozen stream, and—using only their breath and one-pointed focus of the mind—melted the snow and ice around them. Ten years of deepening and I’m five months into my second teacher training this time in Anusara Yoga.
John Friend’s Melt Your Heart, Blow Your Mind Tour 2010 kicked off here in San Francisco. For me it will be a path of great transformation through challenge. Daily Insight Newsletter May 16, 2010. The yogic sages—especially in the Hindu and Buddhist branches of Tantra—anticipated quantum physics by claiming that a subtle vibratory energy is the substratum of everything we know.
