Bouncing into Graceland

John Friend's unique presentation of precise alignment and

spiritual principles has thousands of American yogis flocking

to his Anusara Yoga and flowing with Grace.

By Laura Fraser

Las Vegas is an odd place for a yoga

workshop, particularly one on Anusara

Yoga. This hatha yoga system,

developed by John Friend in 1997,

teaches that everything in the world—

your smile, my Downward Dog,

Vegas's clanging slot machines—is an expression of the

divine. Anusara, which in Sanskrit means "flowing with

Grace," emphasizes moving in concert with the magical

course of energy that is life and consciousness, and

expressing it through the body, heart, and spirit. This

spiritual focus, combined with a concise system of

biomechanical principles that derive largely from Iyengar

Yoga, teaches students to align with the divine.

The divine may seem elusive in a place like Las Vegas, but

nearly 200 people—Anusara groupies, yogis of all stripes,

and Vegas dancers—have come to a gated high school to

take a workshop with Friend, a former financial analyst who

lives in The Woodlands, Texas, an upper-middle-class town

near Houston. Like all of his workshops, this one is crowded

and involved a long waiting list. In large cities, yogis have to

apply and be selected to attend; often, more people are

turned away than are invited to participate.

Even in places like Vegas—where five years ago, yoga was

about as common as a royal flush—Anusara has become

wildly popular. It's now one of the fastest-growing styles of

yoga around, with some 1,000 teachers worldwide and about

200,000 students, some of whom are so devoted that they

spend much of their vacation time and disposable income

following Friend around the country. And there are plenty of

places to go: This year, he's on the road for more than 200

days for his nationwide "Mystical Merry Band Tour 2004." In

keeping with the '60s-rock-band spirit, Friend's merry band

of followers call themselves Friend Heads.

When I join the Friend Heads in Vegas, I realize that the

venue isn't as odd as I had initially thought. In fact, the whole

scene is a bit of a glitzy show itself: The colorful lighting for

the event was designed by the same people who light Cirque

du Soleil. And Friend is known for inviting his assistants to

gather together midclass and perform what could be

considered synchronized yoga. Clapping and even cheering

by Friend's students are inevitable after these performances,

during which, say, eight advanced yogis may line up and

take Vasisthasana (Side Plank Pose), roll over in unison into

Urdhva Dhanurasana (Upward-Facing Bow Pose), and then

roll back.

In an odd way, Anusara Yoga fits perfectly in Vegas because

Anusara, too, is big and fun and quintessentially American.

With it, Friend has created the ultimate American yoga: It's

upbeat, optimistic, entrepreneurial, systematic, and do-it-

yourself-friendly, and it has elements of a quick fix. It's

spiritual but not dogmatic. It creates a sense of community.

And it appeals to Westerners' pioneering spirit by suggesting

that there is yet another frontier to conquer—the one inside

us. Within this American-friendly structure, Friend has

cleverly introduced some of the yogic traditions that are most

foreign to the West, creating a framework in which the less-

exercised limbs of yoga—pranayama, meditation,

philosophy, ethical precepts—can move about freely.

Do Yoga, Be Happy

Anusara has sparked a yoga revolution in America partly

because it's fun. The people I chat with at the workshop,

mostly women in their 30s and 40s, are unrestrained in their

enthusiasm for Friend and Anusara. They say the upbeat

message is what attracted them to the practice: Above all,

Anusara aims to awaken and express joy. Whereas other

systems may focus on the hot, hard workout or the perfect

pose, Anusara emphasizes grace, simplicity, and enjoyment.

In Anusara, the essence of life is all good.

The system also appeals to so many because it manages to

bring rigorous alignment, a strong philosophy, and a spirit of

community into its feel-good approach. "It fills in the gaps for

a lot of people," Friend says when I catch up with him at the

Rio casino. "People who practice vinyasa are intrigued with

the advanced poses, Iyengar people get a hit of the heart

quality and fall in love, and the Kripalu people, who are very

heart-oriented already, want to learn how to do the

alignment."

In our celebrity-loving culture, in which movie stars and

musicians are elevated to godlike stature, it makes sense

that the nation's most popular yoga teachers act like—and

are treated as—celebrities too. And with his graying curly

hair and thick gold bracelet and rings, Friend, 45, does

indeed look like a rock star, albeit an aging one. He is the

consummate performer, known to crack crowd-pleasing

jokes and remember an astonishingly large number of his

students' names. His amiable personality has helped him

reach such superguru status that his organization has been

selling T-shirts befitting a rock concert, with the cities and

dates of the 2004 tour.

Friend both acknowledges and, with self-deflecting humor,

makes fun of his star status. "Live and in concert from San

Francisco—how to turn a hotel ballroom into a sacred

space!" he told a group of 200 yogis on a separate occasion,

opening yet another huge workshop. "We're going to party!"

He makes it all sound easy and fun and, well, a tad

superficial, but his enthusiasm is contagious and draws

people into something he knows goes much deeper.

Friend's popularity derives partly from his charisma, which

seems to persuade everyone in his midst that he is, in fact,

their friend. Whereas other spiritually inclined yoga teachers

may be strict, serious, or unapproachable, Friend is warm

and funny. "John tells good jokes," says Judith Hanson

Lasater, an early teacher of Friend's who is a senior Iyengar

instructor. She says some of his appeal may come from the

way he freely praises students, which B.K.S. Iyengar

generally avoids, thinking it builds up their egos and stunts

their progress.

Lasater also thinks Friend's popularity speaks to a need in

modern America. "There's a lot of father hunger in this

country—for a male authority figure who is warm and

connected," she says. "Maybe John has hit on something

because everyone is so hungry for praise." In any case, she

supports his work. "He's providing a great service to people,

helping them find themselves, open their hearts, and live in

joy."

Yogic Stew

In keeping with the tradition of America as a great melting

pot, Friend has taken ingredients from several yoga styles,

stirred them together, and come up with something uniquely

his own. In the spirit of American entrepreneurship, he

created his own system of yoga because after years of

studying asana and yoga philosophy, he had found no

school that presented yoga the way he wanted to teach it.

Friend was introduced to yoga by his mother at the age of

eight; studied with a wide and eclectic range of teachers,

traditions, and philosophies over the years; and began

teaching yoga in 1980. "If I have anything that people find

worthy, it was really given to me by somebody else," Friend

says. "It's not like I just made it up." Indeed, Anusara draws

on Friend's years as an Iyengar teacher—he studied with

Lasater, Ramanand Patel, Mary Dunn, and B.K.S. Iyengar

and earned introductory and junior intermediate teaching

certificates in the Iyengar tradition. He also studied Ashtanga

Yoga with K. Pattabhi Jois.

One of Friend's most profound experiences, he says, was

meeting Gurumayai Chidvilasananda, of the Siddha Yoga

lineage, in an ashram in India in 1989. There, while

performing a yoga demonstration, he says, he felt his first

tangible experience of Grace. He became deeply interested

in Tantric philosophy and the belief that every heart is home

to the divine. Soon, he began teaching Iyengar classes with

Tantric-inspired ideas of Grace and flow.

Before long, Friend realized he was no longer

teaching Iyengar Yoga in a way that honored and respected

B.K.S. Iyengar. "Iyengar wants his method taught a certain

way, which is totally appropriate," he says. "I was

doing Iyengar Yoga but also the whole Tantric thing. It wasn't

Iyengar, but what was it? People need distinctions."

There's something very American about putting a new name

on an eclectic collection of yoga wisdom, which is exactly

what Friend decided to do. With his background in

organizational systems and business from the financial

world, Friend created not only a system of alignment that is

simple and elegant but an entire Anusara organization. He's

developing an integrated yoga methodology that includes

meditation, philosophy, and what the Tantrics call kula—a

"community of the heart." To that end, he has engaged

philosophers (Douglas Brooks, Carlos Pomeda) and a

meditation teacher (Sally Kempton, who wrote the column

about joy) to join his Merry Band. The integration of modes

often takes place in real time; as Friend coaxes a roomful of

yogis into a challenging pose, Brooks or Pomeda will pick up

a microphone and expound on a Tantric concept or the

meaning of a Sanskrit word.

As for the name "Anusara," Friend was at a Siddha

Yoga ashram when he asked Brooks, a professor of religion

at the University of Rochester (in New York) and a Hindu

Tantra scholar, what he should call his system. Brooks,

ignoring the question, told him about a Tantric text he'd just

translated, which described how by stepping into the current

of Grace descending, the seeker becomes capable of

holding the power of Grace. Friend listened to the word in

the verse that expressed that concept. "Anusara," he

repeated, and the name stuck.

Align with the Divine

On its surface, Anusara Yoga seems simple and free from

dogmatic tradition, something that appeals to people who

are searching for spirituality but are turned off by strict rules

of any kind. Friend's Anusara isn't a spiritual free-for-all,

however—he has invited scholars like Brooks to join his

Merry Band because he is aligning himself with a serious

branch of Tantric philosophy. "Anusara has taken the brave

and risky business of bringing the deep spirituality of yoga

front and center," Brooks says. "It's not only taught as a

program for fitness and wellness, it's taught as a way of life."

Anusara is based on a particular Tantric tradition, rajanaka

yoga, which teaches that everything is divine. But the divine

is veiled, so we have to discover it through revelation and

self-knowledge in a game of hide-and-seek. In classical yoga

traditions, Brooks says, the body is a problem, something to

overcome and transcend. In the Tantric tradition, however,

the body—like everything else—is seen as divine. Tantra

Yogavalues the body and our sensual nature and doesn't try

to dominate or control it. The point of Tantra-based yoga is

not freedom from embodiment but freedom in embodiment.

"The body is a celebration of the divine, and embodiment is

the gift of awakening our potential to see the divine in all

things," Brooks says.

Anusara leaves students with an element of choice, a

fundamental American tenet. Its philosophy is profoundly

optimistic though, Brooks says, "not Pollyanna-ish." It says

we can open ourselves to the goodness and bliss of the

universe, but it recognizes that people are free and may

choose not to experience Grace. It also doesn't deny that

greed, selfishness, and evil exist as choices. "You are free to

choose to align or misalign—yoga is not about being

nonjudgmental but about becoming adept at making

judgments," Brooks says. The overarching belief is that by

aligning ourselves with the divine flow of Grace, we can

bring that Grace to others in our relationships, our

communities, and the world.

Do-It-Yourself Yoga

Having articulated an Anusara philosophy with Brooks,

Friend set about laying its foundation. Since Americans

respond enthusiastically to easily definable categories, quick

solutions, catchphrases, and simplicity, Friend boiled his

system down to what he calls the "three A's": attitude,

alignment, and action. In Anusara, the yogi uses action (the

natural flow of energy in the body) to express his or her

attitude (the power of the heart) through the alignment of the

body (mindful awareness of how its parts are integrated and

connected). The beauty of each asana is expressed not just

in the form but in the attitude that moves the student from

the inside out.

Friend's system of biomechanics is based on years of both

studying and teaching yoga—primarily Iyengar Yoga—and

winnowing what he observed in other yoga systems into a

simpler approach. In other schools, he says, each teacher

gives you his or her own instruction on a lot of different

points in each pose—even though in general, the student

comes to the same position anyway. "Why not say the

thighbone moves back in every pose?" he says. "I thought it

would be simpler if we could organize the instructions into

principles, and I could teach somebody in one day the

alignment that took me years to understand." He studied the

biomechanics of all the poses and organized them into what

he calls the Universal Principles of Alignment (see "Go with

the Flow,"). "There were very distinct patterns—it was a

revelation." His alignment method focuses on an interlocking

system of loops and spirals, balancing what he calls

Muscular Energy, which hugs the muscles to the bones, with

Organic Energy, which radiates out from the heart. Since

students can grasp the alignment concepts easily, they

develop the power to align themselves without a teacher

more readily—undoubtedly a reason Americans, typically

wary of authority and eager for a do-it-yourself approach,

find the system so appealing.

"The teacher does not have to hold all the information in a

hierarchal sense," Friend says. "Learning the principles,

students have something that empowers them superfast. We

don't have to stay in Triangle Pose for two years before

moving on."

When I first dropped in on an Anusara class, I was intrigued

by how a simple system could seemingly organize all the

little instructions I'd come to understand in my body through

seven years of studying mostly Iyengar Yoga but could not

articulate or replicate with confidence at home. The teacher,

Stacey Rosenberg, who is studying Anusara but is not yet

certified in the style, described Friend's interlocking system

of loops, which fit in the body like gears, and spirals, which

either externally or internally rotate the legs. The same

principles, she explained, can be applied in all the poses.

This simplicity is often a welcome relief for yogis who have

spent years listening to complicated, esoteric teachings on

alignment. "I teach yoga for kids," Rosenberg said, "and

even the kids are getting it."

Rosenberg explained that she's attracted to Anusara not

only because the alignment principles are accessible but

because the practice is uplifting. "Anusara teaches that our

inner core is radiant and joyful," she said. "Usually, we learn

to be strong on the outside, and inside we're crumbling. In

Anusara, we're strong on the inside, so on the outside we

can show our sadness, or softness, or vulnerability."

The "action" of Anusara's three A's is, like alignment,

biomechanical. It's based on a balance of energy in each

pose—which is fired up by the attitude. In Anusara, there is

always balanced action, in which Muscular Energy and

Organic Energy flow equally. Too much Organic Energy can

lead to overrelaxing and hyperflexibility, which, in turn, can

cause muscle strains and tears. Too much Muscular Energy

can lead to overefforting.

Friend himself is an extraordinarily bendy yogi, performing

highly advanced poses in a private practice with his

teachers. (He doesn't show off much to the large groups he

teaches.) But his body is a shining example of the balance

between muscularity and softness he teaches.

Effort vs. Ease

The "attitude" of Anusara is where biomechanics and

alignment melt into philosophy. The attitude is the intention

and spiritual expression at the heart of the asanas, which in

Anusara is the desire to realize and awaken our divine

nature. I took a class with longtime Anusara teachers Jim

and Ruthie Bernaert at YogaKula in Berkeley, California; the

studio embodies the Anusara idea of community, bringing

people together for a wide array of yoga and holistic health

classes. "Iyengar is a great teacher of the biomechanics of

asana, but the heart languaging of Anusara—talking about

drawing in muscles and bones to a place of power—inspired

me," Jim said.

"Although the physical is important," Ruthie added, "the main

thing is getting people to connect to the honest goodness

within themselves." The openheartedness of the asanas and

the celebration of the divine within ourselves translate into

an ability to feel more personal greatness and to empower

others to feel it in themselves.

I asked the Bernaerts how they avoided the New Agey,

syrupy-sweet language that can sound phony in yoga

classes. "Genuineness comes from experience," Jim replied.

"You connect to students from your own heart."

That all sounds lovely, but what happens when life throws us

an ugly curve? When I dropped in on a class with Katchie

Gaard, a certified Anusara teacher in San Francisco, I saw

how the open-heart message isn't all about smiley faces.

Gaard, who came to Anusara via Jivamukti and Ashtanga

Yoga, told the class she'd just learned her mother was dying,

and was up-front about the raw pain she was experiencing.

Throughout the practice, her message was clear: You can't

live hunched over; you have to open your heart and breathe

through grief; you have to live and love while you can, and

make decisions in your life as if you can see death out of the

corner of your eye. Though her asana directions were very

clear and technical, hers was no ordinary asana class;

rather, it was an exercise in cracking apart emotions. I was

resistant as a newcomer, and in Savasana (Corpse Pose),

when she asked us to touch the person next to us, I put a

lifeless hand on my neighbor's neck. Gaard encouraged us

to risk opening our hearts and letting the energy flow through

us. When I finally opened the flow from my heart and let it

move through my hand into the responsive human being

next to me, the warm burst of energy astonished me. It did

us both good.

The Final Frontier

With his down-to-earth style, humor, and deep knowledge

base, Friend has few overt critics. Some yoga teachers

grumble that Anusara is all a big marketing scheme—and

certainly, as a marketing scheme, it has succeeded

brilliantly. Others say there is something off-putting about

creating a brand for yoga wisdom that's been around for

centuries, though certainly, plenty of other yoga teachers—

Bikram Choudhury, Pattabhi Jois—have developed and

named their own systems in America. And another

contingent points out that while Anusara says it distinguishes

itself from other styles by focusing mainly on the heart, that

focus is hardly anything new in yoga.

Some yoga teachers also wonder if Anusara is a bit too easy

and pat. Friend claims he can teach good alignment in a

day, but Iyengar teachers say it's hard to embody good

alignment without years of practice. "Our culture wants a

quick fix, and the classical knowledge is that it doesn't

happen quickly," says Karl Erb, former director of the Iyengar

Institute of San Francisco.

As Anusara grows at an astonishingly fast pace, Friend

faces the major challenge of structuring his system so that it

can accommodate a lot of people without becoming as rigid

and dogmatic as other large yoga schools have become.

"With institutes and organizations, you have to keep

increasing boundaries and limitations as they get bigger,

without losing the integrity or connection to the original

purpose," he says. "It's a tricky game."

With any style of yoga, the effectiveness of the teaching

depends on the teacher. And Anusara's accessible—though

not simple—system may be particularly vulnerable to bad

teaching. "When people haven't had experience and mouth

the words, it sounds inane," Douglas Brooks says. "That's

why John is trying to create high standards for certification."

Indeed, Friend has developed a rigorous certification

process, which not only assures that Anusara teachers have

mastered a wide body of knowledge and skills but enables

them to improvise thereafter. Teachers who are interested in

applying must first demonstrate that they have practiced

yoga for at least four years, taught for one year, studied for

two years with an affiliated Anusara teacher and 250 hours

with a certified Anusara teacher (including 100 hours with

John Friend), and taken a one-week teacher training course.

To be certified, they have to pass a lengthy written exam and

have a video of their teaching and asana practice approved

by Friend and another teacher. Five years ago, there were

only 15 to 20 certified teachers, and now there are still only

100.

Once certified, instructors can teach in a way that draws on

what they've learned from other teachers; there's no routine

structure in an Anusara class. Teachers are given

suggestions, such as to offer a lesson from the heart with

each class, but that lesson depends on their own

experience. "It's not a franchise like Bikram's, where it's

standardized to a T," Friend says. "We're connected, but it's

a loose boundary, so it can grow, change, move, and evolve,

and honor the teacher's own unique artistic expressions."

Friend recognizes that there are some dangers to

overpopularity, and he is meticulous about who can use the

Anusara name. "It can get so superficial that people miss the

depth of it, and it can sidetrack them," he explains. But as

ever, he's optimistic. "More people are tapping into a

practice that can connect them to their hearts," he says.

"Even if they're just blowing through the vinyasas, which is

typical today, not really watching the alignment, there's still

something that they pause and start to feel, and they can get

fired up about going deeper. It's a gateway to something

amazing." Friend looks around as we walk through the

casino to the car. "Here I am in Las Vegas teaching a one-

day class to 160 people with a whole wide range of

experience. If I can offer a message to uplift everybody and

feel like everybody's more connected, then maybe that can

spread in a place like this, where it's the world of

superficiality."

Later, at the workshop, Friend takes his seat. "I do the

practice to remember and celebrate my goodness," he tells

the group of rapt listeners. "There's something good in

everything. Even Vegas."

Laura Fraser is the author, most recently, of the

memoir An Italian Affair.

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