The Yoga Blog

Last week, the New York Times Magazine featured a 5,000 word article illuminating Anusara Yoga and its founder, John Friend.  Boundless Yoga has three teachers who teach in the Anusara style.  Here is Leigh Ann Caldwell’s response, and below this, is Leah Barr’s.

I walked into my first Anusara yoga class in the spring of 2003 in New York City. A friend brought me. We practiced detailed, challenging, alignment focused asana but something was a bit different – I was inspired.

In the New York Times Magazine article, John Friend said Anusara is “the yoga of Yes.” This is the magnetic force that kept me coming back to Anusara. It’s Tantric philosophy is life affirming. Anusara teaches yogis to celebrate and embrace life, including all of its challenges, diversity, joys and sorrows, and not just on the yoga mat, but in all aspects of living.

As most yoga traditions believe in the power of asana to transform through the mind-body connection, Anusara does too. My Anusara teachers wove philosophy into asana practice and soon the life enhancing philosophy permeated deep into my core and guided how I walk in the world.

In sanskrit, Anusara means “to flow with Grace.”  Before Anusara yogis move any muscle in asana, we turn to Anusara’s first principle, Open to Grace. It has become the one I return to over and over again. To me, that means turn to my breath and reconnect with myself and my heart as a reminder to align with the flow of the universe. In other words, rather than fight the currents of the universe head on, move from my heart.

In the article, John Friend said teachers should “lead the students to that magical place where everyone’s heart opens naturally and where everyone feels empowered and filled with self love.”  As a teacher, that is my goal. I hope students leave the confines of my class physically, mentally and emotionally strong, flexible, open, and aligned with his or her inherent greatness.

So Kim has asked us Anusara practicioners here at Boundless to write a brief response to the newspaper article about Anusara yoga that was recently published in the New York Times.  What a lovely opportunity for us to deepen our inquiry into yoga.  I’m steadily pursuing Anusara certification so I’m happy and honored to be asked to share my thoughts and my love of the tradition with the Boundless community.  I would also encourage anybody who’s interested to seek out blogs written by certified teachers and of course, the response that was written by the man himself, John Friend (which can be found on the Anusara web site).

John has expressed on his web site how honored he feels to have been featured in such a prestigious and widely read publication and I’m sure many lovers of Anusara feel the same way.  It is a blessing to be sure, and undoubtedly, because of the article, numerous folks will become curious about yoga.  I have already spoken to several people who want to try an Anusara class, or any yoga class at all,  because they found the article intriguing.  Yay!

As one would expect, like any other feature in a popular newspaper, the author took a point of view.  In my opinion, in an effort to make the article sexier, the author took many liberties with her assumptions regarding John’s motivations and intentions, which I obviously consider to be of the highest integrity and caliber or I wouldn’t be practicing Anusara.  However, it’s not so much what was in the article, but what wasn’t in the article of which I’d like to write, and hopefully further the ongoing conversation we have here at Boundless about the nature of yoga.  Underlying the following response, which is written specifically for the Boundless community where the collective intelligence about yoga is quite high,  is the assumption that Boundless readers know that yoga encompasses, but is about much more than just the shapes we make on our mat.

In the article, amidst the referencing of the life affirming aspects of Anusara; that asana can be fun, that it can be an artistic expression, that one needn’t necessarily practice austerities, etc…what gets lost is the fact that there is a deep and vast tradition of yogic innovation, knowledge, and philosophy to support such an approach.   The brief (and somewhat cynical) mention of the scholars of the Tantra who contribute to Anusara does little to convey the depth or breadth of the river of yogic insight that has been flowing and evolving for many hundreds of years and in which Anusara is deeply steeped.   The lack of emphasis on this information in the article, while understandable, is critical because it could make all the difference to the casual observer in determining the authenticity or validity of the style.  Without this information, I could see why a very surface glance at Anusara might lead to various misunderstandings.  It is important for folks to know that the philosophy of “yes” of which John speaks is a paraphrase of an incredibly robust, nuanced, rich, and exquisite body of yogic insight,  and while John’s contribution to this body is massive,  it’s not something he just made up!  To be clear, I’m not advocating that the casual reader, observer, or practioner must be acquainted with the underpinnings of Anusara, but just to know that they are there, that John is their humble, devoted, and passionate student, and that Anusara would not be what it is without them.

There are many different kinds of yoga practicioners.  Some of us just want to feel better and happier.   Most of us want to become free of pain in its various forms. Some of us have a penchant for the metaphysical.  We can participate in the experience of yoga in just the way that we need in any given phase of our life, our day…Inevitably for most of us, regardless of our entry point, our practice will deepen.   So it is good to practice a style of yoga that can hold the fullness of who we are and who we might yet become.   That is what Anusara is to me.

Before I discovered Anusara yoga I did yoga and meditation practices that were aimed at transcending my thoughts, my body and my life.  I thought that was the yogic thing to do.  In my mind there was a clear separation between what I considered to be spiritual and what I considered to be worldly.  Without intending to I had created a duality that alienated me from the inherent beauty of life and it really wasn’t working for me.  It was a tremendous deepening (and a tremendous relief) when I found the practices and philosophy that could actually support my experience of being in a body with all of it’s limitations and sorrows as well as its joys and pleasures.   I began to have encounters with the spirit and beauty pulsing through all of existence as well as a deep peace which came from knowing that my quest for spirit had essentially been fulfilled.  Spirit was embedded in life itself, not hovering above or outside of it.  The purpose of my yoga was to now engage with that spirit fully, still through discipline and study, but with an important shift in my attitude.  I learned that my previous approach was more aligned with classical yogic philosophy and that the more Tantric approach of Anusara, which had evolved out of the classical approach, was less well known, but could trace its roots back to the 9th century in Kashmir.

I would encourage students to take a deeper look beneath the surface of the New York Times article (which I acknowledge because of the nature of what it is had to be a somewhat superficial treatment) and the surface of Anusara.  ”Life affirming” is not synonymous with light weight or “watered down.”  Quite the contrary in my opinion.  I think we should beware of imposing ideas we might have about yoga onto the freshness and immediacy of genuine, deeply felt experience.  From where do these ideas come?  Might they be a bit dated or tired?  Do they really serve us in our endeavor to live life to it’s fullest?  Are they robust?  I hope this article can be an opportunity to get more expansive about our definition of yoga.

Sometimes when I go to my mat I go with the intention to calm my mind.  Sometimes I’m just bored and looking for something productive to do.  Sometimes I just need to move my body.  Often I go with the intention to coax an experience of the divine out of my being by dancing with my breath, my body and spirit within the myriad shapes and forms of the poses.  It can be a quiet experience, it can be a rigorous experience, it can be an elevated experience.  Sometimes it can be all three, and no matter what, it always has a beneficial impact on my life.  We are complex, we are dynamic, we are creative.  We all do bad.  We all do good. We all want to experience freedom, joy, and peace (and by the way, we all need to earn a living, jeez!).  Yoga means to yoke, to connect.  I hope for myself and for everyone that our yoga, no matter what style, can be big enough, potent enough, and elegant enough to hold the fullness and greatness of who we are as human beings so that we can more deeply and wisely connect to ourselves and each other through this awesome, daunting, and wild endeavor/adventure here on earth.