Sunset

Below is a list of “goodbye’s” from our contributors as we “sunset” the site today.  In the spirit of honoring the guru within and true to the spirit of Bay Shakti to equally uplift and empower all contributors as leaders, teachers and students alike, the below “signing off” statements are listed alphabetically by contributor. In other words, the below statements are not ordered by the importance of any one individual over another or even by perceived importance level of the contributors. We all have unique vantage points, which yield different, though potentially equally valid and nonetheless interesting perspectives. What an honor to help publish a diversity of voices along the way, and what a beautiful experience this has been, called Bay Shakti!

Blessings on the Path,
Founder and Editor-In-Chief, Ginger Coy

Certified Anusara Teacher and Contributor, Abby Tucker:
We in the Bay Area, and in the world-wide Anusara and yoga communities, were extremely blessed for the presence of Bay Shakti during the past several years.  The beauty, and the legacy of Bay Shakti, is that is brought everyone to the conversation and everyone had a voice.  From the beginning, the site sought out not only well-known teachers, but also students to make offerings to the community.  No voice more important than next. No voice unworthy.  I’m very honored to have contributed to this all-too-brief moment in time and send my highest hopes that our voices will continue to join together in the great conversation of yoga as they have done on Bay Shakti.

Anusara-Inspired Yoga Teacher and Contributor, Alice Evelyn Van Ness:
In the last three years I have taken an Anusara Immersion, Teacher Training, became an Anusara Inspired Teacher, spent a week doing yoga all day with John Friend and 200 other inspiring people in San Francisco, spent countless hours practicing and laughing with some great people, AND healed my hip / knee pain. Our journey together is not over, its just flowing in a different direction now. I will cherish these past few years forever. Thank you to Ginger for you amazing work and service.

Student and Contributor, Ariane Trélaün:
I was just reflecting, driving home from work, on how completely Anusara has disappeared from my life, this particular word that was in my vocabulary for so long, since 2005. How, in two months’ time, Anusara has basically vanished entirely for me. Part of that is that I’ve been injured and off my mat and away from the kula, except virtually mostly, since December, but the remove feels enormous. If you’d asked me a year ago, 6 months ago, if I thought this day would come — when I would no longer identify as an Anusara yogi, when Bay Shakti would cease to exist – I wouldn’t have believed it. I still feel the loss; even though I still have everyone, the kula, the practice, something ineffable was lost in all that ruckus, something sweet that won’t come again. It was a privilege, in so many ways, to be a part of that here in the Bay Area, to be a part of the Bay Shakti family, thanks to Ginger and Brad and Fredo. Thank you so much for holding center for us for three years, for being a gathering place, for giving me a place to write when I was still learning. Your seva to us all has been tremendous, and I am profoundly grateful.

Founder and Technical Director, Brad Coy:
When we launched Bay Shakti we had no idea really how it would grow. The concept of offering a site for yoga supporting many voices is more challenging than it seems. I would say that it took almost 2 years for it to become something that actually seemed sustainable. I’m very proud of the contributors and what they’ve shared with us here. This community has meant a lot to me. The connections, the lessons, the practice, I will take with me beyond and into the sunset. My heartfelt gratitude to all the contributors for sharing your best with us and to our readership for keeping our desire to share strong.

Tantra and Sanskrit Scholar, Christopher “Hareesh” Wallis:
Thank God for Bay Shakti. Really. Our touchstone for sanity this year. A deep bow to Brad and Ginger for their endless hours of unpaid work!

Yoga Teacher, 500 RYT and Contributor, Chris Arcucci:
Thank you Ginger & Bay Shakti for all that you have contributed to the Anusara Community especially in the last two months of incredible challenge and controversy. My truth has lead me to resign my license to teach Anusara Yoga. My commitment to Yoga & Community is unwavering. I intend to see and speak the truth, to make beauty, to explore the shadow, to courageously follow my heart, and to enjoy the journey of being human. The 11 years of study and teaching Anusara Yoga has been a healing journey for me. I am grateful for all the incredible teachings, revelations, connections, insights and even the heart break of the last few months. I will never be the same and I am happy that my heart has been cracked open. I hold great love for all the amazing teachers and students I have met along the path. Regardless of where teachers choose to stand in this…you are my peeps and i LOVE you!

E-RYT 500-RYT-500 Yoga Instructor and Contributor, Daniella Cotreau:
I offer deep gratitude to Bay Shakti for being such a wonderful place for inspiring people to share in the realm of Anusara yoga. It was an incredible hub and resource for our beautiful community and I am very grateful to Ginger and Brad for their contribution and labor of love. May we see this shift and each and every shift moving forward, individually and collectively, all as opportunities to live our yoga. To know ourselves ever more deeply. To clarify more and more, our Truth. And most of all, to walk it.
with great love and blessings to all,
Daniella Cotreau~

Certified Anusara Teacher and Contributor, Darcy Lyon:
As I think about a blogosphere without Bay Shakti I am saddened. Since its inception Bay Shakti has been a rare forum where practitioners from the same lineage, could have open dialogue about many layers of our practice. I am not a big partaker of blogs– my computer time is taken up by other things. Still, Bay Shakti was an exception. It supported community gatherings like our 12 Bay Area Eye of the Tiger’s practices this year. As a writer it was a site I could share my thoughts on diverse topics from Desire, to Trauma. As a reader it was a forum where I could glean the rich perspectives of many other peers and students alike. It was this aspect, being a site for conversation among both teachers and students alike, which made it so special. Bay Shakti expanded the dialogue and world of Anusara yoga through its contributions to the conversation. I am grateful to Ginger, Brad, more recently Fredo and all the other writers and supporters who contributed to this nexus. The conversation may continue- in living rooms and yoga studio lobbies, but with its ‘sunset’ we are again reminded of this powerful place of transition we are in as a community. What has been before is largely dissolved, what is to re-form is yet to come, we stand in the liminal space, between departing and arriving. The ground is uncertain, the air smells new. Thank you Bay Shakti!!!

Managing Editor, Fredo Guastella:
I will always be grateful for the amazing virtual community that formed, centered around Bay Shakti. I am inspired by how the exploration of our practice can become such a profound source of deepening one’s sadhana and delighting in community. Gratitude and love to all of the writers I had the honor of working with during my tenure as Managing Editor, and gratitude and love to the site’s founders, Ginger and Brad Coy.

Student and Contributor, Jack Van Wyk:
Gratitude to Ginger, Fredo and everyone else who made Bay Shakti such a powerful tool in our community. As the sun sets on Bay Shakti and the storm clouds hang over what is left of Anusara, we will remember that whether it is day or night, cloudy or not, the sun always shines.

Yoga Teacher, 500 RYT and Contributor, Jana Kilgore:
Bay Shakti has been an invaluable resource for our community both locally and globally over the last three years. It has been an honor to contribute to it’s richness and offerings to the greater Anusara community. Seeds have been planted, there has been incredible growth for us all…Now, it is time for us all to cultivate our individual and collective visions of this powerful yoga we have been growing together. Thank you to Ginger, Brad and Alfredo especially for your seva. With love, Jana

Student and Contributor, Jeannie Page:
It is to Ginger Coy and Bay Shakti that I owe a debt of gratitude for helping me to become the writer I am today. Ginger was the first person who encouraged me to write about my journey of healing with yoga, which was published on Bay Shakti as “My Journey Into Grace.” The writing of that first blog opened up a creative flood gate and allowed for so much more magic to flow on my path as a writer. I am grateful for the support and the community developed around Bay Shakti and for all that they have done for the San Francisco Anusara community, and the Anusara community at large.

Yoga Teacher, RYT and Contributor, Jessica Archer:
I’m so grateful for the platform that BayShakti has been for the Anusara yoga community, and I’m hopeful that it can continue to be a source of wisdom and inspiration for the greater yoga community stepping forward.  As a yoga teacher who has resigned my license with Anusara, I know I will always have my roots in the teachings I received while studying this method.  Now, I am feeling a great freedom to step outside of this container…to embrace what resonates most deeply, and explore the expansion of its boundaries. I come to the mat and practice yoga without the solid lines my mind may draw, but with the soft boundaries of my physical form and how it wants to move through this moment in time.  Hope to see you all somewhere along the path.

Yoga Teacher and Contributor, Katrina Ariel:
To me, one of the most potent things I got from Anusara yoga was the invitation to not only align with beauty, but to fully express myself creatively. BayShakti has been an open canvas and each person’s voice has added color and depth. I feel my life has been enriched by the ideas, words, and relationships woven together both online and offline, and send everyone blessings as we each continue to evolve in yoga and beyond.

Yoga Teacher and Contributor, Kelly Murdoch-Kitt:
Spring sunshine warms the moist soil. Sensing the change, previously dormant bulbs beneath the surface begin to emit tentative roots, then nudge their leaves upward, toward the light. One season has given way to the next, and it is time for new life to flourish, though it is not always easy or automatic. Day by day, through alternating chilly rains and welcoming solar rays, this fresh life requires hard work and persistence, but ultimately offers glorious and colorful reward.

During the season of Bay Shakti, it was an honor to participate in its growth and to see it flourish. I am grateful to Ginger and Brad Coy and Alfredo Guastella for their tireless service and leadership in bringing this beautiful offering to our yoga community, and to everyone who contributed to its success. However, as with the transformation of seasons, this change also holds promise. I see this not as an ending, but the beginning of another phase—a new season—for all of us. I am excited to see what will blossom in the future.

Certified Anusara Teacher and Contributor, KK Ledford:
Astrologically, this year will continue to be ripe with change and intensity. I’ve been talking about it for quite some time, and its
what I constantly refer back to, and what I feel is one of the most important factors for this year of the Water Dragon -
Uranus in Aries. The radical and rebellious planet that demands freedom at any cost in the fiery, feisty sign of Aries will continue to bring upheaval and instability personally and universally. My advice is what it has always been: embrace the chaos, merge with the mystery. And while staying steadfast and serious about your sadhana, please please retain a sense of humor.
Blessed be.

Student and Contributor, Michelle Indianer:
I will always feel gratitude to Ginger for inviting me to write for Bay Shakti about the current controversy with John Friend. Because I know Ginger to be classy, intelligent and warm, I decided to bring these qualities to my writing. With her and Alfredo’s wonderful editing support, and knowing that Brad would have my back when the comments got heated, I was able to reach deep within to write articles I could feel proud of and that I hope were helpful to readers of this blog. I think that Bay Shakti has set a high standard for civil discourse in the blogosphere, and as such it will be sorely missed!

Vinyasa and Anusara-Inspired Yoga Teacher and Contributor, Rebecca Snowball:
Thank You Bay Shakti, Ginger, and Support Team! You really enhanced the bright light of Anusara yoga in the Bay Area Community. Because of your blog, I found my voice as an Anusara-Inspired teacher on the path to certification! I felt a deep sense of belonging to our greater Anusara yoga community thanks to Bay Shakti! You will be missed!

Certified Anusara Teacher and Contributor Stacey Rosenberg:
Bay Shakti has been a great source for Anusara Yoga in the Bay Area and beyond for 3 years. Thanks to Ginger, Brad and more recently Fredo for putting together such a rich website full of resources for our community as well as being a place for all of our voices to be heard. It was truly a unique offering and will be missed.

Anusara-Inspired Yoga Teacher and Contributor, Tony Giannetti:
I’ll be sorry to see Bay Shakti go and hope that in the future there will be a forum where those aligned with a more Tantric perspective on life can share and interact. It’s beautiful how this sort of ‘underground’ philosophy from the East found some refuge in Western culture with our free speech laws and proclivity towards communications technology. The web has the power to give Tantra a full-voice in humanity’s conversation, and I hope your early work with this forum and the community it was dedicated to can be part of a ground zero for a larger expansion of forums where people can have a discussion where the intellect and heart are skillfully blended by seekers who are in search of refinement in how they seek and experience.

No related posts.

Sunset in Madurai

Bay Shakti debuted in April 2009; we’ve just crossed the threshold of our third year of blogging this month. With this milestone, and given the last 2 and a half months of turmoil in the Anusara community, we’ve been looking more closely at our mission and vision for the site. Our mission has “sought to uplift the kula of the Bay Area and beyond with great content that empowers, inspires, and connects Anusara enthusiasts.” To this end, we have upheld our mission throughout the years and most especially during the last tumultuous 2 and a half months, publishing content that empowers our readers with ground-breaking information. We’ve published a range of opinions to help readers be informed and to better process this time of great change in our community.

Now that in many ways we are over the “hump” of the scandal and in light of our 3rd year anniversary, it has become necessary to examine our vision of where we are headed. It is with equal parts sadness and relief, that Bay Shakti has decided to “sunset” the site this week. What this means is that the content of Bay Shakti will remain online for likely years into the future, but there will be no new content/ blog posts effective by the week’s end.

Bay Shakti has never been a monetized site with ads, etc, and has always been seva (a service) for the Anusara community, particularly in the Bay Area. We have decided to “sunset” the site because we’ve explored our options and we see no sustainable future for the site in its present form supporting Anusara, Inc.

We are not turning our backs on you personally as a community. We count many of you as amongst our closest friends, and we know that you teachers, teach amazing yoga.

As for thoughts of widening the reach of Bay Shakti to accommodate different styles of yoga, we did entertain the idea, but, Bay Shakti has been a labor of love for the Anusara community and broadening its reach would invite work with no bounds– the arena of San Francisco Bay Area yogis is quite vast. It would become problematic on where to draw the line, whereas, within Anusara, the container of work and the mission of the site has always been very clear.

As for passing the torch of Bay Shakti to someone else to carry, we can think of no one available who we trust to continue the maintenance of the site.

Bay Shakti has become a treasure trove of information documenting our history for the last 3 years. Even though the site will no longer be active by week’s end, it is our hope that the site will be referenced for years to come, as it contains vital information about our community and about Anusara, including flagship video interviews with many teachers. Please be sure to use the search bar on the homepage to easily find and reference blog posts.

The next and final blog post will be a “Signing Off” post from our contributors, to be published on Thursday. Before we publish our contributors “goodbye’s”, we thought it fitting to look back at what we’ve accomplished during these 3 years.  Please see our “Best of” list below.

The Best of Bay Shakti: A Third Year in Recap

The following is a list of our hand picked Top 10 Best of Bay Shakti for all time:

1. John Friend: Finding Grace in Times of Disaster (video)
2. Interview with John Friend, Dancing with the Divine, Part 1 , Interview with John Friend, Dancing with the Divine, Part 2
3. Interview with John Friend at Wanderlust 2010
4. Open Letter to John Friend 
5. Does the Practice of Yoga Automatically Make you a Better Person?
6. Bay Shakti Talks: Interview with Darren Rhodes
7. Bay Shakti Talks: Interview with Sianna Sherman (Part 1 of 4)
8. Interview with Noah Mazé
9. Fighting to Breathe: A Journey Through North India
10. Interview with Douglas Brooks at Esalen 

The following is a list of Bay Shakti’s Top 10 blog posts, racking up the most site visits of all time. Most of the these blog posts cover the scandal:

1. Anusara Controversy Overview and Timeline by Fredo Guastella
2. Interview with John Friend: Wanderlust 2011 by Ginger Coy
3. How Should the Teacher Behave? vs. What Can I Receive?: Understandings and Misunderstandings Around the Role of the Teacher by Tantra and Sanskrit Scholar, Chris (Hareesh) Wallis
4. Standing in the Light Amidst Controversy by Ginger Coy and contributors
5. What is Shiva-Shakti Tantra? Did John Friend make it up? by Tantra and Sanskrit Scholar, Chris (Hareesh) Wallis
6. John Friend explains Wicca and Anusara by Ginger Coy
7. Update on Anusara: Letters From Certified Anusara Teachers, Desiree Rumbaugh and Ross Rayburn by Ginger Coy
8. The Asana of Emotional Healing: Anusara and the Dark Night of the Soul by Michelle Indianer
9. John Friend: Response to Allegations Letter by Ginger Coy
10. Interview with John Friend: Igniting the Center, 2012 World Tour (video) by Ginger Coy

Many thanks to Managing Editor, Fredo Guastella for his dedication to the site and superb coverage.

To all of our contributors, thank you for the trust you have put in us at Bay Shakti, to help steward your image and your reputation online for the last 3 years. It has been a great honor to work with you all and to be in support of your careers and studentship.

To our readers– thank you all for believing in Bay Shakti. We have appreciated your support. Please feel free to contact us to discuss any of the above or add comments below.

In Gratitude,
Ginger Coy
Brad Coy and Fredo Guastella (a.k.a the Bay Shakti Team)

No related posts.

Hareesh Wallis and I are very grateful to those of you who have immersed with us over the years in the sacred teachings of Tantric Shaivism, whether in person, online, or both. It touches us deeply to know that we have been of some service in bringing the liberating and empowering teachings of this tradition to life for you for the past 8 years.

The classical tradition of Tantra or Tantric Shaivism is one of inestimable beauty and importance. It revolutionized the ancient practice of Yoga into a powerfully transformative, body-affirming practice and introduced a radically inspiring, life-enhancing philosophy meant to directly trigger the experience of spiritual awakening in any moment. As you may know, the tradition survives in the form of thousands of ancient manuscripts written in Sanskrit on birch bark, palm leaves and crumbling old paper. These manuscripts detail the non-dual teachings and practices that once flourished throughout South and Southeast Asia — yet only a fraction of these have been published in Sanskrit, let alone in English translation.

Photography by David Houlder

At this time we feel that the Yoga world is going through an intense but positive renovation which will lead to a new level of higher consciousness which we hope will herald in the revival of the forgotten but not lost practices of the Goddess traditions of Tantric Shaivism which flourished in Kashmir a millennium ago. Now, an unprecedented and exciting opportunity has manifested which will serve to catalyze our growth as spiritual truth-seekers and yogis. At the end of this month, I am traveling to Kashmir (Northwest India) to bring back digital scans of hundreds of never before seen manuscripts of ancient Tantric texts which preserve the sacred and empowering teachings of the non-dual Goddess-oriented traditions. Later in the year, Hareesh Wallis will travel toKashmir to continue this work. This huge collection of ancient manuscripts, just recently made accessible to the public, has been preserved by the Oriental Research Library (ORL) in Shrinagar.

Since much of the collection has now been labeled and the catalog is available, we know for certain that we will find some real treasures: both previously unknown Tantric texts, and superior manuscripts of known texts. We are especially excited to bring back a considerable number of manuscripts of scriptures from the Goddess-oriented Krama tradition, whose radically life-affirming practices and philosophical revelations are especially relevant to the modern age. Additionally, we know for a fact that many manuscript bundles contain “mystery texts,” because in many instances, the catalogers have labeled the entire bundle with the title of the text on top.

What else do such ‘bundles’ contain?

Will we find lost writings of the Women masters of the Krama lineage?

Will we uncover the long-lost ecstatic goddess hymns of Abhinavagupta?

Will we discover Kshemaraja’s missing commentary to the Vijnana-bhairava amongst the 16 or so manuscripts of this work held in the ORL library?

In order to retrieve these texts and to make them freely available to everyone, we need your support. Our goal is to raise over $10,000 to pay for the cost of purchasing digital scans of thousands of pages of Tantric manuscripts. Details can be found on our website.

By contributing and/or spreading the word to possible donors, you will be directly supporting the goal of Tantric scholars to provide accessible and accurate translations of these sacred, empowering teachings to many truth-seekers of this generation and of those to come.

With love and gratitude,

Christopher Tompkins

(If you are reading this via RSS or email and do not see the video, please click here.)

No related posts.

Truth

When I started my private practice in the mid-80s, many patients were coming forward with tales of incest and severe abuse, wanting to confront their families and violators, and demanding to have the truth accepted by these people. Many families fractured and there were thousands of wounded and confused patients wondering what went wrong with this plan. I took a contrary stance at that time, one that I still have stuck with. Although I took the memories at face value as the truth, I told my patients that by the time we had processed their memories, they would not have a need to tell the perpetrator(s) what happened, nor would they have a need to have their truth believed by this person (people). They would be able to tell their truth because they believed it for themselves.

People who stuck with me to do this deep inquiry and healing indeed found themselves closer and closer to true peace. Some of them eventually confronted their families and what had happened to them was validated and healing occurred. Some confronted the perpetrators and were told they were liars, and often cast out of their relationships. Some chose to never go back and tell their stories, feeling that it was enough that they knew their own truth. The bottom line was that by waiting and processing they could tell the truth with great inner strength and without the need for validation or attachment to an outcome for these disclosures.

Truth is so hard. We often will question if we are telling or hearing the truth, even if on some level we are absolutely sure. Too many things happen in the privacy of our homes, with those we love best, need most, and with people who often disagree with our versions of reality. This is a perfect set up for us to doubt the validity of our disclosures. If every patient I saw who recovered from trauma needed to have public apologies and disclosures with a hard copy of proof, no one would ever heal. The newspapers would be even more full of salacious details of horrors from people’s private lives. With easy to use video cameras, phone cameras, email and Facebook, we have forgotten that most things are recorded only in our memories of conversations and of other interactions. “Recorded’ is a loose word as it comes though our filters. I have talked about various filters of our experiences in my previous articles: projections, projective identifications, hiding in our Shadow structure, rationalization, minimization, denial, reaction formation and sublimation to name a few. Our perceptions are limited by where we are in our interpersonal, psychological and moral development. These are just a few of factors that make up our samskaras, our unconscious, and our mind-created reality.

Maybe more importantly is the nature of language and its limits in ability to describe our reality. We are always just reflecting and communicating to the best of our ability as we grow, change, learn and change some more. Anything we express is a small part of our experience. It is a hopefully reasonable facsimile of what has occurred but this reality is already passing away even as we utter our perceptions using our best efforts of speech. Our truth doesn’t wait for us to tell it.

Since writing my third article and even more so with  my fifth article I have been called a liar and have had my motives harshly questioned. Most always the rudest comments have been by people using initials or pseudonyms, i.e. anonymously. As I look at other people’s blog postings on John Friend and Anusara, especially when written by those who have left or have critical stories to tell, this pattern of name-calling and some downright nastiness from anonymous commentators seems to be a bit of a norm, a very disturbing and uncivil norm. In reply to one of these comments to me I mused that it seems as if people forget that there is an actual live human being on the other end of the blog posting, someone who feels sadness and regret for perhaps causing a painful awareness in someone reading the post, and someone who feels pain when called names and insulted.

I told in that same comment about an other note I have posted on my refrigerator, by Abraham Hershel, ”When I was young I admired clever people, now that I am old I admire kind people.”. I keep it there as a daily reminder of how I try to approach each interaction. Sometimes I am successful, sometimes not so much. I am a work in progress, but have been moving in the right direction with this goal for a life I can admire living. This comment of mine generated a private apology from one angry commentator, which I greatly appreciated. Being called a liar is a bit bizarre to me, as anyone who knows me would say that if anything I have erred on the side of being overly truthful and blunt. Since my late teens I have had to learn to soften the truths that I tell. I have for instance refused to tell lies for people having affairs or for those wanting to cheat others. While processing and writing the current disclosures I have been deeply concerned about the accuracy of what I said while still trying to protect the privacy of anyone who has not publicly disclosed their stories. But of course, we all see the world through our own filters and my truth as I tell it is only a shadow of what occurred.

Another interesting and very gratifying thing that has happened because of these articles is that I have gotten deeper and clearer validation from other people involved in the events I described. They remembered the truth the same as I. In one case there was a small detail that I hadn’t described clearly and so was read inaccurately. I needed to “clarify something that is unclear in my writing. The second teacher was indeed originally invited by the senior teacher to assist with the Immersion. I am unclear when. I signed up early when only the one teacher was being advertised. That is a fact. At some point later in the summer the other person was added, which was ok with me at that point.” I did this clarification in the comment section of my last article. Privately, both in person and by email, I have been told that my perceptions of what had happened were shared memories. Because these conversations and communications are private, I will not reveal them in order to prove their veracity. Like the patients I described above, I didn’t need these extra bits of validation. Knowing my own inner truth and trusting my intuitions after many months of processing and soul searching was enough for me. The new sources of the facts would not meet the criteria for the rule of law, nor is that what I need them to do. But it was very good to know that I was in alignment with these people whose good will and connection I wanted to have.

One misunderstanding of what I have written is that I have an expectation that everyone process out loud why they are leaving or staying. I kept my processing mainly to myself and a few other carefully selected friends until recently. I felt I could disclose what I did when I did because of the validation I received of a shared reality, and because my understandings are very well cooked.  Writing the articles has helped me digest all the pain, confusion, disgust, despair, anger and sense of betrayal. Many people are much more private than I, and that is very fine with me. I have so appreciated those who have come forward and told their stories. Many of these people have also been cooking, some for many years, and I imagine their process leading to a last straw was a bit like mine. Not the same, which is why diversity is so wonderful and we get to co-create the reality we live in. Without the YogaDork/JFexposed disclosures and the flood of stories that followed I would still feel fairly isolated except for the very few people who saw the same things I did, or who at least believed me when they heard my pain and upset. I would probably still be stewing in my juices (although by that time it was at a very slow simmer). People have been hurt, careers disrupted and that is very sad. And yet, in my mind, a greater service to many people has occurred, a great healing and wonderful connections, deeper for many than in the former kula.

So how does a person know when they are hearing or telling the truth? It has been suggested in classes I have attended recently and on some posts that I have seen that we have to trust our own bodies to give us accurate intuitions. This works for many people, especially those who haven’t had their bodies violated or misused. All too many of us have learned to not listen to our bodies even to meet basic human needs like sleep, food and using the bathroom. We sit all days in chairs or stand doing mind- numbing work. It takes great patience and practice to develop our abilities to attend to the moment-by-moment sensations that arise and fall away. A good yoga or meditation class and teacher, or a good therapist, can help us slow down and lead us to be better observers of our breath, bodily sensations, and gut reactions. As we learn to listen to our own needs as they arise instead of just trying to keep up and perform up to someone else’s (or our harsh inner critic’s) standards, a class can provide us with the challenges and interactions that provide a mirror outside of our own world view. We need to keep checking in though. Stopping, feeling, breathing, relaxing, noticing and going home for more contemplating and noticing on our own.

One particularly obnoxious and pernicious thing I have heard of in the disclosures about Anusara, and I have mentioned before, is that so many people were asked to betray themselves and their friends in the name of loyalty and friendship.  So here you are, moving and opening your body, and aligning with the principles which make you (seemingly) more secure in your body, and in this open and vulnerable state with all your friends around you, you are asked to do something that your gut is screaming “no” about. Often our more primitive and immature developmental and moral level of functioning gets activated. We begin functioning at a level where the truth is relative, where lies are ok if we don’t get caught, or where loyalty to others and a leader of our gang is more important to us than our own truth. Then the self loathing and doubt that arises from this regression creates a greater problem. We find ourselves needing to cling to the group more tightly because we can’t trust ourselves. I believe this is a process that happened with many people until they woke from the dream and decided to let go and move on.

I got lucky. My turning point with John did not happen in circumstances where my heart and energy were open as in the example I described above. In the series of emails I had with John Friend on  June 19,2011, the whole tone of his replies to me was off-putting and just got my dander up. I will include here the two things he wrote to me really warned me off. One was in response to me thanking him for having the email exchange with me and telling him that I would bring the rest of my concerns (which were about my personal relationship with those teachers) back to them. In reply he said,” How have I not addressed your main concerns??? I am the founder of the system and the overall manager of the global organization, so if I am not the person to report to, then who is within Anusara?” He totally did not get that I have relationships with my teachers that shouldn’t concern him. The other response that sent me a clear message was, “Anusara yoga TT is for students who want to become an Anusara yoga teacher licensed by me. Do you understand this?” (emphasis mine). I was very upset by these and the whole exchange was disheartening. I also was disappointed to not be able to start a teacher training with the teacher I wanted and with some other students I had become friends with in my Immersion I had recently completed. However, I knew that I did not want to train in a system run by such an inflated and controlling person, no matter how lovey-dovey Anusara seemed to be. This is when I began to disengage and truly heal. Now I look back and realize I dodged a bullet big time!

My friend and philosophy teacher Christopher (Hareesh) Wallis once said in a lecture, ”A story aligned with reality leads you beyond itself to a deep wordless insight. If the story you are telling doesn’t lead you to love, connection, and compassion it is not reality. This is the only criterion that works.” As I contemplate what has unfolded for me from telling my story and sharing my knowledge base in this series of articles, I see that I have awoken to deeper connections, love and compassion for myself and for the others in my life. I have made connections with some new people who are interesting, insightful and intelligent. I have noticed that I am calmer, clearer and more available to the people in my life both personally and professionally. I am abiding in deeper peace. This is the criterion for truth that I find to be most satisfying.

Creative Commons photo via Flickr by gtall 1.

Related posts:

1. Gratitude, Truth, Love, and New Beginnings

Dear John,

Thank you for your letter yesterday. I hear your general apology for your sexual indiscretions and believe it is sincere. Good luck to you in maintaining your resolve to no longer have sexual relationships with married women and no longer have multiple girlfriends at the same time. Should the temptation occur in the future, your commitment at this time may be hard to keep, so I wish you the clarity and fortitude to stick with your intention.

Unfortunately the letter doesn’t go nearly deep enough to look at the real teacher-student power issues that have been uncovered since the Yoga Dork/JF Exposed disclosures. Leaving it as if it is mainly a sexual indiscretion issue allows too many of your students and teachers to go into denial about the magnitude of the problems still unaddressed by this letter. There are problems that have arisen from the fact that Anusara is a very successful business, where there are thousands of dollars at stake through your patronage or lack thereof. Some concerns that weren’t addressed in your letter are the other misuses of power have been outlined by numerous people online including Amy Ippoliti, Christina Fronsolo Sell, and Bo Srey to name a few.

I experienced these issues firsthand also as described in my article where I talk about how you came to Los Altos and first strong-armed the studio owner and co-teacher into accepting your coven-mate into the Immersion that was going to happen as a solo teacher event, and then you participated in blocking a teacher training at one studio in support of a teacher training in another studio given by this same member of your coven (of which I had no knowledge until the recent disclosure). At the time what was happening in Los Altos seemed to be an isolated incident and it was very confusing. I directly confronted the teachers involved, and as you know, you and I had a lengthy email correspondence where I outlined my perspective on why I saw this as unfair. This was after you had come to my local community and lectured about a “new paradigm” where there would be “cooperation” and “mutual assistance” and “abundance” for all rather than competition. On February 12, 2012, I wrote you a private email asking for an apology (which I copied to the then Interim Committee members) after you had asked people from the community to let you know their concerns. I never heard a response. I know you have a lot on your mind and this request isn’t of primary importance to me in writing this letter. In my email I wrote that obviously you were going though a lot right at that time and perhaps, you thought that my complaint was a trivial one. I offered my concerns to you with all sincerity and with the hope that you would truly do some soul searching during the coming months. I included the email thread to refresh your memory because I felt a bit bullied in the process of communicating with you, and now I have been hearing more and more evidence that this is the way you operate. In your letter I see no indication that you have any regret for the ways your showing favoritism has impacted numerous programs throughout the Anusara world, costing some teachers, studios and their programs tens of thousands of dollars in lost revenues.

The other concern I have that wasn’t addressed in your letter, which I have seen clearly talked about in the internet (by Elena Brower, most ardently) is that you had people close to you lie, cover-up, create written rationalizations, and forced people to betray to themselves in other ways such as blacklisting and excluding friends and teachers that fell out of favor with you. In other words you ask students and friends to betray themselves in order to be loyal or close to you. I was told by a “friend” of yours that you did this even as recently as after this scandal unfolded. I don’t think this is the way friends should show their loyalty and friendship, but apparently it has been a fairly common request from you.

In moral development theory, the levels of development can be broken down into 3 major categories. For men it progresses from being selfish to rights (for friends, family, country) to universal rights. For women it progresses from being selfish to caring (again for friends, family and country) to universal caring. As I see it, the risk of Anusara moving forward without addressing these moral dilemmas is that it will be an organization that covers selfish motives with talk of universal rights and universal caring. One of my friend’s cruder descriptions of this covering up of baser motives with these wonderful ideas (love, bliss and universality) is “putting whipped cream on shit”. I believe your “New Paradigm” model is in the Universal Rights category, but won’t work when there is someone who can violate this free trade idea with selfish motives (or maybe even rights/caring motives for their “family” or close friends and favorites). It just becomes business as usual!

The teachers staying on in Anusara have been very silent with few disclosures about their processing of this crisis, so the statements that follow are based on very little information. It appears that staying loyal and keeping their opinions close at hand is still operational for these teachers as a norm. I think the issue for many of the women teachers that have stayed on with Anusara is based on this moral level of caring. Women have great difficulty looking at and deciding about morality outside of a web of relationships and concerns about connection. As long as they can feel the powerful love energy that Anusara can create in a classroom, and as long as they feel you have been mistreated they will have a hard time looking clearly at the evidence and making a balanced decision whether to stay or go. For the male teachers the lack of evidence to anything worse than screwing around will allow them to see your rights as important as those anyone else. After all, the women were all over the age of 21, so they made their own decisions. The issue of you being in a non-traditional spiritual group will be seen as part of your rights to practice the religion of you choice if people don’t see it as an avenue for power brokering and nepotism. So as I see it, unless you come clean about all your abuses of power, plus release these remaining teachers from needing to stay and protect you and your business, none of those students who remain actually will be able to stay from their deepest place in their hearts and minds.

My third concern is with your use and misuse of the former Ethics Committee to conduct personal vendettas or to protect those you had in your inner circle.

I know of one incident that meets this criteria directly. In addition to making use of the committee in this way, you told someone outside of the committee (in your coven) the results of your (its?) decision, which was sent to me in a personal email. This is highly improper behavior for the head of an ethics committee. In keeping with these ethical concerns, I have not named anyone in this letter who hasn’t addressed these issues in the public domain, but I know you know what I am talking about.

I find it ironic that when you visited my Immersion you gave a brief lecture on Saucha (purity). I can only imagine that you and the Goddess have co-created this set of circumstances so that you can really Grok purity in it’s deepest form. I have looked at where my motives in writing this letter may be impure, I think there is a bit of wanting to get the last word in. I still think what I have to say is of value to you and the community at large and I hope that value will outweigh any taint from this impurity.

I have little doubt that Anusara will live on and become a successful business again. Maybe not as much as before, but who knows? You may rise again to be an extremely successful workshop leader. Many people are comfortable not looking at the issues of morality and will be comfortable with Anusara even if no deep ethical or moral changes occur.

I feel the greatest compassion for you as you go through this process, as it will no doubt be extremely painful if you truly take this opportunity for deep self inquiry. Anusara is a great creation. Finding true wholeness without inflation could be an even greater creation.

With all sincerity,
Michelle Indianer, D.O.

For a more complete overview on what’s been happening, please visit: Anusara Controversy: Overview and Timeline

No related posts.

Below is the latest letter from John Friend, emailed to teachers today.

Dear Teachers and Community,

It has been a long, painful, confusing month plus for our beloved Anusara yoga community, and for that I wish I could personally and sincerely apologize to each one of you.

Understandably, there is still much confusion about the allegations that precipitated this upheaval and where we should all go from here.

Because of the privacy of others involved and the complexities of the situation, it has been difficult to communicate openly during this time. So thank you for your patience.

In order for the Anusara yoga community (and those who have left it) to heal and move forward, it is imperative that I address the allegations, as well as report on the work being done to help evolve Anusara yoga into a new, more sustainable paradigm. My statement here is offered in sincere hopes of bringing as much clarity as possible.

With the help and encouragement of others I respect and sometimes disagreed with, I have suspended my public teaching as of February 20th to allow for a needed period of self-reflection. In this past month, I have been listening intently to countless valuable suggestions from various segments of our community for restructuring the organization, which I acknowledge as something that is overdue.

With respect to management, I have resigned as a director and officer of the company. We are working toward potentially transferring the ownership of the company to a third party who is not connected to me personally or to my staff, yet continues to be within the community.

With respect to the allegations that have been made and other criticisms, I offer the following:

I take full responsibility for being out of integrity in my intimate relationships. I have entered into intimate relations with married women. I am deeply remorseful about my actions in this regard. I will never violate these sacred boundaries again.

I recognize that there is a fundamental power differential between student and teacher, and employer and employee. Over the 15 years of Anusara’s history, there were students, who at one point were employees, with whom I was intimately involved. I have earnestly tried over my years of teaching to honor the integrity of my relationships with students. Nonetheless, there were times when I failed in that effort. Even then, however, I was careful and respectful when entering into closer relationships and only after years of cultivating deep trust and friendship with those students. There was never a rush into any of these relationships. My former wife, to whom I was married for 10 years, was initially a student of mine.

Regarding the charge that I am a “sex therapist,” I am absolutely not a sex therapist. I once described the nature of a private relationship as therapy in an effort to hide the relationship, and this was both wrong and the source of the false label.

The speculation that I am a drug trafficker is ludicrous and untrue.

Since I was 15 years, old I have openly practiced and belonged to non-traditional spiritual groups dedicated to bringing positivity into the world through healing prayer circles. I have never had sex during ceremony within these circles. I have never been part of a “sex coven.”

The charge that there was illegal action with the company’s pension fund is simply not true. There was an honest mistake in the administration of the pension plan, which has been corrected. We have verified that it complies with all legal requirements.

Now that there is the beginning of a genuine plan in place for moving Anusara yoga forward independent of my management, I am taking a sabbatical to embrace a process of self-awareness, transformation, and healing. I will be on teaching hiatus and have sought out professional therapists who are helping me on my path.

Those who are angry with me have helped me back to the path as much as those who have supported me—and to all of you, I am grateful.

My best to each of you,
John

 (Actual letter below)

For a more complete overview on what’s been happening, please visit: Anusara Controversy: Overview and Timeline

No related posts.

The below is my “Dear John” letter of sorts. Though I have not resigned, I have major reservations about continuing with “business as usual”. If John reads this letter, great! If he bothers to comment on it, wonderful! If not, at least you all know what’s on my mind. As far as whether this blog, Bay Shakti, continues in its current form as stated on the homepage byline, “Bay Shakti: Dedicated to Anusara Yoga”, the future remains unseen, though my strong leanings are at this time towards separating from Anusara and John Friend, in short answer, because of the largely, in my opinion, grave mishandling of this clean up effort to date. It is not that I am demonizing John, but as you will read in the letter below, I have misgivings about him and the business, much as I might prefer that none of this controversy ever happened. I have not spoken to John since the scandal broke, though he did email me a short response about publishing a letter at one point during the past 6 weeks, saying he would get back to me once he had permission to give me the go-ahead to publish. He never got back to me, though we managed to secure permission from another Anusara source.

Like many other teachers, while processing the aftermath of this scandal, I have come to realize more than ever ways in which I would like more freedom to teach the way I would like to teach and not be tied to the methodology of Anusara Yoga. Due to some injuries that I have worked through with the enormous help of Pilates, I have become more interested in integrating some teachings of Pilates into yoga.

As I write this letter, it occurs to me that this is, perhaps, my last ditch effort to “make it right”, and in many respects, this whole Anusara controversy already feels dated and played out, as John has had more than adequate time to communicate something more substantial, deep and real to us than he has to date. I suppose silence and some flimsy letters are our only answer from him.

All of the letters have been published on Bay Shakti with the exception of the last two this week, which are linked to on the Bay Shakti Facebook page. I am loosing interest in documenting into perpetuity every letter along the way. These letters, addressed to teachers, represent the extent of the formal communications from Anusara, Inc, the other communications being on Facebook closed groups for teachers. I believe that communication with teachers first is appropriate to give teachers time to assimilate the announced changes and be in a better position to field questions from students. Shortly following communications to teachers should follow communications to students. Communicating with students directly is important in that is shows that you have respect for how they may be feeling. It is a step away from hierarchical thinking and is more inclusive, i.e. promotes a less division, elitism and encourages the harmony of the “merry band”.

The age of the guru is over with the advance of the democratization of the internet. With more power than ever in the hands of “the people”, the more gurus, power figures and their companies cannot count on an old school top-down information dissemination. The following letter explores the role of social media in branding and ways in which the internet can be harnessed for the purposes of upliftment or destruction. My thesis, if you will, or “argument” is that John could have and still can use the power of social media to help those of us still interested to “look for the good”, and get on the same page with him again…or not. If he continues to be silent, Anusara will continue to take a beating.

Addendum: This blog post mostly addresses the aftermath of the scandal breaking; however, in no way do I want to make light of the seriousness of John Friend’s transgressions.

Dear John,

Since Feb. 3rd, when the scandal broke, my world and the world of your students, who include many teachers, has been turned upside down. I do not believe that the scandal has had “legs” so much from the nature of your misdeeds, but rather, the poor job you have done to make amends with our beloved community. The week after the scandal broke, we did our best on Bay Shakti to help report on what was going on, since Anusara was not readily communicating with us, teachers and students. This reporting was done in an effort to help “save” what I perceived to be a “sinking ship”, which was the company you worked so hard to build for 14+ years, by helping to inform your teachers and their students, who have helped to grow and sustain your company all this time- the theory being that if we could help bridge the information gap, all may be sustained. Within my purview of Bay Shakti, I was willing to give it all I had. And so I did, blogging tirelessly to keep all abreast of the latest developments.

All of us, teachers, have been out “in the field” building communities like any other company’s sales force who works “in the field” to grow a brand for headquarters, in this case, Anusara, Inc in the Woodlands, TX. If yogis were the suing type, there may be talk of class action lawsuits, as many teacher’s livelihoods have been impacted by your actions and inactions as their studios fire them because they want nothing to do with the “Anusara drama”. Also, some previously exclusive Anusara studios have chosen to no longer affiliate with Anusara, choosing, instead, to end their ties, which is undoubtedly disruptive and disheartening, to say the least, for Anusara teachers and students. This “Ansuara drama” in my opinion, could have been mitigated, if not squelched, in week one with some proactive, if not aggressive public relations/damage control in the form of massive public outreach. Your teachers are quite communicative on Facebook and in blogs. Your time would have been and would continue to be better served online in the public sphere. Being a public figure necessitates being in the public eye, especially when it is uncomfortable. This is the price you pay for admission; if you want to be famous, this is the downside.

As I’ve mentioned, during the first week after the scandal broke, we did everything we could to communicate each nugget of information we could gather to help hold over a public who was in my opinion hungry, if not, desperate for information. The first 4 days after the scandal, there was abject silence from you and Anusara. This silence was painful, it was so deafening. Even though as a teacher of Anusara myself, and a hurting one at that, I put my “journalist/ blogger hat” on, and did my best to professionally communicate via Bay Shakti to your student base. My thinking was that I was doing this communication on your behalf, while presumably you were dealing with chaos. I thought Bay Shakti could provide a stop-gap measure until you could mobilize your detailed response. Instead, as a community, over the course of 6 weeks now, we have received skimpy letters which have been inadequate for someone as verbose as you and in some cases fanned the flames as when you indicated you were a victim. While you nursed private wounds and wrung your hands on what to do next, the public’s wounds were gaping. This silence comes across as manipulative, in that it appears that you are taking your time to calculate to the nth degree your next strategic move, and selfish, that you could care so little about our feelings as a community, as to not publicly engage.

Switching gears, for some historical context, I have been pleased that during Bay Shakti’s 3 years of service/seva for you, Anusara, and the Bay Area community in particular, we have been warmly received by you and invited to do more video interviews with you. During these interviews, you publicly recognized the work we were doing on Bay Shakti, as we have been acting in many respects as a free auxiliary blogging arm in support of your company, though able to offer our own independent voice. While I always heard you thank us, I felt as though your understanding of the power of social media, which includes blogging, was undeveloped, and came across as lip service to the power of the internet. My feelings have been substantiated by the fact that your remediation of this scandal has not occurred publicly via social media, where you could have gotten the biggest “bang for the buck” or “mileage” in terms of leverage over your massive PR problems. Instead, you chose to retreat behind closed doors where your collateral damage was presumably mitigated one by one, although it seems as though many of your senior teachers chose to leave after speaking privately with you in detail. It is incredible to me that even though blogs have proven they are powerful–jfexposed.com, and YogaDork.com have essentially capsized your company–no one from Anusara has reached out to Bay Shakti to see what we could do to help you. We did it all on our own, shifting gears after the initial week post scandal from acting as a stop-gap measure saving a “sinking ship” to one of holding space for our kula to grieve and heal. It became clear after week one, that there would be inadequate damage control, much as this was baffling and confounding to me. We reached out to our contacts at Anusara of our own volition, knowing that we’ve had a slow internet track record with Anusara, as when we had our interviews published on your homepage, it would take at least a week after the interview was live to get a link on the homepage, so I assumed that this scandal was no different, hence the rush on our part to help bandage the gaping wound of public perception. The whole company was going down the drain due to silence and not taking the wheel and providing leadership when we needed it most. Even when I tried to give you the benefit of the doubt, I would imagine you listening to lawyers who tell you that silence is the best option. Lawyers will always tell you to not to speak until they get their legal “ducks in a row” and do their due diligence which could take years, moving at a snail’s pace. Meanwhile, your company is falling apart. Lawyers will always advise you to deny the allegations if they are false. And what of your public relations? I assume with some certainty that a PR company worth it’s salt would always want the subject of a scandal to talk. Did you choose not to heed their advice to the detriment of your company and your student base? Meanwhile your students’ hearts were and continue to be breaking and hardening, and your company is falling apart under the oppressive weight of silence and for the better part of 6 weeks’ utter lack of meaningful public-facing results. By results, I mean connecting with your student base en masse, without whom, there will be no Anusara, despite whatever re-organization or new processes you put in place. In fact, I would argue that emotional connection with your students and teachers is more important than forming a “teacher-run organization”, etc. Your window of time for damage control in the form of connecting and establishing a conversation with the remaining public is narrowing rapidly, in my opinion, based on my close tracking of the shifts in public sentiment day to day during this 6 week time frame.

During this time of controversy, though I realize your ethics are questionable at best, I have not had as much issue with what you did do as what you have not done, including not following through with a detailed letter on each of the allegations, as you promised you would in a prior letter, some of which you said in an initial letter included “falsehoods”. Why have you not cleared up these falsehoods? Again, no lawyer would tell you not to deny falsehoods. When your credibility is in the gutter, why would you tell yet more falsehoods that you would provide more detail? Are we to chalk up this lack of follow-through up to being “human”? One would think that you would be on your best behavior in terms of follow-through so as to not look like a liar, when your reputation hangs in the balance or may be forever tarnished (if not trashed) across the board. Your private life is so incredibly intertwined with your public life, that there is no room for consistently flagrant error. You indicated in one of your love letters on jfexposed.com that you knew in essence you were playing with fire, and that your actions were ripe for scandal, and yet you did nothing to reverse course, and instead continued to jeopardize your reputation, your company’s reputation and by extension, the livelihoods of your teachers and the quality of your students’ lives. Are we to assume that you have such deep pathology that you could not help but self-destruct? Again, you are a victim? I find it hard to believe, let alone forgive on this premise, especially, again, since you have not been forthcoming with the inner workings of your mind, except in communications which come across as forced and highly fabricated, calculating letters to the public. Where is the juice of your voice, your candor? We want (or wanted) to hear from you! I suggested in the first week that you get on video on Skype with me or solo, and we’d record our session with you reading your apology letter as an idea so that we could hear the earnestness of your voice. This would have been helpful. To this idea of recording you on Skype, we received no reply.

We live in a different day and age than previous gurus, who may have had the luxury of silence as a strategy to help people forget misdeeds. Our current culture is online and has never been more empowered to take down companies or help build them up. This is the greater energy flow. Please align with the greater energy flow of public discourse, and get the healing to truly begin. The truth will set you free, as they say. I know this much; silence is a great way to turn folks off. It suggests you have much more to hide, and are in denial and/or are indifferent that your actions/inactions could hurt people as much as they have. Your silence comes across as selfish and as though you are indulging in one big colossal waste of time–a big pity party where you are the victim. Your students are the victims here. With all the sensitivity you have encouraged us to feel through the years, where is your sensitivity to our feelings? Even if your silence is due to your own psychological break down, let’s say, can’t someone tell us on your behalf that you want desperately to talk more, but you are too fragile right now to talk or that your lawyers have put a gag-order on you, or something? Where are you? It is incredible that you would work so hard for 14 years to build up a a company and not work even harder to save it when the stakes are so high. Are you this much of a self-sabotager? If you came clean now, hearing that you knew you were playing with fire, and still did nothing, and if you apologized that your self-serving, narcisscistic actions were pathological in nature or some such, it would be helpful. I swear you could say almost anything and it would be better than silence in my mind’s eye. I entreat you; please talk. I am about to walk on this situation. My patience is exhausted. Just as I’m fairly certain that I won’t be calling you my teacher any longer, I assume after this letter, you may not want me as a student anyhow. And this is the risk I take. At least I have spoken. I’ve said my piece.

Sincerely,

Ginger

For a more complete overview on what’s been happening, please visit: Anusara Controversy: Overview and Timeline

Related posts:

1. An Open letter to the Anusara Community
2. Letter from new CEO of Anusara, Michal Lichtman announces 50/50 partnership with John Friend

The following letter was sent to us from Anodea Judith. She asked that we share it with you.

Anodea

To the Kula who cares so much, I offer my sympathies for all that you have been experiencing as a result of the recent tsunami in the Anusara community. The depth of pain is always equal to the love maintained and I know how much love there has been, so I can imagine the pain for all concerned. I am reminded of an old Charlie Murphy song:

THERE ARE THOSE WHO WANT TO SET FIRE TO OUR WORLD, WE ARE IN DANGER. THERE IS ONLY TIME TO MOVE SLOWLY, THERE IS NO TIME NOT TO LOVE.

We must all proceed carefully. Everyone is on trial here as yogins, as compassionate and wise beings, and as stewards of yoga, Anusara or otherwise.

I am an outsider, so I speak humbly. I am perhaps a de facto member of the Kula, but not an official one, having never been certified as an Anusara instructor. I haven’t traveled with the merry band, but I have shared experiences on and off the mat with so many of you. I love Anusara, the Kula, the principles, and the teachings I have received from John and all whom I have had the pleasure to study with – you know who you are. John gave you something rich to shape and uplift your lives, and that is no small thing.

Instead I speak as a psychologist, somewhat of an elder/wisewoman, and as someone who has also been involved in communities that have risen and fallen as a result of human foibles. I speak as someone that, like you, has loved and admired John, and watched from afar as Anusara grew from seed to flower to garden. I believe Anusara has made a significant contribution to changing the world, through its community – which is beyond the power of any one man. John may have been the instigator, but you are the stewards. How do you wish to proceed?

Founders Failure – as it is called by those who study these things – is an inevitable stage in the evolution of a lasting organization—meaning an organization that is to leave its legacy past the life of its founder. An organization can only survive past its founder if can evolve and grow. By nature, founders are brilliant at conception and implementation. They are hardworking, driven, visionary, extroverted, and have the charismatic capacity to spark a movement. These very qualities required to start something are often the qualities that get in the way of the organization’s long term evolution. Founders inevitably fail in the eyes of a community – if only from the sheer pressure of holding it together for so many years. Eventually something has to give.

If you look at all this systemically, this tsunami may be right on target – an opportunity for everyone to grow up and stand up as sovereign beings in the light, seeing each other’s shri shine brightly. It is a chance for all of us to practice our yoga in the truest sense of the word, and walk with equanimity and compassion.

Carl Jung said that one of the marks of maturity is the ability to hold the tension of opposites. Each one of us has light and shadow. The bigger we are as a being, the brighter that light needs to be, and it follows that its shadow is equally intense. When a leader is loved, people have a hard time imagining they can be any less than perfect. There seems to be some human need to exalt others beyond ourselves, to see them as more than human. In spiritual communities, that borders on divine projection. When a leader fails in some way, usually by some ethical shortcoming – the same people often have a hard time seeing anything but the darkness.

I saw it happen in my own past community with a man who was much loved, then exposed for his shadow, and ended up mysteriously dead- a crime that was never solved. Some saw him as light, others saw only black once his shadow was revealed. In truth, he was both. It’s just that both sides were bigger than most of us.

I write this letter from Kripalu, where the same thing happened back in 1994. Kripalu is a great organization. Its founder, Amrit Desai, had enough Shakti to start something profound that still exists today and has benefited hundreds of thousands. But he had to fall from grace for Kripalu to grow up. Kripalu made it through the transition and is thriving today. But not all organizations make it.

I don’t know the details of the allegations against John or of his admissions. It matters less to me than the behavior of a community that has received so much grace and guidance in its formation. As he takes his leave of absence, it is up to you to become stewards of that community.

The danger in this stage of an organization’s development, is that a community can fracture. Sides can be taken, factions developed, lesser people often step up to take control. We see it in Egypt as the country struggles to find democracy.

Let’s rise above that. Ethical misconduct is a serious issue, but let’s all grow up and hold the light and dark in an integrated way. This by no means condones whatever has been happening, but instead is a call to our own behavior. John has been giving tirelessly to this community for fourteen years. It ain’t easy being on the road. It is right that he gets to take a break. Maybe this is the only way that could happen.

And that leaves all of you to step up to your highest, most ethical, compassionate and wisest selves. That will make Anusara something you can all be proud of.

With love,

Anodea Judith
Feb 17, 2012

Anodea Judith will help facilitate gatherings at YogaKula on March 19th (see details below). In addition to being a yoga teacher and author of several best-selling books on the chakras, Anodea Judith has a back ground in psychology with 20 years of experience in leading both in leading spiritual organizations and as a former therapist in private practice. She has studied Anusara for over 10 years and teaches workshops all over the world.

Yogakula on Monday – March 19 for discussions on the recent shifts in the Anusara world. This event is for all those who are currently teaching the Anusara method – Certified and Inspired – Licensed or not.
EVENT DETAILS
Yogakula San Francisco – 2 – 4 pm (Teachers are also invited to come for Samantha Terhune’s 12:30 pm class and offer a donation)
Yogakula – Berkeley 7:30 – 9 pm (Teachers are also invited to come for Chris Arcucci’s 6pm class and offer a donation)
The purpose of these gatherings is to hold space for how we each feel as well to foster group collaboration to take things to a higher level.

For a more complete overview on what’s been happening, please visit: Anusara Controversy: Overview and Timeline

Related posts:

1. Open Letter to John Friend
2. Letter from new CEO of Anusara, Michal Lichtman announces 50/50 partnership with John Friend

Everything is here to awaken us.

This is the hot fudge banana split sundae of yoga teachings: sticky and sweet, cold and warm, dark mixed with light.  Tastes exquisite going down… but might give you a headache at any moment.

Why the headache?

As yogis we’re asked not to work just with the good as a means to awakening, but with the poison (difficulties) as well.  Let’s be honest, it’s painful to work with difficulties.  That’s why we sometimes would rather launch a flame email or post than let ourselves feel our own pain and heartbreak. Or avoid our pain by glossing over it in the “spiritual bypass” Darcy Lyon mentioned in last week’s post.

In keeping with yoga’s alchemical roots, we can transform the poison into medicine, but first we need to spend some time examining the poison.

What do you choose to do?

Imagine someone slips out from a dark alleyway and places into your palm a dark purple glass vial with an embellished silver cap on it, and then disappears into the shadows.

Recovering from the shock, you hold it up to the light.  You shake it, you tap it, you feel its weight, you watch how it moves in the bottle to determine its viscosity, perhaps you tentatively open it and give it a sniff.  You might even pour out a bit to check its color and texture.  You get to know it and you compare it to other substances you’ve seen before.  You get curious about it and about your own observations and reactions to it.

What’s in the bottle?

Suddenly you know: it’s the Essence of the Anusara Scandal, distilled down to a potent spirit.

You sense the vial contains a familiar mixture of ingredients, some of which may be poisonous to you, and some not.  Some may be missing from the list below, but the main ones include:

1. John’s actions, “the allegations”
2. The lack of transparency
3. The apology, or lack thereof
4. The resignations
5. The dissolution of the community as we once knew it
6. Revelations about additional misuse of power, both business and sexual
7. More resignations
8. Release of pent up anger and frustration from many sides
9. Attempt at restructuring
10. Even more resignations

When you take a sip of this “elixir,” your emotional reactions to it are as individual as you are, shaped by how close you were to John, how much your identity is (or was) tied to him and the community, the past harm or benefit you’ve received from John or other members of the community, and how much you value the teachings and practice… among other things.

For example, when I take a sip, John’s actions and apology have a bitter, sour taste, buffered by my appreciation for the Anusara system and community and the good I know John has done for people I respect and care for.  To me, the resignations taste completely neutral and the attempt at restructuring feels right on the edge of saccharine.  Others experience the complete opposite… for them the resignations are Tabasco mixed with burnt coffee, and the attempt at restructuring is a raspberry sorbet palate cleanser.  Or the other way around.  Everyone tastes something different.

The question then becomes, what do we do with the poison once we’ve tasted it?

1. We spit it out, spewing more poison into the world.

2. We swallow it whole and let it poison us from the inside out.

Then there’s the third option, or the Shiva option, from the ancient story when the gods and demons attempted to churn amrit (the nectar of immortality) from the ocean, but first ended up with a life-annihilating poison.  Shiva took the poison into his mouth, and rather than swallowing or spitting it out, held it in his throat, dyeing his throat its famous blue color, and transforming the poison into courage, steadfastness, and equanimity.

“Holding it” in this case means having the courage to look honestly at the poison and take responsibility for our reactions to it.

Even just saying to yourself, “I’m pissed about this!”  Or, “I’m pissed at how pissed other people are about this!” is a good start. We let ourselves feel whatever is there, as fully as possible.  We get curious about our feelings, our reactivity, and look at them openly and without judgment.   Then we steady our impulse to react from impatience or anger or fear, and empathize with others about how hard it is to do so.  ‘Cause it is so hard not to push the send/post button or make the vitriolic phone call.

Finally, our equanimity helps us avoid the pitfall of wishing everyone would react the same way we do.

Why isn’t everyone doing what I’m doing?  Oh yeah, they’re not me. We allow other people to make their own choices about how to deal with the poison they’ve swallowed… and not spew more poison out at them because we disagree with their reaction to it.

As Albert Camus put it:
“We all carry within us our places of exile, our crimes, and our ravages. But our task is not to unleash them on the world; it is to transform them in ourselves and in others.”

Once we’ve really sat with the poison (nope, you can’t skip that part), we can work on transforming it.  Pema Chodron asks, “Are we willing to make the commitment that when we suffer we say, ‘This will transform me if I let it.’?”  How can we change this poison into the path of our awakening?

Now things get interesting… and the way you transform the distilled Essence of the Anusara Scandal will be different than anyone else.

Use the insight you’ve reached by sitting with the pain and knowing your heart to transform the energy of the poison from something harmful into something that profoundly serves you. Will the transformation deepen your compassion for all of us flawed yet perfect beings out there, will it inspire your creativity to explore unknown caves of your heart, or will it increase your fearlessness in moving forward with your dreams?   I’m not sure which direction the transformation will lead me yet, but I’m excited about the possibilities.

Like the joy in life, the poison is here to awaken us, too.

That purple vial placed in your hand by a stranger is magic, if you use it wisely.  It’s the yogic path, turning the poison into medicine, pain into compassion, injury into healing.  If we don’t transform it, the poison stays poisonous, and we miss our opportunity to be challenged and changed from the inside out.   This is one opportunity I don’t plan to miss.  Do you?

For a more complete overview on what’s been happening, please visit: Anusara Controversy: Overview and Timeline

No related posts.

In the classic Tantric text The Heart of Recognition, Lord Kshemaraja quotes a lost text saying, ”The awareness of knower and known is common to all embodied beings: but for yogis there is this difference: they pay careful attention to the connection.” As I understand it, the act of knowing is colored by our life experiences, our samskaras. Only though a lot of personal work, meditation, and soul searching can we have a clearer mirror with which to reflect reality. Like the story of the blind men groping over the surface of an elephant trying to understand its nature, our views tend to be partial and very limited by our ability to “see” clearly. We see this displayed by the various reactions to what is “known” about John Friend’s actions and what should or could be done about the future of Anusara. Every day we are bombarded by all kinds of confusing choices about many aspects of our lives. This lends a complexity to our lives that can be overwhelming. I often find myself shutting down the contemplations and just punting. What I would like to offer is one more reflection on how to see more of the many facets of the “truth” and how we of the Anusara community – past, present and future – may reflect on our decisions and move to a deeper internal truth about our choices to stay or leave, and to address how we may move on without doing a psychological or spiritual bypass.

What is known, and what remains unknown?

I love developmental theory and have studied many forms of these theories. What they all posit is that we must go through all the stages in a specific order. All of the stages we pass through remain within our whole, and are found in embedded layers where nothing is lost. Sometimes the issues or accomplishments that arise in each stage we go through are not fully resolved. These are the issues we keep getting into trouble with, repeating the same behaviors until finally, if lucky, we learn to think and behave differently. Organizations and societies also go though stages of development, and there can be harmonious and disharmonious overlapping of your personal developmental stages with those of organizations we interact with.

The first developmental theory I studied is called “The Eight Stages of Man,” written by psychoanalyst Erik Erikson in 1950 in his book “Childhood and Society”. In chronological order they are described by these word pairs: Trust vs. Basic Mistrust, Autonomy vs. Shame and Doubt, Initiative vs. Guilt, Industry vs. Inferiority, Identity vs. Role Diffusion, Intimacy vs. Isolation, Generativity vs. Stagnation, and Ego Integrity vs. Despair (the last three being those of adulthood). Although the theory is that they always go in that order, they may be stalled or even halted at any of these stages by a variety of life experiences including sexual, physical, and emotional abuse, death and other losses, untimely or stressful moves or other traumas. There can also be developmental delays due to mental disabilities, learning disorders, and mental illness.

The two stages that have come up repeatedly for me throughout my life as difficult to resolve and which were at play in my relationship with Anusara are Stage 4 which occurs at approximately ages 6-11 and whose virtue is Competence, and Stage 5 which occurs at approximately ages 12-20 whose virtue is Fidelity.

In stage 4 we grapple with Industry versus Inferiority and how we gain competence in the world outside of our family home. There are two big reasons why this stage is challenging for me. One is that we moved when I was almost 8, away from an (as I remember it) idyllic small town to a small city where it took me years to find an academic and social niche. The impact of this lasted until high school, overlapping with all the problems of adolescence making Stage 5 difficult for me with all the challenges of budding sexuality, crushes. and the challenges of being part of various cliques. The second reason for difficulties in Stage 4 is that I was physically and academically restless, leading to behaviors that led all but the most gifted teachers to be constantly annoyed by me. How the unresolved stage issues were activated for me is due to fact that Anusara is such a brilliant system for gaining competence in asana. It was perfect for feeding my need to be coordinated and competent, giving a sense of mastery of my body in space that I had never gained before. For me nothing could have been better than a teacher who was always looking for the good and giving a lot of encouragement. I have always thought of myself an uncoordinated and poor athlete, so gaining the skills to advance my asana practice has been very esteem building for me.

Stage 4 is where the work principle is prominent, that is “the pleasure of work completions by steady attention and persevering diligence.” The program of Immersions followed by differing levels of certification is very rewarding to this set of needs that we all have to varying degrees. I have certainly been quite compulsive about getting certificates in my field, doing well and scoring high at the expense of my own need for rest and good health. Many of those teachers near to being certified are in a real quandary about just this issue. In his article calling for the dissolution of Anusara, Inc., Douglas Brooks states, “Don’t worry about Anusara losing its method or its standards: these will continue in new ways led by an already formidable corps of talented persons.”

But after all, Dr. Brooks’ own Appa encouraged him go to him to go to an Ivy League University. Should these teachers leave after hundreds or thousands of hours of study without the certification? What is happening with the value of their educations? Is it really the best as they have been told? Are they legitimate and will they be seen as such without the certificate? On the other hand, has their legitimacy been tainted by the recent disclosures about John Friend? I have heard of teachers being told to rename their classes by studio owners. This may leave some of these teachers wondering if they picked the right school to gain their skills from in the first place.

Stage 5 is about the themes of Identity vs. Role Confusion. During this time a teenager moves from conformist tendencies to gaining his or her own voice and to developing his or her own style, also known as teenage rebellion. For me all the problems of adolescence made Stage 5 difficult with the challenges of budding sexuality, crushes and my strong desires to be part of the cool and popular cliques with a willingness to be a bit of a joker in as the price I paid for entrance into these groups. When I started regularly practicing Anusara I thought I had finally found a group of like-minded members in my local kula. My stage-related issues came up because it has been painful and confusing for me to voluntarily pull myself to the outside of this kula as I noticed certain things that have not added up over the last year in regards to how Anusara presents itself versus how it actually seems to function. I have done a lot of personal work with this tendency of mine to want to be part of a group over the years, but apparently it is not all resolved. Stage 5 is when cliques, “in crowds” and “out crowds” form, when fraternities, sororities and secret societies are most alluring. Joining this ‘merry band” must have been very compelling to the teachers, especially those selected for the inner circles, perhaps more so for those who had unresolved issues about belonging from earlier in their lives.

Anusara teachers tend to be very interpersonally warm and it is a very social system of yoga practice. When people join groups they hope that their inclusion will enhance their lives and are willing to abide by the rules. Following the rules is how people show their loyalty, commitment and how they demonstrate that they can be counted on. Members of groups receive, in exchange for following the rules, the security and communality of inclusion. I have heard John Friend talk about the “Inner Circle of Trust” versus the “Outer Circle of Trust” and read about it elsewhere. From the many stories I have heard it sounded to me as if you had to demonstrate this trustworthiness (by both written and unwritten rules) or be sent out into the periphery of the group (something no group member wants). People want to believe that the rules are trustworthy and won’t be randomly changed so that they can stay connected and in good standing with the group they have chosen to join. I believe the recent exodus of so many teachers has as much to do with just this aspect – the changing and arbitrary rules and status within the group – perhaps as much as the questionable morality of John Friend’s personal life and financial dealings.

Darcy Lyon mentions this in a post that originally addressed Douglas Brooks’ call for the dissolution of Anusara Inc. saying, “Anusara is in its 15th year-what an amazing teenage rebellion we are going through! The teen needs to reject the parent-this is a developmental task-they need to find their own voice. But as we as a community move through this developmental stage may we resist the temptation to split off into factions and primitive defenses of splitting and rejection.”

I would agree in part with this statement; however I’m not sure if in any rebellion the rebels can totally resist this temptation to resist and split off and reject at least as a temporary measure to give themselves space to hear and understand what is arising within them. Stage 5 is very influenced by our parents, teachers, and friends, and if not successfully traversed we will be unable to see clearly the direction to take in our adult life and to leave relationships behind that don’t serve our growing self-definition. An aspect of this transition to the next stage is that while developing our identity we must also confront our tendencies to conform to other people’s ideas of how we should stand in the world, to discover what we truly believe in and whether we can stand on our own two feet at all. I was not surprised last year to see teachers beginning to leave Anusara to “rebel” against John Friend, beginning in the 14th year of this organization. As I stated in my previous article, “Perhaps a big part of the problem in the situation with Anusara stems from when teachers accept branding as part of their certification. As far as I understand it, objects, not people can be branded. Maybe the process of accepting the brand created an internal dissonance that didn’t allow these bright and talented people to see and think clearly.” I imagine that these teachers had originally accepted branding as part of showing their commitment to the organization, but this eventually began to rub against their ongoing needs to push forward in their intrapersonal development.

Working through this stage, the issues have to do with the ongoing development of our own voices and our definitions of what yoga truly is for each of us going forward in order to move to the next stage (6) that is about Intimacy vs. Isolation. To achieve true intimacy, we must develop our own identities and be ready to move forward with increased ability to commit and be trustworthy in order to connect in the one-to-one relationships. We begin deepening their friendships, and perhaps move toward marriage or toward a deeper commitment in a career. We are more willing to make the sacrifices and compromises such intimacy calls for. In his challenging and complex article, Matttew Remski talks about the choices he has made to keep his classes small and his ayurvedic consultations one to one in spite of lesser financial gains in order to receive greater gains in intimacy and authenticity. There is an ongoing temptation to not deepen this kind of intimacy and instead to keep looking for multiple other like-minded people to connect with or to perhaps join, or creating powerful groups order to avoid the threat of isolation during this stage. This may be truer even than when Erik Eriksen wrote his book because of the increasing mobility and decreasing long-term family and marital commitments of our post-modern society. More and more people talk about their “families of choice”, which often is their church or some other organization they belong to, more people chose the intensity of a large community over the joys and challenges of the one-to-one relationship.

In Erikson’s words about the next stage, “Generativity is primarily the interest in establishing and guiding the next generation or whatever in a given case may become the absorbing object of a parental kind of responsibility.” My son is becoming a fine young man developing his own individual identity in college now, so many of my generativity needs have been satisfied. I do think that writing these articles as a service to this community that I am part of, without being paid, is meeting another part of my generativity needs. It helps keep me from falling into stagnation by offering some ideas of ways to process the feelings coming up for people impacted by these disclosures and who are involved in creating a future for how this yoga may evolve.

My professional work is mainly done in the one to one, occasionally with couples. In posting these blogs I have also had to confront a Shadow issue of mine that arises often about my desire for fame, recognition, and influence. I have needed to confront these fantasies and calm my every arising desire to “impact thousands of people with a best selling book that I get to promote on the Oprah show” (that’s how the fantasy rises up full formed in my brain…). I am sure this is an issue with many of those in teaching or in the helping professions. It can be frustrating to not know what impact your work is having on the greater whole of society.  I have developed a constant internal reminder to continuously come back to being satisfied with a deep connection in the moment with one other, to dissolve the perception of otherness and co-create an understanding of how we are the same at our core. Though tempting, I have to continuously pull away from attempting to shape my patients’ thoughts. I can really only imagine the temptations that would arise within a person having hundreds of adoring people hanging on his or her every word (like at a large Anusara gathering or any other large yoga teaching experience). I don’t know how well I would resist the siren song to my ego! Knowing about this temptation is part of the reason I haven’t put much energy in creating a large extroverted professional life for myself.

People in the intimacy stage and even more so in the generativity stages are those most capable of accomplishing what Douglas Brooks has described as a healthy way authority can arise in a community:  “Rather, the “seat of the teacher” moves with all the members of the Kula, the community.” I believe this can only happen if people have passed through a healthy resolution of this stage 5 with fidelity to their own truth and an ability to use discernment in their relationships to leaders. Jumping right to this type of authority structure from the rather autocratic way John ran Anusara and with the anarchy that exists now is probably unrealistic until some further clarity within the community at large and among the individual members of the community has had time to settle and evolve. With the deepening into the adult stages of development, we can join groups and still find ways to stay true to the healthier aspects of our identities.

I am intrigued and excited about the next stage I am entering. In Erikson’s words again, “Although aware of the relativity of all the various life styles which have given meaning to human striving, the possessor of integrity is really to defend the dignity of his own life style against all physical and economic threats” and “Ego integrity, therefore, implies an emotional integration which permits participation by followership as well as acceptance of the responsibility of leadership.” This is the stage that comes full circle back to take the initial trust towards others that we develop in infancy to a deeper level of trusting ourselves, knowing that we will be there for ourselves in the various relationships we enter. This stage is about following your own truth. I am finding myself more able to stand for what I know serves more than my limited ego and trusting my intuition forged from my life’s lessons. This is very challenging to me, to dive deeply into true discernment and be ready to be challenged by those I have chosen to be my partner, friends and mentors.

We don’t know what our boundaries are until we reach them. We don’t know what our values are until we find them challenged. It is a great task to be authentic and transparent without being irresponsible by sharing before our issues are fully cooked. The process leading up to the good is not always nice. There can be the need for many course corrections. We may need to journal and read through our notes to ourselves in order to discover and absorb the truths we’ve gained along the way. To communicate we may need to again write old-fashioned notes to people on paper and send via snail mail. Yes, it takes longer, allowing us to really commit before we send something that we hope will be true and alive for us when it arrives.

One of my friends recently said that all this worry about an Internet yoga teacher scandal is a first world issue, there are people with much larger problems to grapple with. I replied that although this is true, issues of how we use and misuse our authority, our sexuality, and the gifts we are given are universal. We learn from the perspective of wherever we are standing. Somehow through a mix of my karma, lila and a bit of “the lucky” I am blessed to be able to learn my lessons in a first world situation. Waking up and integrating a little more of our own truths can happen in any moment if we allow ourselves to look deeply within at our sticking points. The other day in yoga class, Chrissy Graham focused on commitment to the moment, to where our body was willing to go, to what our 100% is today which will be different from any other day, any other moment. While meditating she reminded us to open to how we can drop in, be with our minds and get a little quieter, and then drop in and arrive a little more centered in the base of our hearts. This is the gift of yoga, to get to know our bodies and our minds better, now. This is how we begin to know how we know what we know. Thus we can make the connections to what our body tells our mind, tells our heart, and back around, today, in the ever-arising moment.

Creative Commons photo via Flickr by inoc.

For a more complete overview on what’s been happening, please visit: Anusara Controversy: Overview and Timeline

Related posts:

1. Integrating the Shadow
2. The Asana of Emotional Healing: Anusara and the Dark Night of the Soul
3. Ripples of Healing: Seeing Clearly and Massive Scales of Transformation