Ginger Coy, John Friend, and Brad Coy
For 3 years, since the beginning of this blog, I’ve interviewed John Friend, Founder of Anusara Yoga, at the launch of his world tour. The last 2 years, the tour began in San Francisco. This year, the tour, named Igniting the Center, began in Encinitas, CA with a 3 day workshop from January 18-20th. Encinitas is a beautiful coastal town, which is located 25 miles (about a half hour ride) north of the San Diego airport in Southern California. The town is known as an epicenter of yoga, and ground zero for Autobiography of a Yogi author Paramahansa Yogananda and Ashtanga Yogi, Tim Miller. In addition to having a strong history and presence in yoga, Encinitas also has a strong surfer scene and prevalence of natural foods. Encinitas will soon be the site for the forthcoming Center for Anusara Yoga, called simply, “The Center”. All of us there for the workshop were invited to come tour the Center after class on Thursday. We were able to see a sneak peak of the Center during renovations. The Center is quite big, has good energy and is located about a block from Yogananda’s Self-Realization Fellowship (SRF) and a short walk to a staircase, which leads down to Swami’s beach. The beach features nightly epic sunsets. Since the Center is being renovated, and is slated to open in the Spring or Summer, about 175 of us Anusarans practiced yoga at the Seaside Center for Spiritual Living.
John Friend gives a tour of the Center
Each day of the 3 day workshop, we steadily practiced 100 poses for 4 hours. Our practices were steady in that there were no formal breaks and very little demos. We worked on strengthening our nadis with particular emphasis on the nadis in our arms during hand balancing poses. John defined nadis as energy channels much like guitar strings that vibrate at different frequencies. He spoke about how lots of people get on the treadmill and take in music through their headphones and watch TV while they run and that’s what they become more of, whatever they are taking in. The cardio will get gym-goers’ heart rate up, but there is no internal shift in consciousness. Yoga, by contrast, offers transformation of your whole body, and in particular your energy body through the nadis. He noted that yoga is unique in that a practitioner’s heart rate will go up and down during the practice, which helps to strengthen the energy body or subtle body by toning the nadis. He encouraged us to move not from our outer body but from our energy body inside.
A bunch of us gathered at Swami's Beach after the tour of the Center for sunset
In addition to nadis, he spoke of watching Iyengar on video with the sound off to study his backbends, and he noted that Iyengar moved as though each pose was a prayer packed with meaningfulness throughout every breath and movement. Watching this video, John originated the phrase, “melt your heart.” It was as though Iyengar was softening so much, making such a strong prayer in this way that it necessitated a melting of the heart.
Interview Topics
-Inspiration for the name of this year’s world tour, Igniting the Center
-New York Times article, “How Yoga Can Wreck Your Body” by William J. Broad
-A discussion on injuries sustained through yoga
-Yoga in relationship with Hinduism and Anusara’s philosophy, Shiva-Shakti Tantra
-Critical Times we live in, the role of technology and China
-Sacred Geometry
-Grace in relationship with Control, Non-dualism
-Vision for Anusara Yoga and the world in 2012
If you can’t see the video, click here.
To find out where John is headed next on his tour, please click here.
Related posts:
- Interview with John Friend-Dancing with the Divine, 2011 World Tour
- Part 2: Interview with John Friend-Dancing with the Divine, 2011 World Tour
- John Friend: Finding Grace in times of Disaster (video)
- Teaching or Transmission? Igniting the Fire of Transformation (video)
- Interview with John Friend: Wanderlust 2011
[...] her visit to Encinitas, California, future site of The Center for Anusara Yoga, for the start of John Friend’s 2012 World Tour: “Ignite the [...]