2001

Anusara Yoga

I really enjoyed the yoga teacher training and learned a considerable amount about the different aspects of yoga as taught by the Anusara style. Anusara, I had learned, was one of many styles of yoga. All had at their base, Hatha Yoga, the yoga of doing poses, but different styles were taught differently and with different emphasis. Styles most often were based on a particular teacher or guru one of the more popular and widespread style in the U.S. is Iyengar Yoga taught by the guru B.K.S Iyengar (1818-2014) who was still living at the time. A yoga style is usually based upon the teachings of guru that the yogi studied under, and such lineages can be traced back hundreds of years. Iyengar based his style on the teachings of the yogi Sri Tirumalai Krishnamacharya.  Anusara was a new style, having been around for less than ten years, and was created by the yogi John Friend who had studied with Iyengar himself and was a certified Iyengar teacher before starting his Anusara yoga.  I had heard bits and pieces of this from my teacher Susan and from the workshop with Doug Keller but the teacher training provided more details.

So the different styles are all Hatha Yoga and they all pretty much teach the same yoga poses, down dog, tree pose, triangle pose, and so on. What makes the styles different is how the poses are taught and the emphasis and approach in the teaching.  J. J. Gormley, who I had studied with at The Gray Bear Lodge, taught from a chakra point of view, with emphasis on relating doing yoga poses to the seven chakars.  Iyengar style was one of strict physical alignment in doing the poses. I heard stories from people who had studied with Iyengar and they said he would walk around the room with small stick and would poke, prod and sometimes tap you with the stick to correct your pose.  Having come from an Iyengar background, John Friend’s Anusara yoga was also alignment based but taking it to a different level through what John called the Universal Principles of Alignment. While Iyengar was very strict in his teaching, Anusara used “heart language” as a means of teaching.  The teacher training manual describes it as “a uniquely integrated hatha yoga school in which the artistic glory of the human heart blends seamlessly with scientific principles of biomechanics.”

In 2001 there were four main yoga studios in the Washington DC area each started and run by a yogi. In DC proper was Unity Woods Yoga center, the oldest of the four. Unity Woods was started by John Schumacher had studied with directly with Iyengar and taught Iyengar style of yoga. On the Maryland side of DC in College Park was Willow Street Yoga center started and operated by Susie Hurley. I do not know what style of yoga Susie Hurley started with but in 2001 she was one of the first Anusara certified teachers and Willow Street mainly taught Anusara yoga.  On the Virgina side of DC was Sun and Moon yoga center located in Fairfax. Sun and Moon was started by J.J. Gormley and taught her style of chakra yoga. Located in Herndon Virgina was the Health Advantage Yoga Center (HAYC) started by Betsy Downing who also was an early Anusara certified teacher. Also based out of HAYC was Doug Keller who was Anusara certified. Doug once told the story of how he first met John Friend in India before John had started Anusara yoga.   While there may have been a few smaller yoga studios, these four each had eight or ten teachers each and probably had the majority of yoga students in the area.  

Betsy Downing and Suzie Hurley were good friends and their respective yoga centers often collaborated and often had guest teachers and events together, like the teacher training I went to, and would have brochures about events in their studios about events at the other’s studios. J.J. Gormley at Sun and Moon was also part of the group but to a lesser extent because J.J. and Willow Street were not Anusara yoga.  Almost every month there was some special guest or workshop at one of the studios and with my interest in yoga growing, I began to attend these day or weekend events.

Workshops