John Friend

John Friend(born 1959 is an American yoga guru and creator of Anusara Yoga.

Friend began his yoga career teaching Ashtanga Yoga and then Iyengar Yoga. He practised the spiritual Siddha Yoga intensively for some years before founding Anusara in 1997. In 2012, allegations about mismanagement and sexual abuse were published, leading to Friend's resignation from Anusara. He went on to create a yoga system named Sridaiva, with an alignment methodology called Bowspring.

Early life

John Friend encountered yoga aged 8 in Youngstown, Ohio, when his mother, Ann Friend, read him stories of the supernatural powers of yogis. He started to study yoga philosophy with the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita. He began asana practice by following Swami Satchidananda's book Integral Hatha Yoga.

At 17, Friend joined a Sufi group and took up sitting meditation. He also studied with Theosophical Society members. At age 19 he moved to Houston, Texas, where he studied hatha yoga. He began teaching yoga part-time while working as a financial analyst.

Founder of Anusara Yoga

Friend set up Anusara in 1997 as a style of hatha yoga intended to combine what he called "Shiva-Shakti Tantra" and his own "Universal Principles of [bodily] Alignment".

2012 scandal

In February 2012, an anonymous tipster published accusations on jfexposed.com (short for "John Friend exposed"), which later appeared on the blog YogaDork. These allegations of mismanagement and abuse were later reported on at length in an article in The Washington Post. The four key accusations against Friend were:

That Friend led a Wiccan coven called Blazing Solar Flames whose members allegedly included female Anusara students, teachers and employees. The tipster provided documentation that Friend had engaged in sexual relations with women in the coven, including a letter allegedly written by him to a coven member with whom he had sexual relations, and described an 'alignment' between Wicca and the Anusara system of yoga. That Friend had sexual affairs with several married Anusara employees and teachers. In a February 2012 interview, Friend admitted to the truth of this allegation. That Friend froze funding of employees' defined benefits plans, avoiding notification to employees, and thus violated federal ERISA regulations. The tipster claimed that Anusara, Inc., made the change to the plan in January 2010, but waited until December 2010 to provide oral notification to some employees. In December 2011, 204(h) notification had still not been provided and the tipster made a complaint to the U.S. Department of Labor. In January 2012, Anusara, Inc. finally provided official notification, but attempted to backdate the notification, as well as the effective freeze date, to January 1, 2010. In response, the Department of Labor advised Anusara, Inc. that it was in violation. Anusara, Inc. then restored funds to the account and provided notification of a freeze to take place in the future. Friend provided documentation verifying the pension notification violations and the timeline outlined by the tipster. The documentation included a letter from Anusara Inc. which assured employees that there was never an intention to be deceptive. Friend eventually admitted this was the result of his oversight, corrected after an employee complained to government regulators.

Sridaiva and Bowspring

In 2013, John Friend began working with Colorado-based yoga teaching sisters Desi and Micah Springer to help systematize a yoga method they had developed. Prior to this, Friend had been dating Desi Springer. Originally called "The Roots" practice, the yoga system was rebranded in 2013 as Sridaiva (श्रीदैव, Sanskrit for "divine destiny"),