For years Lance Armstrong has been the subject of doubts and questions.
Lance Armstrong
Did he? Or Didn’t he?
Use illegal substances, of course. Hot off the press is news that three of Armstrong’s close associates have received lifetime bans from Olympic sports after not responding to charges levied last month. Armstrong himself is fighting the process, but a suit he filed was dismissed post-haste by an Austin court.
Scandal in another sphere I care about. John Friend, founder of Anusara yoga, resigned from the institution he founded after confirmation of various forms of misconduct, especially sexual ones, among them a pattern of affairs, including with married students and employees and generally failing baldly to live up to his preaching and posing.
I’ve practiced yoga for 12 years and from the moment I discovered it, Anusara became my preferred style. I love the collegiality, the logic of alignment, the handstands! I like that Anusara classes are more friendly than many other styles. And–at first–I even liked it that disagreements within the community were managed discreetly.
In 2008 Anthony Benenati, founder of City Yoga, wrote to his students—I was one—to say he was resigning his Anusara certification. “My decision to leave is out of respect for John and his community….I realize my vision…diverges from the Anusara community mission.”
HUH?
Between poses, we students scratched our heads.
John Friend
Early this year the resignations spread like gossip before, and more so, after, the serious as the allegations against John Friend came out. (A timeline here.) Laura Christensen. Noah Maze. Amy Ipolliti. Ross Raeburn. To a greater or lesser degree, I’ve studied with them all. Respected teacher Elena Brower, of Vira Yoga, in New York wrote in the Huffington Post about the conspiracy of silence among those in-the-know about John’s deep failings.
In the Yoga Land, “John” is as much a single name guy as “Lance” is in the broader world.
Sad, all of it. But what’s to be learned? New York Times reporter, William Broad, author of the Science of Yoga, says that yogis have always been this way…yoga started as a sex cult and no one should be surprised. Well…Western religions began with idolatry and animal sacrifices and we’ve grown beyond that. Broad himself practices yoga and he doesn’t seem like a sex-cult guy.
Too big for their britches…spandex or otherwise…is what I say.
Let’s let the figureheads suffer whatever fate they deserve—arrogance corrupts as surely as power does– but maintain whatever good they have brought to the world.
For John, that would be the healing and collegial power of yoga. And for Lance, the triumph of humanity over cancer cells.
And for the both them…and the rest of us… a little humility goes a long way.
Humility, an underrated and under-practiced virtue.
