Anusara School of Hatha Yoga Anusara School of Hatha Yoga Anusara School of Hatha Yoga, also known as Anusara Yoga (In Hindi:अनुसार योग) is the successor of a modern school of hatha yoga originally started by American-born yoga teacher John Friend in 1997. Friend derived his style from the Iyengar style of yoga and reintroduced elements of Hindu spirituality into a more health-oriented Western approach to Yoga. The Anusara style emphasizes a set of Universal Principles of Alignment which underlie all of the physical asanas and are connected to philosophical aspects of the practice. The school's ideology is "grounded in a Tantric philosophy of intrinsic
Bhagavad Gita that "when one sees the entire universe as pervaded by the single Universal Spirit [Krishna], one contemplates, marvels, and falls in love with its amazing glory. [...] Having experienced that Truth oneself, all doubts are dispelled. This is how the flower of devotion evolves into the fruit of knowledge." The "Gita" teaches several spiritual paths – jnana, bhakti and karma – to the divine. However, states Fowler, it "does not raise any of these to a status that excludes the others". The theme that unites these paths in the "Gita" is "inner renunciation" where one is unattached to personal rewards