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
Bhakti movement concept of the Ultimate Reality as formless, without attributes or quality. "Saguna" Brahman, in contrast, was envisioned and developed as with form, attributes and quality. The two had parallels in the ancient pantheistic unmanifest and theistic manifest traditions, respectively, and traceable to Arjuna-Krishna dialogue in the Bhagavad Gita. It is the same Brahman, but viewed from two perspectives, one from "Nirguni" knowledge-focus and other from "Saguni" love-focus, united as Krishna in the Gita. "Nirguna" bhakta's poetry were "Jnana-shrayi", or had roots in knowledge. "Saguna" bhakta's poetry were "Prema-shrayi", or with roots in love. In Bhakti, the emphasis is reciprocal love