In times of scandal, remember it’s about the teachings—not the teacher.

I never studied with John Friend, although several of my girlfriends got their certification from his organization. I never even met the man, short of a brief phone interview for a magazine article. But I understand the confusion many who love Anusara yoga are experiencing, because roughly 20 years before, when I was training to be a yoga teacher at Integral Yoga Institute, the guru there came under similar fire.

I was a young woman eager to learn yogic principles like nonharming and truthfulness at the same time the institute’s founder, Swami Satchidananda, was being accused of harming and lying plenty. A woman’s claim of an unwelcome sexual relationship with the supposedly celibate swami was certainly convincing. Yet I ultimately stayed in the training program and became certified to teach yoga there.

What convinced me not to jump ship were the words of the person leading our teacher training. As the scandal around the swami swirled, he had decided to ask himself a simple question:

Have his teachings served me? 

Additionally, I had been asking myself a similar query:

Does a tainted teacher automatically taint the teachings, too?

After much thought, and despite my disgust at the swami’s likely, despicable behavior, I came to the answers yes, and no.

We live in a culture eager to always throw the baby out with the bathwater. Many people won’t watch a movie or read a book (even from the library, so as not to remunerate the person) from someone who did something they abhor.

I understand this impulse, and I’m certainly not suggesting we excuse their actions. When people do awful things, they should pay the price, including potentially with the law.

But my experience with the swami’s scandal convinced me that I can still appreciate what I have gotten from someone, even after they fail greatly. Embracing teachings does not always mean embracing the teacher you learned them from.

Swami Satchidananda was an amazing interpreter of the yoga sutras and the Bhagavad Gita, and his book, To Know Your Self, made esoteric concepts both entertaining and relevant for me. His books and lectures helped me connect to my highest spiritual plane and made me a better person—then and now.

Similarly, John Friend inspired many to reach for their higher self, through teachings that emphasized attitude, alignment, and right action on and off the mat. The beauty of those teachings continue, even if the man turned out to be a horrible practitioner of those teachings himself.

~

Meryl Davids Landau is a certified yoga teacher and the author of the spiritual women’s novel Downward Dog, Upward Fog, which was recommended by the Yoga Journal, YogaDork and Everything Yoga blogs, and is the current book club pick for the Goodreads Yoga Folks group. Foreword Reviews calls the novel “an inspirational gem that will appeal to introspective, evolving women.” Read excerpts here. Meryl also writes for O: the Oprah Magazine, Whole Living, Reader’s Digest and other national magazines.