The Great Oom: The Improbable Birth of Yoga in America Cover
Podcast Mentions

The Great Oom The Improbable Birth of Yoga in America

Robert Love

The amazing story of how yoga came to America-and the charming rogue who made it possible In Jazz Age New York, there was no place hotter than the Clarkstown Country Club, where celebrities such as Leopold Stokowski mingled with Vanderbilts, Goodriches, and Great War spies. They came for the club's...

Podcasts 1
Quotes 5
Behind the Bastards

It was discussed as the best book about Pierre Arnold Bernard, detailing his early East Coast clientele and the evolution of his Tantric Order yoga school and sanitarium.

"

The best book on Bernard is called The Great Oum by Robert Love.

— Episode: Part One: The First American Yoga Cult L...

Episode: Part One: The First American Yoga Cult Leader

It was discussed as the best book about Pierre Arnold Bernard, detailing his early East Coast clientele and the evolution of his Tantric Order yoga school and sanitarium.

"

The best book on Bernard is called The Great Oum by Robert Love.

The violence of the violent yoga comes primarily from the method used to achieve these results, the forceful fusing of opposites.

In that book, Love describes Bernard's early East Coast clientele as a mix of well-heeled interested parties, doctors, patients, the sickly, occultists, spiritual seekers and health fad enthusiasts.

The next day with her parents approval, Miss Hoppe traveled alone to Manhattan and arrived at the Brownstone where Bernard cigar in hand ushered her into a back room and conducted a physical exam.

Report surfaced in the press on those salacious details of Hindu tantric practices. A diligent New York World reporter had turned up a copy of Bernard's Vera Sadhana and published excerpts under the headline tantrics worship calls for dead bodies and young girls.

Note: The book recommendations on this page are discovered automatically from podcast transcripts, and may be incorrect or incomplete.