The Great Oom: The Improbable Birth of Yoga in America

by 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 circuses and burlesques but especially for the lectures on the subject at the heart of the club's yoga. Their guru was the notorious Pierre Bernard, who trained with an Indian master and instructed his wealthy followers in the asanas and the modern yogic lifestyle.

Robert Love traces this American obsession from moonlit Tantric rituals in San Francisco to its arrival in New York, where Bernard's teachings were adopted by Wall Streeters and Gilded Age heiresses, who then bankrolled a luxurious ashram on the Hudson River-the first in the nation. Though today's practitioners know little of Bernard, they can thank his salesman's persistence for sustaining our interest in yoga despite generations of naysayers.

In this surprising, sometimes comic story, Love uncovers the forgotten life and times of the colorful, enigmatic character who brought us hatha yoga. The Great Oom delves into the murky intersection of mysticism, money, and celebrity that gave rise to the creation of one of America's most popular practices and a fivebillion-dollar industry.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Biography, Religion, Spirituality, Philosophy, Health

416 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2010

About the author

Robert Love has worked in magazine publishing for 30 years and was the managing editor of Rolling Stone and executive editor of Best Life. He is an adjunct professor of journalism at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. Loves articles have appeared in the New York Times, the New York Observer and the Utne Reader. He lives with his wife in Westchester County, New York."

Reviews

[Andy · Rating 4 out of 5]

The town where the "Great Oom" (Perry Baker, aka Pierre Bernard) lived his remarkable life is the town where I grew up and went to school. In fact, my middle school is built in the former location of Bernard's 'elephant barn." I heard the school referred to as "the elephant barn" when I was a student, but I never knew why it was called that. This book explains all that and a lot more. The book isn't really about the "birth of yoga" in America - I mean, it has to do with that - and it's not even really about The Great Oom - it's really about America between about 1900 and 1950. American fads, interests, prejudices, curiosity, and epic events form the steady backdrop that makes this book relevant to those who don't know the town of Nyack and can't picture the places referred to in Love's book.

It is mind-boggling to me that my family lived in and around the locus of all the events related here from just before Bernard died, and that I grew up there without ever having heard a word about this guy or his incredible antics and endeavors. It's worth reading as a 3-star diversion if you're just curious about eccentric personalities. But if you have spent any time at all in Nyack, New York, you will be astonished to discover what an influence Oom had over the town for 4 decades, and how rapidly his name and influence faded as he aged and passed on.

[Charles Dee Mitchell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Around here there are as many yoga studios as there are dry cleaners. So it's hard to imagine a time when yoga instruction could be linked to white slavery and sex orgies. This biography of Dr. Pierre Bernard covers the first half of the 20th century, and follows the life of a man that was equal parts Sanskrit scholar, yoga master, huckster, and civic promoter. This is the first I have heard of Dr. Bernard, who wasn't a doctor and whose name wasn't Bernard, so this biography was something of a page-turner. It's filled with scandals, famous names, elephant acts, baseball games, and as many reversals of fortune as a 19th-century novel. This sounds like an infomercial, but it really is entertaining and informative. The next time you are doing the Downward Facing Dog or struggling into a headstand, you can reflect that you are facing challenges faced by Vanderbilt heiresses, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Greta Garbo.

[Eilfie Music · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Great Oom was a surprise find for me. I have had a long interest in history of the various movements such as New age, fringe religions, good health movement, and practices. This sheds light on one the early western practitioners of yoga in the United States for good or ill. Yoga had already started filtering in during the later half of the 19th century, but this was more focus on the hatha yoga branch with the idea of a more mind body connection.
The character Dr. Pierre Bernard also known at "The Great Oom" would have made P.T. Barnum proud with his showmanship. Reading through, even with all the show and legal run ins and outs Bernard seems to truly believe in the work he was doing, but knew it needed sparkle to attract the upper crust of NY society. I would have love to have seen his extensive library that was utilized by students and scholars alike.
If you have a fascination with the early new age movement and even with how we got where we are today with the yoga in the US, this would be a good book to start with. The author also names many early yoga books that were written by former students of people somehow effected by the Great Oom.

[Susan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the story of Dr. Pierre Bernard, a man from Iowa, who introduced the Vanderbilts, and other rich Americans at the turn of the twentieth century to Hatha Yoga....Dr. Bernard's uniquely American brand of Hatha Yoga, which included baseball, theatrics, and circus animals. The book read like a historical novel spanning the Victorian era to the Cold War. The question asked in both the beginning and ending of this story is, "Was he is a fraud or a genius?" Maybe both. A very interesting and surprising bit of history about a practice commonly used today in the USA as a health and exercise tool.

[Anya · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book took me a while to read, basically because it is very dull. It has a great title, and great chapter titles and I am genuinely very interesting in the subject matter. However, the book goes into a lot of detail about chronological events and people who meet each another and there is very little information on the actual yogic practices which were carried out and how they relate to practices in various yogic schools in India (which is what I was interested in). So he was called “America’s first yogi”- but what kind of yogi was he? And who carries in this lineage and in which lineage did he learn (or was it all made up pseudo yoga?). I still don’t know.

[Gina Boonshoft · Rating 4 out of 5]

I grew up in the town next to Nyack, NY, so the history of the area and yoga was fascinating. This book was well researched and well written. The reader can get an immediate feel of the times and people. Very intriguing how many famous and wealthy people were at one point or another, involved with Pierre Bernard, his teachings and his retreat in Nyack. A great story about a larger than life man, who, despite all his failings as a person, had a tremendous influence on Western culture's obsession with yoga.

[George Ilsley · Rating 3 out of 5]

At the centre of this book is the person of Pierre Bernard, who is credited with having brought yoga to the United States.

Interesting and at times entertaining, but started to meander about in the second half. Perhaps this accurately reflects what was happening in Bernard's life at the time.

If I'd only read the first half, would have rated the book higher.

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

Perry Baker, AKA Dr. Pierre Bernard, AKA the Great OOM. The book contends that he was one of the main people responsible for the 'birth' of hatha (physical) yoga in America. He was surely one of the American movement's seminal figures, and along the way ran a country club, founded a minor league baseball team, owned an airport and hobnobbed with the rich & famous.

Tantric and hatha yoga had fallen out of favor in India, but one follower of the traditional hatha yoga (Sylvais Hamati) came to the US in the late nineteenth century. He met and taught Perry Baker, and molded him into Pierre Bernard. Bernard adapted Hindu tantrism with his own philosophy.Tantrics believe in the purity of the human body, and from this came hatha yoga, the system of postures and breathing that is well known now. (Some tantrics utilize taboos - drugs, alcohol, sex - in their rituals.) Bernard was also influenced by the Transcendentalists (Emerson was familiar with Sanskrit literature) and the Theosophists.

Bernard became so adept at yoga breathing he illustrated the Death Trance in San Francisco, where he was able to have doctors inject needles into his flesh and show no emotion. In California he formed a cult-like group that mixed traditional yoga with some scandalous sexual practices, until he was essentially run out of town and moved to New York.

He believed that sex was not only natural but had the potential to be sacred, and blamed sexual problems (insufficient sex, celibacy, overdose) for 99% of divorces. "Until one has loved, the years are wasted."

In New York City he set up yoga clinics, was arrested when 2 teenage girls claimed he had abducted them (the charges were later dropped), and also had two Vanderbilt women befriend and financially support him.

He moved his operation to Nyack, where he created the sprawling Clarkstown Country Club, which would eventually house a library of 7000 books, one of the best Sanskrit libraries in america. The club mixed vigorous exercise (including baseball), diet, yoga, hard work, lectures and 'healthy living'; it was a truly American endeavor and became a major sport for the devoted, the curious, and the rich & famous. (Even Pete Seger's family went there).

He hosted elaborate dinners, parades, circuses (he owned several elephants), parties, and became a major figure in Nyack commerce and politics. in Nyack he built baseball stadiums, dog tracks, an airport, and became becoming president of the State Bank of Pearl River in 1931.

Was he responsible for the "birth" of yoga in America? There were others who were spreading the word before, during and after him. But at the time, his club was the only working yoga ashram in the US, and he was regular fodder for newspapers - both the scandals and the positive side. And many people he influenced went on to spread the word: his nephew later went to India and returned to the US and wrote an important book; actors came to Clarkstown and took yoga back to Hollywood.

All in all, a lively read on a little known figure in American history.

[Don · Rating 5 out of 5]

Two recent books tackle the development of Yoga in the United States. Through an unlikely series of events Pierre Bernard (born Perry Baker in Iowa) became a master yogi, and through a series of contrivances shamelessly promoted himself around the country, most notably in San Francisco and New York. At the turn of the century, tantric yoga and other foreign practices were considered cultish and morally subversive; this is when the press dubbed Pierre “The Great Oom” (this image served as the model for countless “evil swami” characters in the movies and cartoons of the era). By the 1920’s his Clarkstown Country Club in Nyack, New York became a popular retreat for the rich and famous, where the Vanderbilts, the conductor Leopold Stokowski, and many others learned hatha yoga, attended Pierre’s philosophic lectures, and staged an annual circus (elephants and other creatures lived on the grounds year-round). Syman’s The Subtle Body is a more comprehensive look at the transformation of this South Indian spiritual practice, starting with Thoreau’s experiments at Walden Pond and the first Indian yogis in America. The mid-century rise in yoga’s popularity includes the work of Pierre’s nephew, Theos Bernard, and yoga in Hollywood. The psychedelic era saw the drug-induced return of spiritual yoga (including the likes of Timothy Leary and Ram Dass) then modern variants emerged, such as Iyengar and Bikram.

[Carol · Rating 5 out of 5]

My friend held out this book to me, said she would lend it as I shook my head thinking about all the books I was currently reading but she pressed on: “It’s a Good Read!!!.” Oh my that is so correct. All the other books waited as I couldn't put this down.
Beyond describing the life of a most complex man, Pierrie Bernard, a story so unbelievable, so well documented and written with Love’s talent of a natural born storyteller, this volume, for me, provided some insights into history that I can’t stop thinking about. Love does reference just by mentioning, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby” and I also thought of the “Hearst Castle,” William Randolph Hearst’s estate in San Simeon, CA. How these extremes represented a point of view of a certain class in an era of our history. You don’t need to be interested in yoga to be captivated, educated, by this book. It is a story, a record of events revealing the milieu of our country in the early years of the 1900’s that brings a new focus of attitude's evolution. Also thoughts about obsession.

[Jerrod E. · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book started out interesting, but it quickly turned quite bland. The book is more of a biography of "The Great Oom" and less about yoga's birth and popularity in America. I'm not a big fan of the biography genre, so this book pretty much started to bore the hell out of me. I think it might have been more entertaining if the author would have studied whether or not he felt "The Great Oom" was real or a fraud, but this consideration occupies only one chapter in the book. All in all, "Oom's" life wasn't enough to maintain my reading focus.

[Iris · Rating 2 out of 5]

Missing a lust for life, a curiosity about the world, an acumen for history, and the grace to take the hand of the reader and explore with her the outlandish history of the P.T. Barnum of yoga.

'Tis a far, far better thing to read an engaging, thrilling and accurate history: "The Subtle Body: The Story of Yoga in America" by Stefanie Syman. Published this summer, I think it's one for the ages.

[Heidi · Rating 2 out of 5]

There were glimmers of interest in this book for me - like when they actually described some yoga poses and the lifestyle in the houses The Great Oom set up. But so much history and name-dropping really isn't my bag, so I found myself just slogging through. It is an eye-opener that sensationalism and gossip is nothing new!

[West Hartford Public Library · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book covers a little-known story about the development of Yoga in the United States. Through an unlikely series of events Pierre Bernard (born Perry Baker in Iowa) became a master yogi, and through a series of contrivances shamelessly promoted himself around the country, most notably in San Francisco and New York. At the turn of the century, tantric yoga and other foreign practices were considered cultish and morally subversive; this is when the press dubbed Pierre “The Great Oom” (this image served as the model for countless “evil swami” characters in the movies and cartoons of the era). By the 1920’s his Clarkstown Country Club in Nyack, New York became a popular retreat for the rich and famous, where the Vanderbilts, the conductor Leopold Stokowski, and many others learned hatha yoga, attended Pierre’s philosophic lectures, and staged an annual circus (elephants and other creatures lived on the grounds year-round).

[Georg'ann · Rating 4 out of 5]

As someone who has practiced and even taught yoga, I have often wondered about the history of yoga in the US. And this story, the story of Pierre Bernard, has answered my questions about yoga in the United States and how it came to be a part of our culture. Love spins a good story, and he doesn't have to do much to hold the reader's attention. Bernard's life kind of borders on the unbelievable. Now I want to read more about the social and cultural context that made his individual journey possible. Love provides glimpses of this, but I am left wanting more. (and that's not a criticism of the book, just a consequence of how fantastical the story is and the teasers that are provided - there is much more to this story!!)

[Jaclynn (JackieReadsAlot) · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't practice yoga but you don't need to be a fan to read the book. The history of yoga's introduction to the U.S is interesting enough to stand on its own. This is the story of (self styled) "Dr" Pierre Bernard, a man from Iowa, who introduced the Vanderbilts, and other rich Americans at the turn of the twentieth century to Hatha Yoga, his uniquely American brand, which included baseball, theatrics, and circus animals. Bernard was at first reviled, later revered, finally dying in obscurity. The book reads like a historical novel spanning the Victorian era to the Cold War. The question asked in both the beginning and ending of this story is, "Was he is a fraud or a genius?" Maybe both.

[Summer Cook · Rating 5 out of 5]

A compelling and delightful read! I was engrossed from the very start, and found myself wanting to know everything about this captivating story and the individuals who it involved. I felt myself learning so much about a history that I have seldom seen explored elsewhere. Richly detailed and full of the excitement of the roaring twenties this autobiography is less about a specific person and more about a fascinating and thriving community in the first half of the 20th century.

[Tim Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bernard's Educated Elephants may have been bringing in $1,000 a week while on tour, but at home in Nyack, there were no longer dewy young applicants lining up outside the CCC gates, pledging to sign over their financial legacies if only they could be stripped of their egos and taught how to breathe.

[Courtney · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a yoga instructor in the US, I found this book fascinating. I marvel at this unique man’s journey and wonder how much he truly believed in the lifestyle and how much he was driven by power, money, and fame. (Recurring questions of any day in any movement.) It is also strange how he seems erased from yogic history in the US, at least in common knowledge.

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a richly detailed chronicle of how yoga made its way into American culture as well as an engaging biography of Dr. Pierre Bernard, whose legacy has long been overlooked. The author writes in a highly readable manner, and although the book is lengthy, it held me captive. Highly recommended to all yoga enthusiasts as we as anyone with an interest in popular culture or American history!

[Kathleen Celmins · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gah, this could have been so much better. I found the first half really interesting, and the last half dragged on. Much like the life of P.A. Bernard, I suppose. But I did love the story of how yoga came to the United States.

[Lynne · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting biography of a man who was a cross between BKS Iyengar and P.T. Barnum. His devotion to the deep philosophy and principles of yoga were engulfed by the roaring twenties. I found it sad.

[Norini · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting but somewhat disjointed. If you are interested in how yoga came the US and how it grew here, then it's ok.

[Brandy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is nonfiction but the events are so colorful and the stories so interesting that it reads like historical fiction.

[Cyamber Parker · Rating 5 out of 5]

Complex and interesting

[Laura Brose · Rating 3 out of 5]

Loved the fact that the writer exhaustively combed through early 20th century periodicals, letters, and other such materials to reconstruct an account of an interesting life of an impresario who started out by promoting yoga along with the Sanskrit language, Indian culture and religion, including Tantrism; but gained notoriety for allegedly compromising the virtue of an unmarried woman whose parents sent her to his establishment for what we would now call exercise or physical therapy. Upon relocation from New York City to Upstate New York in Nyack, by means of wealthy clients and benefactors, he gained enough money to become a leading citizen and to start first one, and then another country club. The country clubs were more mainstream in orientation, but yoga was still offered as part of their athletic program. However, "easy come, easy go", "Pierre Bernard" as he preferred to call himself lost a fortune as easily as he came into large quantities of capital. One problem with buttering up big-money benefactors, is that they can be alienated almost as easily as they can be flattered. Some of his losses were through bad investments (he built a dog track when he thought NY State was going to legalize dog racing, but that was not to be), and through the general economic downturn of the Great Depression. Both Bernard and his empire experienced a general deterioration and decline at roughly the same time, passing quietly and completely from this earth well before the popularization of Yoga in the 1960s and 1970s. Robert Love is to be lauded for tracing the words and actions of someone who had become a forgotten figure, and telling modern audiences a cautionary tale.

[M Shomaker · Rating 3 out of 5]

The scandal-plagued spiritual life of "Dr." Pierre Bernard (formerly Perry Baker from Iowa) who is largely responsible for introducing yoga to America at the turn of the 20th century as "the Great Oom". From Iowa to San Francisco, New York City, and Nyack, New York, Bernard recruited followers, taught tantric yoga, and ran in and out of trouble with the law.

[Martin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was hoping that there would be more about yoga and how it developed in America but it is all about "The Great Oom" and his antics. It reads more like a history book that chronicles his relationships, business ventures and run-ins with the law. There are some really interesting and fun facts here, like his relationship with the Vanderbilts and how people have been doing yoga since the turn of the century but at the end of the last page, it is mostly about him and not the yoga. Fun to read and meticulously written but not for someone who is looking to read about yoga.

[Heather Downs · Rating 3 out of 5]

The popularity of American yoga did not begin with the counter cultural movement in the 1960s. Well before this movement, Pierre Bernard taught members of New York's high society how to find fulfillment. Robert Love provides an interesting history of the complex man known as "The Great Oom". In deconstructing his story, Love explores whether or not Oom was motivated by ideology, money, fame, sex or a combination of the above. Recommended for anyone interested in learning more about the origins of yoga in the United States.

[Gloria · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bookclub book.

Probably a 3.5 star rating, in actuality. The book was interesting in that it did reveal the history of yoga in the US via this person's life… but the writing was really not inspiring, nor did I get a sense of the man—which is probably why the subtitle reads the way it does. It is not about him, but rather how yoga took hold.

What I did find interesting was how many celebrities (and pre-celebrities—Pete Seeger!) were involved in the Clarkstown Country Club in Nyack, NY. It really helped me get a sense of the times…