At his best, when a crowd of hundreds of students extended their limbs before him or drew deep breaths with their eyes closed, John Friend could captivate minds and shape bodies. Students spoke of melting beneath his touch. In a gentle voice, he urged them to reach for something beyond the physical, something that extended past the poses they perfected on their yoga mats and embedded into their everyday lives.

Its all yoga, he would say.

He became a superstar, a jet-setting international celebrity of boundless ambition who had invented Anusara, a yoga style that combines rigorous physical poses with a philosophical framework, strict ethical standards and an emphasis on building a worldwide yoga community. He touched down in European and Asian capitals or headlined American yoga festivals trailed by an entourage and a traveling retail outlet. When class ended, the parties often began, happenings where his adoring fans drank beer and cocktails and listened to Friend read poetry as costumed performers roamed the room.

Kind of a lovefest. Kind of a party, April Ritchey, a California-based Anusara instructor, called it. People really got addicted to being a part of this.

Friend achieved kind of a new thing: yoga rock-stardom, said Joe Miller, the owner of Willow Street Yoga in Takoma Park and Silver Spring, until recently the worlds largest Anusara-affiliated studio.

Friends empire an international network that claims more than 1,500 teachers, including 25 in the Washington metro area, and 600,000 students is in crisis now, teetering under the strain of a sex scandal that has split its most loyal practitioners and prompted an astounding venting of emotions, from rage and recriminations to compassion and sadness. In conference calls, e-mails and hushed conversations, Friend has admitted to sexual relations with students and employees and married women. He has confessed to cheating on one girlfriend and smoking marijuana, according to senior Anusara instructors who have participated in conference calls with him. And he has acknowledged leading an otherwise all-female Wiccan coven whose members sometimes took off all their clothes for gatherings, according to senior Anusara instructors who detailed his admissions in a written summary provided to The Washington Post. The covens name was the Blazing Solar Flames, and Friend had Anusaras graphics team design a logo for it, according to three former employees.

There had been rumors about a wild side to Friends lifestyle for years, but few comprehended the magnitude until Feb. 3 when an anonymous Web site jfexposed.com appeared containing graphic, close-up sexual images and racy chat transcripts attributed to Friend and a student. The Web site, which was up for just a day and a half, gained a wide audience when it was featured on the popular site yogadork.com. It included allegations of financial misdeeds the freezing of promised pension funds that Friend later said were the result of a clerical error that was corrected after an employee complained to government regulators.

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Scandal contorts future of John Friend, Anusara yoga