03/26/2026
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Yoga in Detroit in the Sixties
by George Johnston
In 1951, J. Oliver Black, or Yogacharya as he was called later on, began to conduct evening meditations and SRF Sunday morning services at the Detroit Institute of Arts. In 1970, he established Song of the Morning yoga retreat in the Pigeon River State Forest and continued to lead the SRF Detroit Center until 1975, when he moved to the retreat.
Around 1960, Mr. Black and an older member of the Detroit Center, Helen Swan, started the SRF Yoga Teachers Organization, to teach hatha yoga, and in 1976 it was renamed the Golden Lotus Yoga Teachers Association.
In 1962, I started attending Mr. Black’s Thursday evening meditations and Sunday morning services at the Art Institute and soon after began to teach hatha yoga classes in the suburbs. I had learned how to do some of the postures from a book, Yoga for Americans by Indra Devi, and Helen Swan taught all of us how to perform them correctly with slow, controlled breathing and concentration. She showed us how to teach them to students and helped us organize classes at various locations in the Detroit suburbs. Eventually, about twenty-five hatha yoga teachers had classes in community centers and schools.
All the hatha yoga teachers had practiced meditation and its techniques. With Mr. Black’s oversight, Helen Swan and the other yoga teachers were teaching traditional, time-honored hatha yoga postures to the general public. It wasn’t until many years later that new ways of performing hatha yoga asanas were invented and popularized.
We were taught to always end our classes with savasana, lying on our backs with eyes closed, breathing slowly while concentrating on the different parts of the body from the toes to the head, and then enjoying peace and stillness for about ten minutes. Students would go home refreshed, energized, and relaxed. They would feel the profound benefits of calming the mind and nervous system by practicing each pose with deep concentration and by holding it while breathing slowly with the muscles and nerves stretched. The period of deep relaxation at the end of each class opened many students to an experience of deep peace and well-being that was new to them.
We would let students know about the meditations and services at the Detroit Art Institute, and some of them would feel drawn to learn more about the deeper aspects of yoga and would come to the SRF services there. In the 1960s, most people didn’t even know what yoga was, but through the Yoga Teachers Organization in Detroit, many people experienced its benefits, especially those who came to the Art Institute and began to practice meditation. Over a period of about twenty-four years, Mr. Black led meditations and conducted Sunday services at the Art Institute, and thousands of people from Michigan, other states, and Canada came there to meditate, hear him speak and be with him.
In addition to training hatha yoga teachers and teaching classes to the public herself, Helen Swan also helped organize hatha yoga demonstrations where several teachers would demonstrate the postures to the public. At a few of these events, she included short, inspirational readings from the Bhagavad Gita or devotional music in addition to the postures. Yoga was something entirely new to the public, and people enjoyed the uplifting grace and beauty of these unique presentations.
I’ll never forget an event in Birmingham, Michigan, where a number of teachers performed the postures. Mr. Black and Helen were there, and after the presentation, the teachers stood up, and spontaneously, he went up to each of us in turn and, with palms placed together, pranamed to each of us. The public probably didn’t realize it, but there was a feeling of bliss as he went up to each of us. Those early days with Yogacharya held many realizations of joy and bliss. Through Yogacharya and the teachings and living presence of the SRF gurus, many souls were drawn to God, and many lives were changed for the better.
Excerpt from "Spiritual Teachings for Our Times"
https://www.smashwords.com/books/search?query=George+johnston
