How a Tacoma Woman Nearly Took Down America's First Yoga Entrepreneur in 1910

Pierre Bernard is credited by many for popularizing yoga in the United States. Indeed, he made a healthy business of it and claimed many influential and wealthy followers. But the successes of his later years can not quite conceal his odd and scandalous earlier dealings.

To start with, “Pierre Bernard” was one of the assumed names of an Iowan called Perry Baker. He began his convoluted journey as the carnival-barker con-man of “Eastern Mysticism” in 1905. Calling himself “The Omnipotent Oom”, he moved to Seattle and became head of The Tantrik Order of America. Seattle was not an early adopter of the Tantrik Order’s fol-de-rol, so Bernard moved his shop to New York in 1910.

In New York, Bernard was able to gather followers and established a center of sorts for practitioners of his exercise and meditation teachings. But then things got certifiably weird and dark (even as described in Victorian terms): sexual foul play, hypnosis, “Hindoo” and blood oaths. Zella Hopp, one of the young women involved in the alleged cult (who had met the Oom in Tacoma a while before) became distressed with the behavior of Mr. Bernard, and wrote a letter to her sister in Tacoma, asking for help. The sister, a certain Mrs. Miller, left her home here and journeyed to New York to put an end to Mr. Bernard’s business.

Mrs. Miller was deadly serious. She led the police to the den of opportunism and disturbed the progress of a seance. Bernard was held briefly on $15,000 bail, but the charges were eventually dropped – though, from the news stories, one wonders why no clear offense could be identified. Mrs. Miller was quoted in the Nashua Telegraph:

His Oriental classes met at the Seventy-fourth Street house three and four times a week. You couldn’t get past the door unless you had the countersign. New candidates are required to take a most horrible oath never to reveal what takes place at the gatherings… What the police saw Monday night was respectable compared to the proceedings of what is known as “the inner circle”… My little sister’s life has been blasted, but I made up my mind that if publicity could keep other girls from following in her footsteps, I would give out the facts. Miss Hopp is going back to Tacoma to live with us.

Pierre Bernard went on to enjoy a great deal of notoriety and wealth as the apostle of yoga in America. Searches of online public records in King and Pierce counties gave me no further information on the life of Zella Hopp.

The original news story is here: Girls’ Stories of a Hindoo

You can read more about Pierre Bernard here, or at yogadork.com here – Ten Things You Need to Know About Pierre Bernard – America’s First Yogapreneur.