Blanche DeVries Bernard

Blanche De Vries (September 7, 1891—September 4, 1984) was an American yoga instructor and an influential figure in the development of yoga in the United States and the Western world.

Life and career

Blanche De Vries was born in Adrian, Michigan on September 7, 1891, to William Henry Shannon and Elizabeth Alice Shannon. Interested in singing, she moved to New York City as a teenager to start a music career. In New York, she met her future husband, yogi Pierre Bernard (1875-1955) at one of his yoga schools in 1913. Barnard, who was nicknamed "The Great Oom", was a celebrated yoga teacher, researcher, philosopher, mystic, and businessman, and known for launching Hatha yoga and tantra in the United States.

De Vries was a promising yoga student of Bernard, and in 1914, Bernard appointed her to be in charge of his yoga school for women in New York. In 1918, she married Bernard.

After the marriage, Bernard acquired Clarkstown Country Club—a large estate with a thirty-room building in Nyack, New York, from one of his followers and students. Bernard and De Vries operated a yoga ashram on the estate until the mid-1940s. After Bernard's death in 1955, De Vries inherited all of his assets including the Clarkstown Country Club.

De Vries combined oriental dance with yoga and in February 1919 opened a Yoga Gymnosophy Institute in a five-story building on East Fifty-third Street, backed by wealthy financiers. In 1945, she opened a yoga studio, The Living Arts Center, in New York City.

De Vries helped invite noted Indian yogi B.K.S. Iyengar, to the United States in 1956. She also introduced Iyengar's yoga methods in her teachings. One of her students, Indra Devi, opened a branch in Hollywood, attracting students such as Gloria Swanson, Ruth St. Denis, and Greta Garbo.

De Vries also ran an interior decorating business that included designs of homes in Washington, D.C. and a student nurses' residence in Cleveland, Ohio. She also

designed the interiors of several of the Clarkatown Country Club's thirty buildings, as well as the gardens throughout the property.

She taught yoga and Eastern philosophy until 1982, two years before her death in 1984.

Death

Blanche De Vries died at the age of 93 on September 4, 1984, in Pomona, Rockland County, New York.