Yoga Teacher Training or Cult?

Unfortunately, sometimes it is hard to distinguish between the two. So following the outbreak of abuse cases over the last few years, some of which were in yoga schools who I had done trainings with, I started researching cult dynamics.

There are many, way too many, accounts of people setting off to exotic yoga teacher trainings, all enthusiastic and full of love for the practice, but coming back jaded, a little broken, or indeed completely broken, because they found themselves immersed into what to all intents and purposes amounts to an abusive cult. Not that this always happens in exotic places. There’s plenty of yoga cults where the main guru has been found to be abusive closer to home. Indeed, the one referred to in the story below is in the UK.

Recently on social media, a yoga teacher who had previously experienced psychological abuse on their teacher training was asking for a recommendation for a safe further training. Requests like this are incredibly common. For some reason, we seem to trust the recommendations of people we have never met on the internet just because they are yoga teachers. The ensuing thread recommended 2 trainings with schools of yoga where I know the main guru has been implicated in abuse. One of the schools was repeatedly recommended by several people. All seemingly lovely and kind, motherly people. On the surface it seemed as though this school was the best. The people who run it were described as ‘a lovely bunch’.

In my research into yoga cults and their dynamics, I had repeatedly come across this school. The main guru was implicated in several cases of sexual and psychological abuse. The school was found to have misappropriated funds given to it for charity. All of this information is freely available on the internet and was reported in national newspapers 15-20 years ago. The allegations and legal proceedings were multiplying, so the main guru fled the UK, and didn’t return until recently.

What enabled him to return was skilled SEO management. A cursory search online will not reveal details of abuse or financial misdeeds. You need to be precise in your search terminology and dig deeply. It has been alleged that this yoga school has paid to ensure that all searches including their name and the words ‘abuse’ or ‘sexual abuse’ or ‘scandal’ are directed to their own website, which contains no record of any abuse or scandals. Wikipedia on the other hand, contains links to a few articles that contain the allegations and an article describing how it was covered up.

After seeing this cry for help, and people having a go at the poster for wanting to go to India in a pandemic (even though she had not said that she wanted to go now), rather than add my own forthcoming teacher training to the recommendations (which would have been equally as irrelevant to the poster as the other suggestions for a UK training), I offered the following advice…

‘Sorry to hear of your awful experience. Unfortunately, it’s not uncommon in yoga trainings & retreats. For some reason people think yoga teachers should hold some kind of elevated level of humanity which seems to both make it easy to ignore abuse from our teachers & also shame blame each other when we do things that non yoga teachers would not be judged for. So I’m not going to suggest any particular training. Instead I’m going to suggest that you ignore the blame shamers & take the recommendations with a pinch of salt. Unless you personally know the person recommending something, an internet recommendation in a yoga teachers group is as useful as an internet search as the students of that teacher may well have ignored a lot of abuse.

Before committing to any training, ensure you have worked with the main trainer in a personal or live online capacity beforehand. Question them thoroughly. A good quality trainer will be open to arranging a 1-2-1 live online meeting with you before you commit to a training. If they are not open to that, they are unapproachable, hiding behind layers of followers & / or administration. If they are not interested in meeting you as a person before the training, chances are, they will not be interested in meeting you as a person during the training either. And, if they are running trainings without personally interviewing & vetting the people attending their trainings, they are not ensuring a safe space for people who come on their trainings.

Also do a thorough internet search before you even get to the interview stage. By that I mean, type in ‘xxx yoga abuse scandal’, where xxx is the name of the yoga school, & then do another where xxx is the name of the main guru. You need to do both as often the name of the main guru is hidden behind a brand, especially if that guru has been involved in abuse. You need to scroll through to at least page 3 of the results. because I have heard of training schools that have paid for SEO to redirect searches mentioning that name and the words abuse, sexual abuse, or scandal, to the school’s main website, which of course does not mention abuse at all. However, if you scroll to page 3 of that search, you will find a few articles in reputable national newspapers that give details of the abuse.

Cave emptor. Do thorough research. Don’t rely on word of mouth from gurus, or their inner circle followers, or those in the outer circles who have no idea that abuse is taking place and so innocently recommend trainings that are basically funnels that deliver vulnerable people to the hands of abusers.

For more information on how cult dynamics work, watch the series ‘The Vow’.’

One of the people who recommended one of these schools liked my post. I hope she actually does that search on her own school herself. Because the people she described as a lovely bunch that she has worked with for over a decade, have as their main guru someone who if you searched as I suggested above, you would indeed find articles in national newspapers about the abuse cases he has been involved in.

I suspect the chances are that the women recommending the training have never met the main guru themselves, and probably do not even know his name. This is common in yoga circles, where a quick change from his birth name to a ‘spiritual’ name and nobody asks any questions, or could find the link to the abuse if they did.

However, this man is back in the UK now. Has been for a few of years. Keeping a low profile. All the while very lovely, well meaning, perfectly nice, middle aged, middle class, seemingly safe, motherly white women are sending vulnerable people his way.

So if you are already a teacher, and you have not yet done the above search for the training you went on, I strongly suggest that you do. Even if they were standing behind a huge trusted organisation, do the search on the type of yoga they do, who is the main guru there? You might be horrified. I know I was.

Would you really want to recommend your training, even if you didn’t suffer abuse yourself? After all, perhaps you were one of the more skeptical individuals who was kept in the outer circle, because the people invited into the inner circles are on the other end of the suggestible - skeptical scale to you, and therefore, more vulnerable and require your protection, and help in developing critical discernment. To that aim, I highly recommend the work of Alexandra Stein. Link to her website below.

https://www.thefreelibrary.com/CULT+HIT+BY+SEX+ABUSE+CLAIMS%3B+EX-MEMBERS+SLAM+GLOBAL+SELF-HELP+GROUP...-a0147967336

https://www.ukhillwalking.com/forums/off_belay/sinister_scientology_secrecy-555982

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/nov/19/religion.news

https://www.religionnewsblog.com/22220/dru-yoga

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dru_yoga

http://www.alexandrastein.com/