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MATTHEW REMSKI
Matthew Remski – Yoga, Writing & Inquiry. We’ve all heard the cliché: “yoga means union”. It can ring hollow when we learn that spirituality, like the unconscious, can be a broken space: We can think we’re practicing to heal our wounds, even as we deepen them.We
CONSPIRITUALITY PODCAST A journalist, cult researcher, and philosophical skeptic discuss the stories, cognitive dissonances, and cultic dynamics tearing through the yoga, wellness, and new spirituality worlds. The term “conspirituality” first appeared in 2009 as the name of a Vancouver rap group that unironically dropped conspiracy keywords intobeats calling for
THAT TIME WHEN I WAS IN A CULT AND GOT AN INCREDIBLE In 1999, a good friend of mine wrote to me about my immersion in the cult of Michael Roach. I recently found his typewritten letter during a closet clean-out, and read it again. And again. I’m retyping it out here with minor edits to protect anonymity. Though I didn’t fully absorb them then, these words haunted me for the entire year PATTABHI JOIS SEXUALLY ASSAULTED MEN: PHOTO EVIDENCE Content warning: photos of sexual assault, below. This post is intended to facilitate access to the following already-available images, which will be cited in Practice and All is Coming: Abuse, Cult Dynamics and Healing in Yoga and Beyond (March 2019).. In the first photo, Pattabhi Jois is seen sexually assaulting a male practitioner in Supta trivikramasana. WHEN THE GOODNESS OF A YOGA GROUP COMES FROM THOSE IT Here’s something I wasn’t able to fit into the Sivananda Yoga feature, because it veers into commentary/opinion, and because it would have stretched the word count beyond breaking.. There was a guest on Rachel Bernstein’s IndoctriNation podcast (can’t recall the name or find it now) who said something I’ll paraphrase: “The cult takes the best part of a person. WHAT THAT RAJNEESH DOCUMENTARY LEAVES OUT It can’t. What the Way brothers have made is an intoxicating Bollywood Western, minus the choreography. Yokels vs. invaders stage a culture war on a battlefield of orgasms and guns, fuelled by diamonds and drugs and the budget of the DA, played out against pop abstractions of orientalist woo and Americanist fantasies of freedom. SPIRITUALIZED NARCISSISM AS TRAUMA RESPONSE: A REVIEW OF (This article first appeared in Yoga International.) It begins with your family. but soon it comes ‘round to your soul — Leonard Cohen ____ On April 22 nd, 2012, Ian Thorson died in a cave in the Arizona desert.. The Cochise Country coroner ruled the cause of death as dysentery-induced dehydration. ELEVEN-YEAR-OLD BOYS, TOUCHING WOMEN ON THE SUBWAY This site hosts over 200 original posts on current affairs in modern global yoga and Buddhist culture. My aim is to popularize the use of interdisciplinary tools — from cult psychology and critical theory, for instance — towards the creation of safer practice spaces. SENIOR RIGPA STUDENTS ASK FOR SOGYAL RINPOCHE TO BE The petition letter asks for the Rigpa “Vision Board” to reinstall Sogyal Lakar (aka Sogyal Rinpoche) as the public spiritual guide for the organization. The petition letter lists seventeen original signatories. Emails to six of these signatories requesting comment have gone unanswered. The names have been redacted in the copy below WHY MANOUSO MANOS WAS SUSPENDED: MEETING NOTES AND Recently recovered notes from a 1989 faculty meeting of the Iyengar Yoga Institute in San Francisco show that Manouso Manos publicly admitted to sexual misconduct and that fellow faculty members recommended he be suspended.MATTHEW REMSKI
Matthew Remski – Yoga, Writing & Inquiry. We’ve all heard the cliché: “yoga means union”. It can ring hollow when we learn that spirituality, like the unconscious, can be a broken space: We can think we’re practicing to heal our wounds, even as we deepen them.We
CONSPIRITUALITY PODCAST A journalist, cult researcher, and philosophical skeptic discuss the stories, cognitive dissonances, and cultic dynamics tearing through the yoga, wellness, and new spirituality worlds. The term “conspirituality” first appeared in 2009 as the name of a Vancouver rap group that unironically dropped conspiracy keywords intobeats calling for
THAT TIME WHEN I WAS IN A CULT AND GOT AN INCREDIBLE In 1999, a good friend of mine wrote to me about my immersion in the cult of Michael Roach. I recently found his typewritten letter during a closet clean-out, and read it again. And again. I’m retyping it out here with minor edits to protect anonymity. Though I didn’t fully absorb them then, these words haunted me for the entire year PATTABHI JOIS SEXUALLY ASSAULTED MEN: PHOTO EVIDENCE Content warning: photos of sexual assault, below. This post is intended to facilitate access to the following already-available images, which will be cited in Practice and All is Coming: Abuse, Cult Dynamics and Healing in Yoga and Beyond (March 2019).. In the first photo, Pattabhi Jois is seen sexually assaulting a male practitioner in Supta trivikramasana. WHEN THE GOODNESS OF A YOGA GROUP COMES FROM THOSE IT Here’s something I wasn’t able to fit into the Sivananda Yoga feature, because it veers into commentary/opinion, and because it would have stretched the word count beyond breaking.. There was a guest on Rachel Bernstein’s IndoctriNation podcast (can’t recall the name or find it now) who said something I’ll paraphrase: “The cult takes the best part of a person. WHAT THAT RAJNEESH DOCUMENTARY LEAVES OUT It can’t. What the Way brothers have made is an intoxicating Bollywood Western, minus the choreography. Yokels vs. invaders stage a culture war on a battlefield of orgasms and guns, fuelled by diamonds and drugs and the budget of the DA, played out against pop abstractions of orientalist woo and Americanist fantasies of freedom. SPIRITUALIZED NARCISSISM AS TRAUMA RESPONSE: A REVIEW OF (This article first appeared in Yoga International.) It begins with your family. but soon it comes ‘round to your soul — Leonard Cohen ____ On April 22 nd, 2012, Ian Thorson died in a cave in the Arizona desert.. The Cochise Country coroner ruled the cause of death as dysentery-induced dehydration. ELEVEN-YEAR-OLD BOYS, TOUCHING WOMEN ON THE SUBWAY This site hosts over 200 original posts on current affairs in modern global yoga and Buddhist culture. My aim is to popularize the use of interdisciplinary tools — from cult psychology and critical theory, for instance — towards the creation of safer practice spaces. SENIOR RIGPA STUDENTS ASK FOR SOGYAL RINPOCHE TO BE The petition letter asks for the Rigpa “Vision Board” to reinstall Sogyal Lakar (aka Sogyal Rinpoche) as the public spiritual guide for the organization. The petition letter lists seventeen original signatories. Emails to six of these signatories requesting comment have gone unanswered. The names have been redacted in the copy below WHY MANOUSO MANOS WAS SUSPENDED: MEETING NOTES AND Recently recovered notes from a 1989 faculty meeting of the Iyengar Yoga Institute in San Francisco show that Manouso Manos publicly admitted to sexual misconduct and that fellow faculty members recommended he be suspended. BLOG – MATTHEW REMSKI It’s a pleasure to meet you finally. Continue reading. “Cyndi Lee Interviews Matthew Remski about Working Through the Abuse Crisis in Modern Yoga and Buddhism (+ transcript)”. Articles, Audio, Blog, Charismatic Abuse, Cult dynamics, Press & Interviews, Yoga, Yoga culture, Yoga pedagogy June 19, WHAT THAT RAJNEESH DOCUMENTARY LEAVES OUT It can’t. What the Way brothers have made is an intoxicating Bollywood Western, minus the choreography. Yokels vs. invaders stage a culture war on a battlefield of orgasms and guns, fuelled by diamonds and drugs and the budget of the DA, played out against pop abstractions of orientalist woo and Americanist fantasies of freedom. GURU OR GUIDE: WHAT’S THE SCOPE OF PRACTICE? A SECOND Christopher Wallis responded to my response to his article on guru-abuse prevention – check his comment here.We’re having a cordial exchange about an important topic — how strange for Yogaland! — and a lot of folks have seemed to appreciate the themes explored so far, so I’ll respond again. QUOTES FROM RAM DASS THAT FIT THE PATTERN OF Quotes from Ram Dass That Fit the Pattern of Spiritualizing Sexual Abuse in Yoga. Not long after the glowing obits for Ram Dass started packing my feeds, Karen Rain, a trusted friend and colleague messaged me: “Did you know that Neem Karoli Baba was a sex offender too?”. No. No I didn’t. Neem Karoli Baba was Dass’s guru. “BETRAYAL OF TRUST”: 1991 MERCURY NEWS INVESTIGATION OF This article from 1991 has been parked on my website in PDF form for almost two years, after one of the anonymous sources for it sent it to me. It article was recently featured in Miranda Leitsinger’s investigative report for KQED, which presents two new allegations: one from 1983, and the other from 2015. The journalist, Bob Frost, standsby every detail.
KINO’S HIP: REFLECTIONS ON EXTREME PRACTICE AND INJURY IN Kino’s Hip: Reflections on Extreme Practice and Injury in Asana. Heyam dukham anagatam. (Pain that is yet to come can be avoided.) Yoga Sutra II:16. On June 14 th, Kino MacGregor posted a photo to her 782K Instagram and 264K Facebook followers. She’s in hero pose, her hands in prayer, eyes closed, on a beach. BYRON KATIE’S DOMINATION TECHNIQUE: A CASE STUDY Byron Katie’s Domination Technique: a Case Study. Enough people have asked me my thoughts about Byron Katie and “The Work” that I’ll give a few here in relation to the following video. In it, Katie “helps” a woman understand that her fears of the Trump administration are unwise, with an undercurrent of “deluded”. SPIRITUALIZED NARCISSISM AS TRAUMA RESPONSE: A REVIEW OF (This article first appeared in Yoga International.) It begins with your family. but soon it comes ‘round to your soul — Leonard Cohen ____ On April 22 nd, 2012, Ian Thorson died in a cave in the Arizona desert.. The Cochise Country coroner ruled the cause of death as dysentery-induced dehydration. SENIOR RIGPA STUDENTS ASK FOR SOGYAL RINPOCHE TO BE The petition letter asks for the Rigpa “Vision Board” to reinstall Sogyal Lakar (aka Sogyal Rinpoche) as the public spiritual guide for the organization. The petition letter lists seventeen original signatories. Emails to six of these signatories requesting comment have gone unanswered. The names have been redacted in the copy below WHY MANOUSO MANOS WAS SUSPENDED: MEETING NOTES AND Recently recovered notes from a 1989 faculty meeting of the Iyengar Yoga Institute in San Francisco show that Manouso Manos publicly admitted to sexual misconduct and that fellow faculty members recommended he be suspended.MATTHEW REMSKI
Matthew Remski – Yoga, Writing & Inquiry. We’ve all heard the cliché: “yoga means union”. It can ring hollow when we learn that spirituality, like the unconscious, can be a broken space: We can think we’re practicing to heal our wounds, even as we deepen them.We
CONSPIRITUALITY PODCAST A journalist, cult researcher, and philosophical skeptic discuss the stories, cognitive dissonances, and cultic dynamics tearing through the yoga, wellness, and new spirituality worlds. The term “conspirituality” first appeared in 2009 as the name of a Vancouver rap group that unironically dropped conspiracy keywords intobeats calling for
WHIPLASH IS A TERRIBLE MOVIE An embittered genius jazz band conductor for an elite New York school emotionally and physically abuses and gaslights the mostly young men in his band, constantly. Who knows what happened in his own history for him to be this way but it was probably brutal. He plays the boys off of each other in a dominance hierarchy in which everyone pays WHAT THAT RAJNEESH DOCUMENTARY LEAVES OUT It can’t. What the Way brothers have made is an intoxicating Bollywood Western, minus the choreography. Yokels vs. invaders stage a culture war on a battlefield of orgasms and guns, fuelled by diamonds and drugs and the budget of the DA, played out against pop abstractions of orientalist woo and Americanist fantasies of freedom. THAT TIME WHEN I WAS IN A CULT AND GOT AN INCREDIBLE In 1999, a good friend of mine wrote to me about my immersion in the cult of Michael Roach. I recently found his typewritten letter during a closet clean-out, and read it again. And again. I’m retyping it out here with minor edits to protect anonymity. Though I didn’t fully absorb them then, these words haunted me for the entire year PATTABHI JOIS SEXUALLY ASSAULTED MEN: PHOTO EVIDENCE Content warning: photos of sexual assault, below. This post is intended to facilitate access to the following already-available images, which will be cited in Practice and All is Coming: Abuse, Cult Dynamics and Healing in Yoga and Beyond (March 2019).. In the first photo, Pattabhi Jois is seen sexually assaulting a male practitioner in Supta trivikramasana. “BETRAYAL OF TRUST”: 1991 MERCURY NEWS INVESTIGATION OF This article from 1991 has been parked on my website in PDF form for almost two years, after one of the anonymous sources for it sent it to me. It article was recently featured in Miranda Leitsinger’s investigative report for KQED, which presents two new allegations: one from 1983, and the other from 2015. The journalist, Bob Frost, standsby every detail.
TO ECO-ACTIVISTS BEING INTRODUCED TO BUDDHISM AS A SUPPORT This site hosts over 200 original posts on current affairs in modern global yoga and Buddhist culture. My aim is to popularize the use of interdisciplinary tools — from cult psychology and critical theory, for instance — towards the creation of safer practice spaces. ELEVEN-YEAR-OLD BOYS, TOUCHING WOMEN ON THE SUBWAY This site hosts over 200 original posts on current affairs in modern global yoga and Buddhist culture. My aim is to popularize the use of interdisciplinary tools — from cult psychology and critical theory, for instance — towards the creation of safer practice spaces. QUOTES FROM RAM DASS THAT FIT THE PATTERN OF Quotes from Ram Dass That Fit the Pattern of Spiritualizing Sexual Abuse in Yoga. Not long after the glowing obits for Ram Dass started packing my feeds, Karen Rain, a trusted friend and colleague messaged me: “Did you know that Neem Karoli Baba was a sex offender too?”. No. No I didn’t. Neem Karoli Baba was Dass’s guru.MATTHEW REMSKI
Matthew Remski – Yoga, Writing & Inquiry. We’ve all heard the cliché: “yoga means union”. It can ring hollow when we learn that spirituality, like the unconscious, can be a broken space: We can think we’re practicing to heal our wounds, even as we deepen them.We
CONSPIRITUALITY PODCAST A journalist, cult researcher, and philosophical skeptic discuss the stories, cognitive dissonances, and cultic dynamics tearing through the yoga, wellness, and new spirituality worlds. The term “conspirituality” first appeared in 2009 as the name of a Vancouver rap group that unironically dropped conspiracy keywords intobeats calling for
WHIPLASH IS A TERRIBLE MOVIE An embittered genius jazz band conductor for an elite New York school emotionally and physically abuses and gaslights the mostly young men in his band, constantly. Who knows what happened in his own history for him to be this way but it was probably brutal. He plays the boys off of each other in a dominance hierarchy in which everyone pays WHAT THAT RAJNEESH DOCUMENTARY LEAVES OUT It can’t. What the Way brothers have made is an intoxicating Bollywood Western, minus the choreography. Yokels vs. invaders stage a culture war on a battlefield of orgasms and guns, fuelled by diamonds and drugs and the budget of the DA, played out against pop abstractions of orientalist woo and Americanist fantasies of freedom. THAT TIME WHEN I WAS IN A CULT AND GOT AN INCREDIBLE In 1999, a good friend of mine wrote to me about my immersion in the cult of Michael Roach. I recently found his typewritten letter during a closet clean-out, and read it again. And again. I’m retyping it out here with minor edits to protect anonymity. Though I didn’t fully absorb them then, these words haunted me for the entire year PATTABHI JOIS SEXUALLY ASSAULTED MEN: PHOTO EVIDENCE Content warning: photos of sexual assault, below. This post is intended to facilitate access to the following already-available images, which will be cited in Practice and All is Coming: Abuse, Cult Dynamics and Healing in Yoga and Beyond (March 2019).. In the first photo, Pattabhi Jois is seen sexually assaulting a male practitioner in Supta trivikramasana. “BETRAYAL OF TRUST”: 1991 MERCURY NEWS INVESTIGATION OF This article from 1991 has been parked on my website in PDF form for almost two years, after one of the anonymous sources for it sent it to me. It article was recently featured in Miranda Leitsinger’s investigative report for KQED, which presents two new allegations: one from 1983, and the other from 2015. The journalist, Bob Frost, standsby every detail.
TO ECO-ACTIVISTS BEING INTRODUCED TO BUDDHISM AS A SUPPORT This site hosts over 200 original posts on current affairs in modern global yoga and Buddhist culture. My aim is to popularize the use of interdisciplinary tools — from cult psychology and critical theory, for instance — towards the creation of safer practice spaces. ELEVEN-YEAR-OLD BOYS, TOUCHING WOMEN ON THE SUBWAY This site hosts over 200 original posts on current affairs in modern global yoga and Buddhist culture. My aim is to popularize the use of interdisciplinary tools — from cult psychology and critical theory, for instance — towards the creation of safer practice spaces. QUOTES FROM RAM DASS THAT FIT THE PATTERN OF Quotes from Ram Dass That Fit the Pattern of Spiritualizing Sexual Abuse in Yoga. Not long after the glowing obits for Ram Dass started packing my feeds, Karen Rain, a trusted friend and colleague messaged me: “Did you know that Neem Karoli Baba was a sex offender too?”. No. No I didn’t. Neem Karoli Baba was Dass’s guru. CONSPIRITUALITY PODCAST A journalist, cult researcher, and philosophical skeptic discuss the stories, cognitive dissonances, and cultic dynamics tearing through the yoga, wellness, and new spirituality worlds. The term “conspirituality” first appeared in 2009 as the name of a Vancouver rap group that unironically dropped conspiracy keywords intobeats calling for
WHAT THAT RAJNEESH DOCUMENTARY LEAVES OUT It can’t. What the Way brothers have made is an intoxicating Bollywood Western, minus the choreography. Yokels vs. invaders stage a culture war on a battlefield of orgasms and guns, fuelled by diamonds and drugs and the budget of the DA, played out against pop abstractions of orientalist woo and Americanist fantasies of freedom. WHEN THE GOODNESS OF A YOGA GROUP COMES FROM THOSE IT Here’s something I wasn’t able to fit into the Sivananda Yoga feature, because it veers into commentary/opinion, and because it would have stretched the word count beyond breaking.. There was a guest on Rachel Bernstein’s IndoctriNation podcast (can’t recall the name or find it now) who said something I’ll paraphrase: “The cult takes the best part of a person. “I AM NOT (WHAT YOU NEED FROM) MY BODY”: EXPANDING ON A 1. “I am not my body” communicates a felt reality: a review + another possibility . It’s been about five months since I called out Cameron Shayne’s use of the “I am not my body” meme to rationalize his DIY libertarian It’s-Okay-To-Sleep-With-My-Students ethics. It started a rich discussion that gave me a lot to think about, and softened up this critical heart of mine. BYRON KATIE’S DOMINATION TECHNIQUE: A CASE STUDY Byron Katie’s Domination Technique: a Case Study. Enough people have asked me my thoughts about Byron Katie and “The Work” that I’ll give a few here in relation to the following video. In it, Katie “helps” a woman understand that her fears of the Trump administration are unwise, with an undercurrent of “deluded”. QUOTES FROM RAM DASS THAT FIT THE PATTERN OF Quotes from Ram Dass That Fit the Pattern of Spiritualizing Sexual Abuse in Yoga. Not long after the glowing obits for Ram Dass started packing my feeds, Karen Rain, a trusted friend and colleague messaged me: “Did you know that Neem Karoli Baba was a sex offender too?”. No. No I didn’t. Neem Karoli Baba was Dass’s guru. KINO’S HIP: REFLECTIONS ON EXTREME PRACTICE AND INJURY IN Kino’s Hip: Reflections on Extreme Practice and Injury in Asana. Heyam dukham anagatam. (Pain that is yet to come can be avoided.) Yoga Sutra II:16. On June 14 th, Kino MacGregor posted a photo to her 782K Instagram and 264K Facebook followers. She’s in hero pose, her hands in prayer, eyes closed, on a beach. REGGIE RAY FLIPS HIS OWN ABUSE CRISIS INTO HIS OWN Reggie Ray Flips His Own Abuse Crisis Into His Own Ultimate Dharma Teaching. In October of last year, twelve long-time students at Dharma Village / Dharma Ocean (I’ll call them the “DO12”) published an open letter disclosing “longstanding patterns of emotional and spiritual abuse within Dharma Ocean, the Buddhist community led byReggie
SPIRITUALIZED NARCISSISM AS TRAUMA RESPONSE: A REVIEW OF (This article first appeared in Yoga International.) It begins with your family. but soon it comes ‘round to your soul — Leonard Cohen ____ On April 22 nd, 2012, Ian Thorson died in a cave in the Arizona desert.. The Cochise Country coroner ruled the cause of death as dysentery-induced dehydration. WHY MANOUSO MANOS WAS SUSPENDED: MEETING NOTES AND Recently recovered notes from a 1989 faculty meeting of the Iyengar Yoga Institute in San Francisco show that Manouso Manos publicly admitted to sexual misconduct and that fellow faculty members recommended he be suspended.MATTHEW REMSKI
Matthew Remski – Yoga, Writing & Inquiry. We’ve all heard the cliché: “yoga means union”. It can ring hollow when we learn that spirituality, like the unconscious, can be a broken space: We can think we’re practicing to heal our wounds, even as we deepen them.We
CONSPIRITUALITY PODCAST A journalist, cult researcher, and philosophical skeptic discuss the stories, cognitive dissonances, and cultic dynamics tearing through the yoga, wellness, and new spirituality worlds. The term “conspirituality” first appeared in 2009 as the name of a Vancouver rap group that unironically dropped conspiracy keywords intobeats calling for
WHIPLASH IS A TERRIBLE MOVIE An embittered genius jazz band conductor for an elite New York school emotionally and physically abuses and gaslights the mostly young men in his band, constantly. Who knows what happened in his own history for him to be this way but it was probably brutal. He plays the boys off of each other in a dominance hierarchy in which everyone pays WHAT THAT RAJNEESH DOCUMENTARY LEAVES OUT It can’t. What the Way brothers have made is an intoxicating Bollywood Western, minus the choreography. Yokels vs. invaders stage a culture war on a battlefield of orgasms and guns, fuelled by diamonds and drugs and the budget of the DA, played out against pop abstractions of orientalist woo and Americanist fantasies of freedom. THAT TIME WHEN I WAS IN A CULT AND GOT AN INCREDIBLE In 1999, a good friend of mine wrote to me about my immersion in the cult of Michael Roach. I recently found his typewritten letter during a closet clean-out, and read it again. And again. I’m retyping it out here with minor edits to protect anonymity. Though I didn’t fully absorb them then, these words haunted me for the entire year PATTABHI JOIS SEXUALLY ASSAULTED MEN: PHOTO EVIDENCE Content warning: photos of sexual assault, below. This post is intended to facilitate access to the following already-available images, which will be cited in Practice and All is Coming: Abuse, Cult Dynamics and Healing in Yoga and Beyond (March 2019).. In the first photo, Pattabhi Jois is seen sexually assaulting a male practitioner in Supta trivikramasana. “BETRAYAL OF TRUST”: 1991 MERCURY NEWS INVESTIGATION OF This article from 1991 has been parked on my website in PDF form for almost two years, after one of the anonymous sources for it sent it to me. It article was recently featured in Miranda Leitsinger’s investigative report for KQED, which presents two new allegations: one from 1983, and the other from 2015. The journalist, Bob Frost, standsby every detail.
TO ECO-ACTIVISTS BEING INTRODUCED TO BUDDHISM AS A SUPPORT This site hosts over 200 original posts on current affairs in modern global yoga and Buddhist culture. My aim is to popularize the use of interdisciplinary tools — from cult psychology and critical theory, for instance — towards the creation of safer practice spaces. ELEVEN-YEAR-OLD BOYS, TOUCHING WOMEN ON THE SUBWAY This site hosts over 200 original posts on current affairs in modern global yoga and Buddhist culture. My aim is to popularize the use of interdisciplinary tools — from cult psychology and critical theory, for instance — towards the creation of safer practice spaces. QUOTES FROM RAM DASS THAT FIT THE PATTERN OF Quotes from Ram Dass That Fit the Pattern of Spiritualizing Sexual Abuse in Yoga. Not long after the glowing obits for Ram Dass started packing my feeds, Karen Rain, a trusted friend and colleague messaged me: “Did you know that Neem Karoli Baba was a sex offender too?”. No. No I didn’t. Neem Karoli Baba was Dass’s guru.MATTHEW REMSKI
Matthew Remski – Yoga, Writing & Inquiry. We’ve all heard the cliché: “yoga means union”. It can ring hollow when we learn that spirituality, like the unconscious, can be a broken space: We can think we’re practicing to heal our wounds, even as we deepen them.We
CONSPIRITUALITY PODCAST A journalist, cult researcher, and philosophical skeptic discuss the stories, cognitive dissonances, and cultic dynamics tearing through the yoga, wellness, and new spirituality worlds. The term “conspirituality” first appeared in 2009 as the name of a Vancouver rap group that unironically dropped conspiracy keywords intobeats calling for
WHIPLASH IS A TERRIBLE MOVIE An embittered genius jazz band conductor for an elite New York school emotionally and physically abuses and gaslights the mostly young men in his band, constantly. Who knows what happened in his own history for him to be this way but it was probably brutal. He plays the boys off of each other in a dominance hierarchy in which everyone pays WHAT THAT RAJNEESH DOCUMENTARY LEAVES OUT It can’t. What the Way brothers have made is an intoxicating Bollywood Western, minus the choreography. Yokels vs. invaders stage a culture war on a battlefield of orgasms and guns, fuelled by diamonds and drugs and the budget of the DA, played out against pop abstractions of orientalist woo and Americanist fantasies of freedom. THAT TIME WHEN I WAS IN A CULT AND GOT AN INCREDIBLE In 1999, a good friend of mine wrote to me about my immersion in the cult of Michael Roach. I recently found his typewritten letter during a closet clean-out, and read it again. And again. I’m retyping it out here with minor edits to protect anonymity. Though I didn’t fully absorb them then, these words haunted me for the entire year PATTABHI JOIS SEXUALLY ASSAULTED MEN: PHOTO EVIDENCE Content warning: photos of sexual assault, below. This post is intended to facilitate access to the following already-available images, which will be cited in Practice and All is Coming: Abuse, Cult Dynamics and Healing in Yoga and Beyond (March 2019).. In the first photo, Pattabhi Jois is seen sexually assaulting a male practitioner in Supta trivikramasana. “BETRAYAL OF TRUST”: 1991 MERCURY NEWS INVESTIGATION OF This article from 1991 has been parked on my website in PDF form for almost two years, after one of the anonymous sources for it sent it to me. It article was recently featured in Miranda Leitsinger’s investigative report for KQED, which presents two new allegations: one from 1983, and the other from 2015. The journalist, Bob Frost, standsby every detail.
TO ECO-ACTIVISTS BEING INTRODUCED TO BUDDHISM AS A SUPPORT This site hosts over 200 original posts on current affairs in modern global yoga and Buddhist culture. My aim is to popularize the use of interdisciplinary tools — from cult psychology and critical theory, for instance — towards the creation of safer practice spaces. ELEVEN-YEAR-OLD BOYS, TOUCHING WOMEN ON THE SUBWAY This site hosts over 200 original posts on current affairs in modern global yoga and Buddhist culture. My aim is to popularize the use of interdisciplinary tools — from cult psychology and critical theory, for instance — towards the creation of safer practice spaces. QUOTES FROM RAM DASS THAT FIT THE PATTERN OF Quotes from Ram Dass That Fit the Pattern of Spiritualizing Sexual Abuse in Yoga. Not long after the glowing obits for Ram Dass started packing my feeds, Karen Rain, a trusted friend and colleague messaged me: “Did you know that Neem Karoli Baba was a sex offender too?”. No. No I didn’t. Neem Karoli Baba was Dass’s guru. CONSPIRITUALITY PODCAST A journalist, cult researcher, and philosophical skeptic discuss the stories, cognitive dissonances, and cultic dynamics tearing through the yoga, wellness, and new spirituality worlds. The term “conspirituality” first appeared in 2009 as the name of a Vancouver rap group that unironically dropped conspiracy keywords intobeats calling for
WHAT THAT RAJNEESH DOCUMENTARY LEAVES OUT It can’t. What the Way brothers have made is an intoxicating Bollywood Western, minus the choreography. Yokels vs. invaders stage a culture war on a battlefield of orgasms and guns, fuelled by diamonds and drugs and the budget of the DA, played out against pop abstractions of orientalist woo and Americanist fantasies of freedom. WHEN THE GOODNESS OF A YOGA GROUP COMES FROM THOSE IT Here’s something I wasn’t able to fit into the Sivananda Yoga feature, because it veers into commentary/opinion, and because it would have stretched the word count beyond breaking.. There was a guest on Rachel Bernstein’s IndoctriNation podcast (can’t recall the name or find it now) who said something I’ll paraphrase: “The cult takes the best part of a person. “I AM NOT (WHAT YOU NEED FROM) MY BODY”: EXPANDING ON A 1. “I am not my body” communicates a felt reality: a review + another possibility . It’s been about five months since I called out Cameron Shayne’s use of the “I am not my body” meme to rationalize his DIY libertarian It’s-Okay-To-Sleep-With-My-Students ethics. It started a rich discussion that gave me a lot to think about, and softened up this critical heart of mine. BYRON KATIE’S DOMINATION TECHNIQUE: A CASE STUDY Byron Katie’s Domination Technique: a Case Study. Enough people have asked me my thoughts about Byron Katie and “The Work” that I’ll give a few here in relation to the following video. In it, Katie “helps” a woman understand that her fears of the Trump administration are unwise, with an undercurrent of “deluded”. QUOTES FROM RAM DASS THAT FIT THE PATTERN OF Quotes from Ram Dass That Fit the Pattern of Spiritualizing Sexual Abuse in Yoga. Not long after the glowing obits for Ram Dass started packing my feeds, Karen Rain, a trusted friend and colleague messaged me: “Did you know that Neem Karoli Baba was a sex offender too?”. No. No I didn’t. Neem Karoli Baba was Dass’s guru. KINO’S HIP: REFLECTIONS ON EXTREME PRACTICE AND INJURY IN Kino’s Hip: Reflections on Extreme Practice and Injury in Asana. Heyam dukham anagatam. (Pain that is yet to come can be avoided.) Yoga Sutra II:16. On June 14 th, Kino MacGregor posted a photo to her 782K Instagram and 264K Facebook followers. She’s in hero pose, her hands in prayer, eyes closed, on a beach. REGGIE RAY FLIPS HIS OWN ABUSE CRISIS INTO HIS OWN Reggie Ray Flips His Own Abuse Crisis Into His Own Ultimate Dharma Teaching. In October of last year, twelve long-time students at Dharma Village / Dharma Ocean (I’ll call them the “DO12”) published an open letter disclosing “longstanding patterns of emotional and spiritual abuse within Dharma Ocean, the Buddhist community led byReggie
SPIRITUALIZED NARCISSISM AS TRAUMA RESPONSE: A REVIEW OF (This article first appeared in Yoga International.) It begins with your family. but soon it comes ‘round to your soul — Leonard Cohen ____ On April 22 nd, 2012, Ian Thorson died in a cave in the Arizona desert.. The Cochise Country coroner ruled the cause of death as dysentery-induced dehydration. WHY MANOUSO MANOS WAS SUSPENDED: MEETING NOTES AND Recently recovered notes from a 1989 faculty meeting of the Iyengar Yoga Institute in San Francisco show that Manouso Manos publicly admitted to sexual misconduct and that fellow faculty members recommended he be suspended.MATTHEW REMSKI
Matthew Remski – Yoga, Writing & Inquiry. We’ve all heard the cliché: “yoga means union”. It can ring hollow when we learn that spirituality, like the unconscious, can be a broken space: We can think we’re practicing to heal our wounds, even as we deepen them.We
CONSPIRITUALITY PODCAST A journalist, cult researcher, and philosophical skeptic discuss the stories, cognitive dissonances, and cultic dynamics tearing through the yoga, wellness, and new spirituality worlds. The term “conspirituality” first appeared in 2009 as the name of a Vancouver rap group that unironically dropped conspiracy keywords intobeats calling for
WHIPLASH IS A TERRIBLE MOVIE An embittered genius jazz band conductor for an elite New York school emotionally and physically abuses and gaslights the mostly young men in his band, constantly. Who knows what happened in his own history for him to be this way but it was probably brutal. He plays the boys off of each other in a dominance hierarchy in which everyone pays WHAT THAT RAJNEESH DOCUMENTARY LEAVES OUT It can’t. What the Way brothers have made is an intoxicating Bollywood Western, minus the choreography. Yokels vs. invaders stage a culture war on a battlefield of orgasms and guns, fuelled by diamonds and drugs and the budget of the DA, played out against pop abstractions of orientalist woo and Americanist fantasies of freedom. PATTABHI JOIS SEXUALLY ASSAULTED MEN: PHOTO EVIDENCE Content warning: photos of sexual assault, below. This post is intended to facilitate access to the following already-available images, which will be cited in Practice and All is Coming: Abuse, Cult Dynamics and Healing in Yoga and Beyond (March 2019).. In the first photo, Pattabhi Jois is seen sexually assaulting a male practitioner in Supta trivikramasana. THAT TIME WHEN I WAS IN A CULT AND GOT AN INCREDIBLE In 1999, a good friend of mine wrote to me about my immersion in the cult of Michael Roach. I recently found his typewritten letter during a closet clean-out, and read it again. And again. I’m retyping it out here with minor edits to protect anonymity. Though I didn’t fully absorb them then, these words haunted me for the entire year GURU OR GUIDE: WHAT’S THE SCOPE OF PRACTICE? A SECOND Christopher Wallis responded to my response to his article on guru-abuse prevention – check his comment here.We’re having a cordial exchange about an important topic — how strange for Yogaland! — and a lot of folks have seemed to appreciate the themes explored so far, so I’ll respond again. BYRON KATIE’S DOMINATION TECHNIQUE: A CASE STUDY Byron Katie’s Domination Technique: a Case Study. Enough people have asked me my thoughts about Byron Katie and “The Work” that I’ll give a few here in relation to the following video. In it, Katie “helps” a woman understand that her fears of the Trump administration are unwise, with an undercurrent of “deluded”. “BETRAYAL OF TRUST”: 1991 MERCURY NEWS INVESTIGATION OF This article from 1991 has been parked on my website in PDF form for almost two years, after one of the anonymous sources for it sent it to me. It article was recently featured in Miranda Leitsinger’s investigative report for KQED, which presents two new allegations: one from 1983, and the other from 2015. The journalist, Bob Frost, standsby every detail.
REGGIE RAY FLIPS HIS OWN ABUSE CRISIS INTO HIS OWN Reggie Ray Flips His Own Abuse Crisis Into His Own Ultimate Dharma Teaching. In October of last year, twelve long-time students at Dharma Village / Dharma Ocean (I’ll call them the “DO12”) published an open letter disclosing “longstanding patterns of emotional and spiritual abuse within Dharma Ocean, the Buddhist community led byReggie
MATTHEW REMSKI
Matthew Remski – Yoga, Writing & Inquiry. We’ve all heard the cliché: “yoga means union”. It can ring hollow when we learn that spirituality, like the unconscious, can be a broken space: We can think we’re practicing to heal our wounds, even as we deepen them.We
CONSPIRITUALITY PODCAST A journalist, cult researcher, and philosophical skeptic discuss the stories, cognitive dissonances, and cultic dynamics tearing through the yoga, wellness, and new spirituality worlds. The term “conspirituality” first appeared in 2009 as the name of a Vancouver rap group that unironically dropped conspiracy keywords intobeats calling for
WHIPLASH IS A TERRIBLE MOVIE An embittered genius jazz band conductor for an elite New York school emotionally and physically abuses and gaslights the mostly young men in his band, constantly. Who knows what happened in his own history for him to be this way but it was probably brutal. He plays the boys off of each other in a dominance hierarchy in which everyone pays WHAT THAT RAJNEESH DOCUMENTARY LEAVES OUT It can’t. What the Way brothers have made is an intoxicating Bollywood Western, minus the choreography. Yokels vs. invaders stage a culture war on a battlefield of orgasms and guns, fuelled by diamonds and drugs and the budget of the DA, played out against pop abstractions of orientalist woo and Americanist fantasies of freedom. PATTABHI JOIS SEXUALLY ASSAULTED MEN: PHOTO EVIDENCE Content warning: photos of sexual assault, below. This post is intended to facilitate access to the following already-available images, which will be cited in Practice and All is Coming: Abuse, Cult Dynamics and Healing in Yoga and Beyond (March 2019).. In the first photo, Pattabhi Jois is seen sexually assaulting a male practitioner in Supta trivikramasana. THAT TIME WHEN I WAS IN A CULT AND GOT AN INCREDIBLE In 1999, a good friend of mine wrote to me about my immersion in the cult of Michael Roach. I recently found his typewritten letter during a closet clean-out, and read it again. And again. I’m retyping it out here with minor edits to protect anonymity. Though I didn’t fully absorb them then, these words haunted me for the entire year GURU OR GUIDE: WHAT’S THE SCOPE OF PRACTICE? A SECOND Christopher Wallis responded to my response to his article on guru-abuse prevention – check his comment here.We’re having a cordial exchange about an important topic — how strange for Yogaland! — and a lot of folks have seemed to appreciate the themes explored so far, so I’ll respond again. BYRON KATIE’S DOMINATION TECHNIQUE: A CASE STUDY Byron Katie’s Domination Technique: a Case Study. Enough people have asked me my thoughts about Byron Katie and “The Work” that I’ll give a few here in relation to the following video. In it, Katie “helps” a woman understand that her fears of the Trump administration are unwise, with an undercurrent of “deluded”. “BETRAYAL OF TRUST”: 1991 MERCURY NEWS INVESTIGATION OF This article from 1991 has been parked on my website in PDF form for almost two years, after one of the anonymous sources for it sent it to me. It article was recently featured in Miranda Leitsinger’s investigative report for KQED, which presents two new allegations: one from 1983, and the other from 2015. The journalist, Bob Frost, standsby every detail.
REGGIE RAY FLIPS HIS OWN ABUSE CRISIS INTO HIS OWN Reggie Ray Flips His Own Abuse Crisis Into His Own Ultimate Dharma Teaching. In October of last year, twelve long-time students at Dharma Village / Dharma Ocean (I’ll call them the “DO12”) published an open letter disclosing “longstanding patterns of emotional and spiritual abuse within Dharma Ocean, the Buddhist community led byReggie
CULT DYNAMICS
He shows the same face in relation to the legal system when he fantasizes about gunning people down on 5th Avenue with impunity. But when he challenges the *actual sun*, i.e., the source of all power on earth, he’s putting something at stake that his draft-deferring, germophobic soul rarely risks: his body. WHEN THE GOODNESS OF A YOGA GROUP COMES FROM THOSE IT Here’s something I wasn’t able to fit into the Sivananda Yoga feature, because it veers into commentary/opinion, and because it would have stretched the word count beyond breaking.. There was a guest on Rachel Bernstein’s IndoctriNation podcast (can’t recall the name or find it now) who said something I’ll paraphrase: “The cult takes the best part of a person. GURU OR GUIDE: WHAT’S THE SCOPE OF PRACTICE? A SECOND Christopher Wallis responded to my response to his article on guru-abuse prevention – check his comment here.We’re having a cordial exchange about an important topic — how strange for Yogaland! — and a lot of folks have seemed to appreciate the themes explored so far, so I’ll respond again. “BETRAYAL OF TRUST”: 1991 MERCURY NEWS INVESTIGATION OF This article from 1991 has been parked on my website in PDF form for almost two years, after one of the anonymous sources for it sent it to me. It article was recently featured in Miranda Leitsinger’s investigative report for KQED, which presents two new allegations: one from 1983, and the other from 2015. The journalist, Bob Frost, standsby every detail.
REGGIE RAY FLIPS HIS OWN ABUSE CRISIS INTO HIS OWN Reggie Ray Flips His Own Abuse Crisis Into His Own Ultimate Dharma Teaching. In October of last year, twelve long-time students at Dharma Village / Dharma Ocean (I’ll call them the “DO12”) published an open letter disclosing “longstanding patterns of emotional and spiritual abuse within Dharma Ocean, the Buddhist community led byReggie
“I AM NOT (WHAT YOU NEED FROM) MY BODY”: EXPANDING ON A 1. “I am not my body” communicates a felt reality: a review + another possibility . It’s been about five months since I called out Cameron Shayne’s use of the “I am not my body” meme to rationalize his DIY libertarian It’s-Okay-To-Sleep-With-My-Students ethics. It started a rich discussion that gave me a lot to think about, and softened up this critical heart of mine. BOYCOTT SATYANANDA’S LITERATURE AND METHODS UNTIL TRIGGER WARNING: descriptions of child rape, sexual assault, violence against women and children, cult abuse. “Sri Swamiji always loved children, and children loved him. In fact, I may call myself his first love, although I know that many others have loved him and he has loved many other children before me.” ELEVEN-YEAR-OLD BOYS, TOUCHING WOMEN ON THE SUBWAY This site hosts over 200 original posts on current affairs in modern global yoga and Buddhist culture. My aim is to popularize the use of interdisciplinary tools — from cult psychology and critical theory, for instance — towards the creation of safer practice spaces. SENIOR RIGPA STUDENTS ASK FOR SOGYAL RINPOCHE TO BE The petition letter asks for the Rigpa “Vision Board” to reinstall Sogyal Lakar (aka Sogyal Rinpoche) as the public spiritual guide for the organization. The petition letter lists seventeen original signatories. Emails to six of these signatories requesting comment have gone unanswered. The names have been redacted in the copy below WHY MANOUSO MANOS WAS SUSPENDED: MEETING NOTES AND Recently recovered notes from a 1989 faculty meeting of the Iyengar Yoga Institute in San Francisco show that Manouso Manos publicly admitted to sexual misconduct and that fellow faculty members recommended he be suspended.MATTHEW REMSKI
Matthew Remski – Yoga, Writing & Inquiry. We’ve all heard the cliché: “yoga means union”. It can ring hollow when we learn that spirituality, like the unconscious, can be a broken space: We can think we’re practicing to heal our wounds, even as we deepen them.We
CONSPIRITUALITY PODCAST A journalist, cult researcher, and philosophical skeptic discuss the stories, cognitive dissonances, and cultic dynamics tearing through the yoga, wellness, and new spirituality worlds. The term “conspirituality” first appeared in 2009 as the name of a Vancouver rap group that unironically dropped conspiracy keywords intobeats calling for
WHIPLASH IS A TERRIBLE MOVIE An embittered genius jazz band conductor for an elite New York school emotionally and physically abuses and gaslights the mostly young men in his band, constantly. Who knows what happened in his own history for him to be this way but it was probably brutal. He plays the boys off of each other in a dominance hierarchy in which everyone pays WHAT THAT RAJNEESH DOCUMENTARY LEAVES OUT It can’t. What the Way brothers have made is an intoxicating Bollywood Western, minus the choreography. Yokels vs. invaders stage a culture war on a battlefield of orgasms and guns, fuelled by diamonds and drugs and the budget of the DA, played out against pop abstractions of orientalist woo and Americanist fantasies of freedom. THAT TIME WHEN I WAS IN A CULT AND GOT AN INCREDIBLE In 1999, a good friend of mine wrote to me about my immersion in the cult of Michael Roach. I recently found his typewritten letter during a closet clean-out, and read it again. And again. I’m retyping it out here with minor edits to protect anonymity. Though I didn’t fully absorb them then, these words haunted me for the entire year PATTABHI JOIS SEXUALLY ASSAULTED MEN: PHOTO EVIDENCE Content warning: photos of sexual assault, below. This post is intended to facilitate access to the following already-available images, which will be cited in Practice and All is Coming: Abuse, Cult Dynamics and Healing in Yoga and Beyond (March 2019).. In the first photo, Pattabhi Jois is seen sexually assaulting a male practitioner in Supta trivikramasana. GURU OR GUIDE: WHAT’S THE SCOPE OF PRACTICE? A SECOND Christopher Wallis responded to my response to his article on guru-abuse prevention – check his comment here.We’re having a cordial exchange about an important topic — how strange for Yogaland! — and a lot of folks have seemed to appreciate the themes explored so far, so I’ll respond again. BYRON KATIE’S DOMINATION TECHNIQUE: A CASE STUDY Byron Katie’s Domination Technique: a Case Study. Enough people have asked me my thoughts about Byron Katie and “The Work” that I’ll give a few here in relation to the following video. In it, Katie “helps” a woman understand that her fears of the Trump administration are unwise, with an undercurrent of “deluded”. “BETRAYAL OF TRUST”: 1991 MERCURY NEWS INVESTIGATION OF This article from 1991 has been parked on my website in PDF form for almost two years, after one of the anonymous sources for it sent it to me. It article was recently featured in Miranda Leitsinger’s investigative report for KQED, which presents two new allegations: one from 1983, and the other from 2015. The journalist, Bob Frost, standsby every detail.
REGGIE RAY FLIPS HIS OWN ABUSE CRISIS INTO HIS OWN Reggie Ray Flips His Own Abuse Crisis Into His Own Ultimate Dharma Teaching. In October of last year, twelve long-time students at Dharma Village / Dharma Ocean (I’ll call them the “DO12”) published an open letter disclosing “longstanding patterns of emotional and spiritual abuse within Dharma Ocean, the Buddhist community led byReggie
MATTHEW REMSKI
Matthew Remski – Yoga, Writing & Inquiry. We’ve all heard the cliché: “yoga means union”. It can ring hollow when we learn that spirituality, like the unconscious, can be a broken space: We can think we’re practicing to heal our wounds, even as we deepen them.We
CONSPIRITUALITY PODCAST A journalist, cult researcher, and philosophical skeptic discuss the stories, cognitive dissonances, and cultic dynamics tearing through the yoga, wellness, and new spirituality worlds. The term “conspirituality” first appeared in 2009 as the name of a Vancouver rap group that unironically dropped conspiracy keywords intobeats calling for
WHIPLASH IS A TERRIBLE MOVIE An embittered genius jazz band conductor for an elite New York school emotionally and physically abuses and gaslights the mostly young men in his band, constantly. Who knows what happened in his own history for him to be this way but it was probably brutal. He plays the boys off of each other in a dominance hierarchy in which everyone pays WHAT THAT RAJNEESH DOCUMENTARY LEAVES OUT It can’t. What the Way brothers have made is an intoxicating Bollywood Western, minus the choreography. Yokels vs. invaders stage a culture war on a battlefield of orgasms and guns, fuelled by diamonds and drugs and the budget of the DA, played out against pop abstractions of orientalist woo and Americanist fantasies of freedom. THAT TIME WHEN I WAS IN A CULT AND GOT AN INCREDIBLE In 1999, a good friend of mine wrote to me about my immersion in the cult of Michael Roach. I recently found his typewritten letter during a closet clean-out, and read it again. And again. I’m retyping it out here with minor edits to protect anonymity. Though I didn’t fully absorb them then, these words haunted me for the entire year PATTABHI JOIS SEXUALLY ASSAULTED MEN: PHOTO EVIDENCE Content warning: photos of sexual assault, below. This post is intended to facilitate access to the following already-available images, which will be cited in Practice and All is Coming: Abuse, Cult Dynamics and Healing in Yoga and Beyond (March 2019).. In the first photo, Pattabhi Jois is seen sexually assaulting a male practitioner in Supta trivikramasana. GURU OR GUIDE: WHAT’S THE SCOPE OF PRACTICE? A SECOND Christopher Wallis responded to my response to his article on guru-abuse prevention – check his comment here.We’re having a cordial exchange about an important topic — how strange for Yogaland! — and a lot of folks have seemed to appreciate the themes explored so far, so I’ll respond again. BYRON KATIE’S DOMINATION TECHNIQUE: A CASE STUDY Byron Katie’s Domination Technique: a Case Study. Enough people have asked me my thoughts about Byron Katie and “The Work” that I’ll give a few here in relation to the following video. In it, Katie “helps” a woman understand that her fears of the Trump administration are unwise, with an undercurrent of “deluded”. “BETRAYAL OF TRUST”: 1991 MERCURY NEWS INVESTIGATION OF This article from 1991 has been parked on my website in PDF form for almost two years, after one of the anonymous sources for it sent it to me. It article was recently featured in Miranda Leitsinger’s investigative report for KQED, which presents two new allegations: one from 1983, and the other from 2015. The journalist, Bob Frost, standsby every detail.
REGGIE RAY FLIPS HIS OWN ABUSE CRISIS INTO HIS OWN Reggie Ray Flips His Own Abuse Crisis Into His Own Ultimate Dharma Teaching. In October of last year, twelve long-time students at Dharma Village / Dharma Ocean (I’ll call them the “DO12”) published an open letter disclosing “longstanding patterns of emotional and spiritual abuse within Dharma Ocean, the Buddhist community led byReggie
CULT DYNAMICS
He shows the same face in relation to the legal system when he fantasizes about gunning people down on 5th Avenue with impunity. But when he challenges the *actual sun*, i.e., the source of all power on earth, he’s putting something at stake that his draft-deferring, germophobic soul rarely risks: his body. WHEN THE GOODNESS OF A YOGA GROUP COMES FROM THOSE IT Here’s something I wasn’t able to fit into the Sivananda Yoga feature, because it veers into commentary/opinion, and because it would have stretched the word count beyond breaking.. There was a guest on Rachel Bernstein’s IndoctriNation podcast (can’t recall the name or find it now) who said something I’ll paraphrase: “The cult takes the best part of a person. GURU OR GUIDE: WHAT’S THE SCOPE OF PRACTICE? A SECOND Christopher Wallis responded to my response to his article on guru-abuse prevention – check his comment here.We’re having a cordial exchange about an important topic — how strange for Yogaland! — and a lot of folks have seemed to appreciate the themes explored so far, so I’ll respond again. “BETRAYAL OF TRUST”: 1991 MERCURY NEWS INVESTIGATION OF This article from 1991 has been parked on my website in PDF form for almost two years, after one of the anonymous sources for it sent it to me. It article was recently featured in Miranda Leitsinger’s investigative report for KQED, which presents two new allegations: one from 1983, and the other from 2015. The journalist, Bob Frost, standsby every detail.
REGGIE RAY FLIPS HIS OWN ABUSE CRISIS INTO HIS OWN Reggie Ray Flips His Own Abuse Crisis Into His Own Ultimate Dharma Teaching. In October of last year, twelve long-time students at Dharma Village / Dharma Ocean (I’ll call them the “DO12”) published an open letter disclosing “longstanding patterns of emotional and spiritual abuse within Dharma Ocean, the Buddhist community led byReggie
“I AM NOT (WHAT YOU NEED FROM) MY BODY”: EXPANDING ON A 1. “I am not my body” communicates a felt reality: a review + another possibility . It’s been about five months since I called out Cameron Shayne’s use of the “I am not my body” meme to rationalize his DIY libertarian It’s-Okay-To-Sleep-With-My-Students ethics. It started a rich discussion that gave me a lot to think about, and softened up this critical heart of mine. BOYCOTT SATYANANDA’S LITERATURE AND METHODS UNTIL TRIGGER WARNING: descriptions of child rape, sexual assault, violence against women and children, cult abuse. “Sri Swamiji always loved children, and children loved him. In fact, I may call myself his first love, although I know that many others have loved him and he has loved many other children before me.” SENIOR RIGPA STUDENTS ASK FOR SOGYAL RINPOCHE TO BE The petition letter asks for the Rigpa “Vision Board” to reinstall Sogyal Lakar (aka Sogyal Rinpoche) as the public spiritual guide for the organization. The petition letter lists seventeen original signatories. Emails to six of these signatories requesting comment have gone unanswered. The names have been redacted in the copy below ELEVEN-YEAR-OLD BOYS, TOUCHING WOMEN ON THE SUBWAY This site hosts over 200 original posts on current affairs in modern global yoga and Buddhist culture. My aim is to popularize the use of interdisciplinary tools — from cult psychology and critical theory, for instance — towards the creation of safer practice spaces. WHY MANOUSO MANOS WAS SUSPENDED: MEETING NOTES AND Recently recovered notes from a 1989 faculty meeting of the Iyengar Yoga Institute in San Francisco show that Manouso Manos publicly admitted to sexual misconduct and that fellow faculty members recommended he be suspended.MATTHEW REMSKI
Matthew Remski – Yoga, Writing & Inquiry. We’ve all heard the cliché: “yoga means union”. It can ring hollow when we learn that spirituality, like the unconscious, can be a broken space: We can think we’re practicing to heal our wounds, even as we deepen them.We
CONSPIRITUALITY PODCAST A journalist, cult researcher, and philosophical skeptic discuss the stories, cognitive dissonances, and cultic dynamics tearing through the yoga, wellness, and new spirituality worlds. The term “conspirituality” first appeared in 2009 as the name of a Vancouver rap group that unironically dropped conspiracy keywords intobeats calling for
WHIPLASH IS A TERRIBLE MOVIE An embittered genius jazz band conductor for an elite New York school emotionally and physically abuses and gaslights the mostly young men in his band, constantly. Who knows what happened in his own history for him to be this way but it was probably brutal. He plays the boys off of each other in a dominance hierarchy in which everyone pays WHAT THAT RAJNEESH DOCUMENTARY LEAVES OUT It can’t. What the Way brothers have made is an intoxicating Bollywood Western, minus the choreography. Yokels vs. invaders stage a culture war on a battlefield of orgasms and guns, fuelled by diamonds and drugs and the budget of the DA, played out against pop abstractions of orientalist woo and Americanist fantasies of freedom. THAT TIME WHEN I WAS IN A CULT AND GOT AN INCREDIBLE In 1999, a good friend of mine wrote to me about my immersion in the cult of Michael Roach. I recently found his typewritten letter during a closet clean-out, and read it again. And again. I’m retyping it out here with minor edits to protect anonymity. Though I didn’t fully absorb them then, these words haunted me for the entire year PATTABHI JOIS SEXUALLY ASSAULTED MEN: PHOTO EVIDENCE Content warning: photos of sexual assault, below. This post is intended to facilitate access to the following already-available images, which will be cited in Practice and All is Coming: Abuse, Cult Dynamics and Healing in Yoga and Beyond (March 2019).. In the first photo, Pattabhi Jois is seen sexually assaulting a male practitioner in Supta trivikramasana. GURU OR GUIDE: WHAT’S THE SCOPE OF PRACTICE? A SECOND Christopher Wallis responded to my response to his article on guru-abuse prevention – check his comment here.We’re having a cordial exchange about an important topic — how strange for Yogaland! — and a lot of folks have seemed to appreciate the themes explored so far, so I’ll respond again. BYRON KATIE’S DOMINATION TECHNIQUE: A CASE STUDY Byron Katie’s Domination Technique: a Case Study. Enough people have asked me my thoughts about Byron Katie and “The Work” that I’ll give a few here in relation to the following video. In it, Katie “helps” a woman understand that her fears of the Trump administration are unwise, with an undercurrent of “deluded”. “BETRAYAL OF TRUST”: 1991 MERCURY NEWS INVESTIGATION OF This article from 1991 has been parked on my website in PDF form for almost two years, after one of the anonymous sources for it sent it to me. It article was recently featured in Miranda Leitsinger’s investigative report for KQED, which presents two new allegations: one from 1983, and the other from 2015. The journalist, Bob Frost, standsby every detail.
REGGIE RAY FLIPS HIS OWN ABUSE CRISIS INTO HIS OWN Reggie Ray Flips His Own Abuse Crisis Into His Own Ultimate Dharma Teaching. In October of last year, twelve long-time students at Dharma Village / Dharma Ocean (I’ll call them the “DO12”) published an open letter disclosing “longstanding patterns of emotional and spiritual abuse within Dharma Ocean, the Buddhist community led byReggie
MATTHEW REMSKI
Matthew Remski – Yoga, Writing & Inquiry. We’ve all heard the cliché: “yoga means union”. It can ring hollow when we learn that spirituality, like the unconscious, can be a broken space: We can think we’re practicing to heal our wounds, even as we deepen them.We
CONSPIRITUALITY PODCAST A journalist, cult researcher, and philosophical skeptic discuss the stories, cognitive dissonances, and cultic dynamics tearing through the yoga, wellness, and new spirituality worlds. The term “conspirituality” first appeared in 2009 as the name of a Vancouver rap group that unironically dropped conspiracy keywords intobeats calling for
WHIPLASH IS A TERRIBLE MOVIE An embittered genius jazz band conductor for an elite New York school emotionally and physically abuses and gaslights the mostly young men in his band, constantly. Who knows what happened in his own history for him to be this way but it was probably brutal. He plays the boys off of each other in a dominance hierarchy in which everyone pays WHAT THAT RAJNEESH DOCUMENTARY LEAVES OUT It can’t. What the Way brothers have made is an intoxicating Bollywood Western, minus the choreography. Yokels vs. invaders stage a culture war on a battlefield of orgasms and guns, fuelled by diamonds and drugs and the budget of the DA, played out against pop abstractions of orientalist woo and Americanist fantasies of freedom. THAT TIME WHEN I WAS IN A CULT AND GOT AN INCREDIBLE In 1999, a good friend of mine wrote to me about my immersion in the cult of Michael Roach. I recently found his typewritten letter during a closet clean-out, and read it again. And again. I’m retyping it out here with minor edits to protect anonymity. Though I didn’t fully absorb them then, these words haunted me for the entire year PATTABHI JOIS SEXUALLY ASSAULTED MEN: PHOTO EVIDENCE Content warning: photos of sexual assault, below. This post is intended to facilitate access to the following already-available images, which will be cited in Practice and All is Coming: Abuse, Cult Dynamics and Healing in Yoga and Beyond (March 2019).. In the first photo, Pattabhi Jois is seen sexually assaulting a male practitioner in Supta trivikramasana. GURU OR GUIDE: WHAT’S THE SCOPE OF PRACTICE? A SECOND Christopher Wallis responded to my response to his article on guru-abuse prevention – check his comment here.We’re having a cordial exchange about an important topic — how strange for Yogaland! — and a lot of folks have seemed to appreciate the themes explored so far, so I’ll respond again. BYRON KATIE’S DOMINATION TECHNIQUE: A CASE STUDY Byron Katie’s Domination Technique: a Case Study. Enough people have asked me my thoughts about Byron Katie and “The Work” that I’ll give a few here in relation to the following video. In it, Katie “helps” a woman understand that her fears of the Trump administration are unwise, with an undercurrent of “deluded”. “BETRAYAL OF TRUST”: 1991 MERCURY NEWS INVESTIGATION OF This article from 1991 has been parked on my website in PDF form for almost two years, after one of the anonymous sources for it sent it to me. It article was recently featured in Miranda Leitsinger’s investigative report for KQED, which presents two new allegations: one from 1983, and the other from 2015. The journalist, Bob Frost, standsby every detail.
REGGIE RAY FLIPS HIS OWN ABUSE CRISIS INTO HIS OWN Reggie Ray Flips His Own Abuse Crisis Into His Own Ultimate Dharma Teaching. In October of last year, twelve long-time students at Dharma Village / Dharma Ocean (I’ll call them the “DO12”) published an open letter disclosing “longstanding patterns of emotional and spiritual abuse within Dharma Ocean, the Buddhist community led byReggie
BOOKS – MATTHEW REMSKI Matthew Remski writes and presents on yoga and ayurveda in the shadows of capitalism and climate change. He is the author of eight books of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction including Threads of Yoga: A Remix of Patanjali’s Sutras.. Follow on Facebook » GURU OR GUIDE: WHAT’S THE SCOPE OF PRACTICE? A SECOND Christopher Wallis responded to my response to his article on guru-abuse prevention – check his comment here.We’re having a cordial exchange about an important topic — how strange for Yogaland! — and a lot of folks have seemed to appreciate the themes explored so far, so I’ll respond again.CULT DYNAMICS
He shows the same face in relation to the legal system when he fantasizes about gunning people down on 5th Avenue with impunity. But when he challenges the *actual sun*, i.e., the source of all power on earth, he’s putting something at stake that his draft-deferring, germophobic soul rarely risks: his body. WHEN THE GOODNESS OF A YOGA GROUP COMES FROM THOSE IT Here’s something I wasn’t able to fit into the Sivananda Yoga feature, because it veers into commentary/opinion, and because it would have stretched the word count beyond breaking.. There was a guest on Rachel Bernstein’s IndoctriNation podcast (can’t recall the name or find it now) who said something I’ll paraphrase: “The cult takes the best part of a person. “BETRAYAL OF TRUST”: 1991 MERCURY NEWS INVESTIGATION OF This article from 1991 has been parked on my website in PDF form for almost two years, after one of the anonymous sources for it sent it to me. It article was recently featured in Miranda Leitsinger’s investigative report for KQED, which presents two new allegations: one from 1983, and the other from 2015. The journalist, Bob Frost, standsby every detail.
KINO’S HIP: REFLECTIONS ON EXTREME PRACTICE AND INJURY IN Kino’s Hip: Reflections on Extreme Practice and Injury in Asana. Heyam dukham anagatam. (Pain that is yet to come can be avoided.) Yoga Sutra II:16. On June 14 th, Kino MacGregor posted a photo to her 782K Instagram and 264K Facebook followers. She’s in hero pose, her hands in prayer, eyes closed, on a beach. “I AM NOT (WHAT YOU NEED FROM) MY BODY”: EXPANDING ON A 1. “I am not my body” communicates a felt reality: a review + another possibility . It’s been about five months since I called out Cameron Shayne’s use of the “I am not my body” meme to rationalize his DIY libertarian It’s-Okay-To-Sleep-With-My-Students ethics. It started a rich discussion that gave me a lot to think about, and softened up this critical heart of mine. REGGIE RAY FLIPS HIS OWN ABUSE CRISIS INTO HIS OWN Reggie Ray Flips His Own Abuse Crisis Into His Own Ultimate Dharma Teaching. In October of last year, twelve long-time students at Dharma Village / Dharma Ocean (I’ll call them the “DO12”) published an open letter disclosing “longstanding patterns of emotional and spiritual abuse within Dharma Ocean, the Buddhist community led byReggie
SENIOR RIGPA STUDENTS ASK FOR SOGYAL RINPOCHE TO BE The petition letter asks for the Rigpa “Vision Board” to reinstall Sogyal Lakar (aka Sogyal Rinpoche) as the public spiritual guide for the organization. The petition letter lists seventeen original signatories. Emails to six of these signatories requesting comment have gone unanswered. The names have been redacted in the copy below ELEVEN-YEAR-OLD BOYS, TOUCHING WOMEN ON THE SUBWAY This site hosts over 200 original posts on current affairs in modern global yoga and Buddhist culture. My aim is to popularize the use of interdisciplinary tools — from cult psychology and critical theory, for instance — towards the creation of safer practice spaces.MATTHEW REMSKI
Matthew Remski – Yoga, Writing & Inquiry. We’ve all heard the cliché: “yoga means union”. It can ring hollow when we learn that spirituality, like the unconscious, can be a broken space: We can think we’re practicing to heal our wounds, even as we deepen them.We
CONSPIRITUALITY PODCAST A journalist, cult researcher, and philosophical skeptic discuss the stories, cognitive dissonances, and cultic dynamics tearing through the yoga, wellness, and new spirituality worlds. The term “conspirituality” first appeared in 2009 as the name of a Vancouver rap group that unironically dropped conspiracy keywords intobeats calling for
WHIPLASH IS A TERRIBLE MOVIE An embittered genius jazz band conductor for an elite New York school emotionally and physically abuses and gaslights the mostly young men in his band, constantly. Who knows what happened in his own history for him to be this way but it was probably brutal. He plays the boys off of each other in a dominance hierarchy in which everyone pays WHAT THAT RAJNEESH DOCUMENTARY LEAVES OUT It can’t. What the Way brothers have made is an intoxicating Bollywood Western, minus the choreography. Yokels vs. invaders stage a culture war on a battlefield of orgasms and guns, fuelled by diamonds and drugs and the budget of the DA, played out against pop abstractions of orientalist woo and Americanist fantasies of freedom. THAT TIME WHEN I WAS IN A CULT AND GOT AN INCREDIBLE In 1999, a good friend of mine wrote to me about my immersion in the cult of Michael Roach. I recently found his typewritten letter during a closet clean-out, and read it again. And again. I’m retyping it out here with minor edits to protect anonymity. Though I didn’t fully absorb them then, these words haunted me for the entire year PATTABHI JOIS SEXUALLY ASSAULTED MEN: PHOTO EVIDENCE Content warning: photos of sexual assault, below. This post is intended to facilitate access to the following already-available images, which will be cited in Practice and All is Coming: Abuse, Cult Dynamics and Healing in Yoga and Beyond (March 2019).. In the first photo, Pattabhi Jois is seen sexually assaulting a male practitioner in Supta trivikramasana. GURU OR GUIDE: WHAT’S THE SCOPE OF PRACTICE? A SECOND Christopher Wallis responded to my response to his article on guru-abuse prevention – check his comment here.We’re having a cordial exchange about an important topic — how strange for Yogaland! — and a lot of folks have seemed to appreciate the themes explored so far, so I’ll respond again. BYRON KATIE’S DOMINATION TECHNIQUE: A CASE STUDY Byron Katie’s Domination Technique: a Case Study. Enough people have asked me my thoughts about Byron Katie and “The Work” that I’ll give a few here in relation to the following video. In it, Katie “helps” a woman understand that her fears of the Trump administration are unwise, with an undercurrent of “deluded”. “BETRAYAL OF TRUST”: 1991 MERCURY NEWS INVESTIGATION OF This article from 1991 has been parked on my website in PDF form for almost two years, after one of the anonymous sources for it sent it to me. It article was recently featured in Miranda Leitsinger’s investigative report for KQED, which presents two new allegations: one from 1983, and the other from 2015. The journalist, Bob Frost, standsby every detail.
REGGIE RAY FLIPS HIS OWN ABUSE CRISIS INTO HIS OWN Reggie Ray Flips His Own Abuse Crisis Into His Own Ultimate Dharma Teaching. In October of last year, twelve long-time students at Dharma Village / Dharma Ocean (I’ll call them the “DO12”) published an open letter disclosing “longstanding patterns of emotional and spiritual abuse within Dharma Ocean, the Buddhist community led byReggie
MATTHEW REMSKI
Matthew Remski – Yoga, Writing & Inquiry. We’ve all heard the cliché: “yoga means union”. It can ring hollow when we learn that spirituality, like the unconscious, can be a broken space: We can think we’re practicing to heal our wounds, even as we deepen them.We
CONSPIRITUALITY PODCAST A journalist, cult researcher, and philosophical skeptic discuss the stories, cognitive dissonances, and cultic dynamics tearing through the yoga, wellness, and new spirituality worlds. The term “conspirituality” first appeared in 2009 as the name of a Vancouver rap group that unironically dropped conspiracy keywords intobeats calling for
WHIPLASH IS A TERRIBLE MOVIE An embittered genius jazz band conductor for an elite New York school emotionally and physically abuses and gaslights the mostly young men in his band, constantly. Who knows what happened in his own history for him to be this way but it was probably brutal. He plays the boys off of each other in a dominance hierarchy in which everyone pays WHAT THAT RAJNEESH DOCUMENTARY LEAVES OUT It can’t. What the Way brothers have made is an intoxicating Bollywood Western, minus the choreography. Yokels vs. invaders stage a culture war on a battlefield of orgasms and guns, fuelled by diamonds and drugs and the budget of the DA, played out against pop abstractions of orientalist woo and Americanist fantasies of freedom. THAT TIME WHEN I WAS IN A CULT AND GOT AN INCREDIBLE In 1999, a good friend of mine wrote to me about my immersion in the cult of Michael Roach. I recently found his typewritten letter during a closet clean-out, and read it again. And again. I’m retyping it out here with minor edits to protect anonymity. Though I didn’t fully absorb them then, these words haunted me for the entire year PATTABHI JOIS SEXUALLY ASSAULTED MEN: PHOTO EVIDENCE Content warning: photos of sexual assault, below. This post is intended to facilitate access to the following already-available images, which will be cited in Practice and All is Coming: Abuse, Cult Dynamics and Healing in Yoga and Beyond (March 2019).. In the first photo, Pattabhi Jois is seen sexually assaulting a male practitioner in Supta trivikramasana. GURU OR GUIDE: WHAT’S THE SCOPE OF PRACTICE? A SECOND Christopher Wallis responded to my response to his article on guru-abuse prevention – check his comment here.We’re having a cordial exchange about an important topic — how strange for Yogaland! — and a lot of folks have seemed to appreciate the themes explored so far, so I’ll respond again. BYRON KATIE’S DOMINATION TECHNIQUE: A CASE STUDY Byron Katie’s Domination Technique: a Case Study. Enough people have asked me my thoughts about Byron Katie and “The Work” that I’ll give a few here in relation to the following video. In it, Katie “helps” a woman understand that her fears of the Trump administration are unwise, with an undercurrent of “deluded”. “BETRAYAL OF TRUST”: 1991 MERCURY NEWS INVESTIGATION OF This article from 1991 has been parked on my website in PDF form for almost two years, after one of the anonymous sources for it sent it to me. It article was recently featured in Miranda Leitsinger’s investigative report for KQED, which presents two new allegations: one from 1983, and the other from 2015. The journalist, Bob Frost, standsby every detail.
REGGIE RAY FLIPS HIS OWN ABUSE CRISIS INTO HIS OWN Reggie Ray Flips His Own Abuse Crisis Into His Own Ultimate Dharma Teaching. In October of last year, twelve long-time students at Dharma Village / Dharma Ocean (I’ll call them the “DO12”) published an open letter disclosing “longstanding patterns of emotional and spiritual abuse within Dharma Ocean, the Buddhist community led byReggie
BOOKS – MATTHEW REMSKI Matthew Remski writes and presents on yoga and ayurveda in the shadows of capitalism and climate change. He is the author of eight books of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction including Threads of Yoga: A Remix of Patanjali’s Sutras.. Follow on Facebook » GURU OR GUIDE: WHAT’S THE SCOPE OF PRACTICE? A SECOND Christopher Wallis responded to my response to his article on guru-abuse prevention – check his comment here.We’re having a cordial exchange about an important topic — how strange for Yogaland! — and a lot of folks have seemed to appreciate the themes explored so far, so I’ll respond again.CULT DYNAMICS
He shows the same face in relation to the legal system when he fantasizes about gunning people down on 5th Avenue with impunity. But when he challenges the *actual sun*, i.e., the source of all power on earth, he’s putting something at stake that his draft-deferring, germophobic soul rarely risks: his body. WHEN THE GOODNESS OF A YOGA GROUP COMES FROM THOSE IT Here’s something I wasn’t able to fit into the Sivananda Yoga feature, because it veers into commentary/opinion, and because it would have stretched the word count beyond breaking.. There was a guest on Rachel Bernstein’s IndoctriNation podcast (can’t recall the name or find it now) who said something I’ll paraphrase: “The cult takes the best part of a person. “BETRAYAL OF TRUST”: 1991 MERCURY NEWS INVESTIGATION OF This article from 1991 has been parked on my website in PDF form for almost two years, after one of the anonymous sources for it sent it to me. It article was recently featured in Miranda Leitsinger’s investigative report for KQED, which presents two new allegations: one from 1983, and the other from 2015. The journalist, Bob Frost, standsby every detail.
KINO’S HIP: REFLECTIONS ON EXTREME PRACTICE AND INJURY IN Kino’s Hip: Reflections on Extreme Practice and Injury in Asana. Heyam dukham anagatam. (Pain that is yet to come can be avoided.) Yoga Sutra II:16. On June 14 th, Kino MacGregor posted a photo to her 782K Instagram and 264K Facebook followers. She’s in hero pose, her hands in prayer, eyes closed, on a beach. “I AM NOT (WHAT YOU NEED FROM) MY BODY”: EXPANDING ON A 1. “I am not my body” communicates a felt reality: a review + another possibility . It’s been about five months since I called out Cameron Shayne’s use of the “I am not my body” meme to rationalize his DIY libertarian It’s-Okay-To-Sleep-With-My-Students ethics. It started a rich discussion that gave me a lot to think about, and softened up this critical heart of mine. REGGIE RAY FLIPS HIS OWN ABUSE CRISIS INTO HIS OWN Reggie Ray Flips His Own Abuse Crisis Into His Own Ultimate Dharma Teaching. In October of last year, twelve long-time students at Dharma Village / Dharma Ocean (I’ll call them the “DO12”) published an open letter disclosing “longstanding patterns of emotional and spiritual abuse within Dharma Ocean, the Buddhist community led byReggie
SENIOR RIGPA STUDENTS ASK FOR SOGYAL RINPOCHE TO BE The petition letter asks for the Rigpa “Vision Board” to reinstall Sogyal Lakar (aka Sogyal Rinpoche) as the public spiritual guide for the organization. The petition letter lists seventeen original signatories. Emails to six of these signatories requesting comment have gone unanswered. The names have been redacted in the copy below ELEVEN-YEAR-OLD BOYS, TOUCHING WOMEN ON THE SUBWAY This site hosts over 200 original posts on current affairs in modern global yoga and Buddhist culture. My aim is to popularize the use of interdisciplinary tools — from cult psychology and critical theory, for instance — towards the creation of safer practice spaces.MATTHEW REMSKI
Matthew Remski – Yoga, Writing & Inquiry. We’ve all heard the cliché: “yoga means union”. It can ring hollow when we learn that spirituality, like the unconscious, can be a broken space: We can think we’re practicing to heal our wounds, even as we deepen them.We
CONSPIRITUALITY PODCAST Conspirituality Podcast. With colleagues Derek Beres and Julian Marc Walker, I’ve been working on Conspirituality Podcast since May of 2020. Here’s our show description: A weekly discussion of the intersection between right-wing conspiracy theories and left-wing wellness utopianism. As the alt-right and New Age horseshoe towardeach other
WHIPLASH IS A TERRIBLE MOVIE An embittered genius jazz band conductor for an elite New York school emotionally and physically abuses and gaslights the mostly young men in his band, constantly. Who knows what happened in his own history for him to be this way but it was probably brutal. He plays the boys off of each other in a dominance hierarchy in which everyone pays WHAT THAT RAJNEESH DOCUMENTARY LEAVES OUT It can’t. What the Way brothers have made is an intoxicating Bollywood Western, minus the choreography. Yokels vs. invaders stage a culture war on a battlefield of orgasms and guns, fuelled by diamonds and drugs and the budget of the DA, played out against pop abstractions of orientalist woo and Americanist fantasies of freedom. THAT TIME WHEN I WAS IN A CULT AND GOT AN INCREDIBLE In 1999, a good friend of mine wrote to me about my immersion in the cult of Michael Roach. I recently found his typewritten letter during a closet clean-out, and read it again. And again. I’m retyping it out here with minor edits to protect anonymity. Though I didn’t fully absorb them then, these words haunted me for the entire year PATTABHI JOIS SEXUALLY ASSAULTED MEN: PHOTO EVIDENCE Content warning: photos of sexual assault, below. This post is intended to facilitate access to the following already-available images, which will be cited in Practice and All is Coming: Abuse, Cult Dynamics and Healing in Yoga and Beyond (March 2019).. In the first photo, Pattabhi Jois is seen sexually assaulting a male practitioner in Supta trivikramasana. TO ECO-ACTIVISTS BEING INTRODUCED TO BUDDHISM AS A SUPPORT This site hosts over 200 original posts on current affairs in modern global yoga and Buddhist culture. My aim is to popularize the use of interdisciplinary tools — from cult psychology and critical theory, for instance — towards the creation of safer practice spaces. “BETRAYAL OF TRUST”: 1991 MERCURY NEWS INVESTIGATION OF This article from 1991 has been parked on my website in PDF form for almost two years, after one of the anonymous sources for it sent it to me. It article was recently featured in Miranda Leitsinger’s investigative report for KQED, which presents two new allegations: one from 1983, and the other from 2015. The journalist, Bob Frost, standsby every detail.
QUOTES FROM RAM DASS THAT FIT THE PATTERN OF Quotes from Ram Dass That Fit the Pattern of Spiritualizing Sexual Abuse in Yoga. Not long after the glowing obits for Ram Dass started packing my feeds, Karen Rain, a trusted friend and colleague messaged me: “Did you know that Neem Karoli Baba was a sex offender too?”. No. No I didn’t. Neem Karoli Baba was Dass’s guru. ELEVEN-YEAR-OLD BOYS, TOUCHING WOMEN ON THE SUBWAY This site hosts over 200 original posts on current affairs in modern global yoga and Buddhist culture. My aim is to popularize the use of interdisciplinary tools — from cult psychology and critical theory, for instance — towards the creation of safer practice spaces.MATTHEW REMSKI
Matthew Remski – Yoga, Writing & Inquiry. We’ve all heard the cliché: “yoga means union”. It can ring hollow when we learn that spirituality, like the unconscious, can be a broken space: We can think we’re practicing to heal our wounds, even as we deepen them.We
CONSPIRITUALITY PODCAST A journalist, cult researcher, and philosophical skeptic discuss the stories, cognitive dissonances, and cultic dynamics tearing through the yoga, wellness, and new spirituality worlds. The term “conspirituality” first appeared in 2009 as the name of a Vancouver rap group that unironically dropped conspiracy keywords intobeats calling for
WHIPLASH IS A TERRIBLE MOVIE An embittered genius jazz band conductor for an elite New York school emotionally and physically abuses and gaslights the mostly young men in his band, constantly. Who knows what happened in his own history for him to be this way but it was probably brutal. He plays the boys off of each other in a dominance hierarchy in which everyone pays WHAT THAT RAJNEESH DOCUMENTARY LEAVES OUT It can’t. What the Way brothers have made is an intoxicating Bollywood Western, minus the choreography. Yokels vs. invaders stage a culture war on a battlefield of orgasms and guns, fuelled by diamonds and drugs and the budget of the DA, played out against pop abstractions of orientalist woo and Americanist fantasies of freedom. THAT TIME WHEN I WAS IN A CULT AND GOT AN INCREDIBLE In 1999, a good friend of mine wrote to me about my immersion in the cult of Michael Roach. I recently found his typewritten letter during a closet clean-out, and read it again. And again. I’m retyping it out here with minor edits to protect anonymity. Though I didn’t fully absorb them then, these words haunted me for the entire year PATTABHI JOIS SEXUALLY ASSAULTED MEN: PHOTO EVIDENCE Content warning: photos of sexual assault, below. This post is intended to facilitate access to the following already-available images, which will be cited in Practice and All is Coming: Abuse, Cult Dynamics and Healing in Yoga and Beyond (March 2019).. In the first photo, Pattabhi Jois is seen sexually assaulting a male practitioner in Supta trivikramasana. “BETRAYAL OF TRUST”: 1991 MERCURY NEWS INVESTIGATION OF This article from 1991 has been parked on my website in PDF form for almost two years, after one of the anonymous sources for it sent it to me. It article was recently featured in Miranda Leitsinger’s investigative report for KQED, which presents two new allegations: one from 1983, and the other from 2015. The journalist, Bob Frost, standsby every detail.
TO ECO-ACTIVISTS BEING INTRODUCED TO BUDDHISM AS A SUPPORT This site hosts over 200 original posts on current affairs in modern global yoga and Buddhist culture. My aim is to popularize the use of interdisciplinary tools — from cult psychology and critical theory, for instance — towards the creation of safer practice spaces. QUOTES FROM RAM DASS THAT FIT THE PATTERN OF Quotes from Ram Dass That Fit the Pattern of Spiritualizing Sexual Abuse in Yoga. Not long after the glowing obits for Ram Dass started packing my feeds, Karen Rain, a trusted friend and colleague messaged me: “Did you know that Neem Karoli Baba was a sex offender too?”. No. No I didn’t. Neem Karoli Baba was Dass’s guru. ELEVEN-YEAR-OLD BOYS, TOUCHING WOMEN ON THE SUBWAY This site hosts over 200 original posts on current affairs in modern global yoga and Buddhist culture. My aim is to popularize the use of interdisciplinary tools — from cult psychology and critical theory, for instance — towards the creation of safer practice spaces. CONSPIRITUALITY PODCAST A journalist, cult researcher, and philosophical skeptic discuss the stories, cognitive dissonances, and cultic dynamics tearing through the yoga, wellness, and new spirituality worlds. The term “conspirituality” first appeared in 2009 as the name of a Vancouver rap group that unironically dropped conspiracy keywords intobeats calling for
WHAT THAT RAJNEESH DOCUMENTARY LEAVES OUT It can’t. What the Way brothers have made is an intoxicating Bollywood Western, minus the choreography. Yokels vs. invaders stage a culture war on a battlefield of orgasms and guns, fuelled by diamonds and drugs and the budget of the DA, played out against pop abstractions of orientalist woo and Americanist fantasies of freedom.CULT DYNAMICS
He shows the same face in relation to the legal system when he fantasizes about gunning people down on 5th Avenue with impunity. But when he challenges the *actual sun*, i.e., the source of all power on earth, he’s putting something at stake that his draft-deferring, germophobic soul rarely risks: his body. ARTICLES – PAGE 27 – MATTHEW REMSKITRANSLATE THIS PAGE In the face of the most difficult etiology, cancer, Ayurveda offers four overlapping modes of reflection and support: the descriptive, the preventative, the purificatory, and the supportive/palliative. “BETRAYAL OF TRUST”: 1991 MERCURY NEWS INVESTIGATION OF This article from 1991 has been parked on my website in PDF form for almost two years, after one of the anonymous sources for it sent it to me. It article was recently featured in Miranda Leitsinger’s investigative report for KQED, which presents two new allegations: one from 1983, and the other from 2015. The journalist, Bob Frost, standsby every detail.
WHEN THE GOODNESS OF A YOGA GROUP COMES FROM THOSE IT Here’s something I wasn’t able to fit into the Sivananda Yoga feature, because it veers into commentary/opinion, and because it would have stretched the word count beyond breaking.. There was a guest on Rachel Bernstein’s IndoctriNation podcast (can’t recall the name or find it now) who said something I’ll paraphrase: “The cult takes the best part of a person. “I AM NOT (WHAT YOU NEED FROM) MY BODY”: EXPANDING ON A 1. “I am not my body” communicates a felt reality: a review + another possibility . It’s been about five months since I called out Cameron Shayne’s use of the “I am not my body” meme to rationalize his DIY libertarian It’s-Okay-To-Sleep-With-My-Students ethics. It started a rich discussion that gave me a lot to think about, and softened up this critical heart of mine. BYRON KATIE’S DOMINATION TECHNIQUE: A CASE STUDY Byron Katie’s Domination Technique: a Case Study. Enough people have asked me my thoughts about Byron Katie and “The Work” that I’ll give a few here in relation to the following video. In it, Katie “helps” a woman understand that her fears of the Trump administration are unwise, with an undercurrent of “deluded”. KINO’S HIP: REFLECTIONS ON EXTREME PRACTICE AND INJURY IN Kino’s Hip: Reflections on Extreme Practice and Injury in Asana. Heyam dukham anagatam. (Pain that is yet to come can be avoided.) Yoga Sutra II:16. On June 14 th, Kino MacGregor posted a photo to her 782K Instagram and 264K Facebook followers. She’s in hero pose, her hands in prayer, eyes closed, on a beach. REGGIE RAY FLIPS HIS OWN ABUSE CRISIS INTO HIS OWN Reggie Ray Flips His Own Abuse Crisis Into His Own Ultimate Dharma Teaching. In October of last year, twelve long-time students at Dharma Village / Dharma Ocean (I’ll call them the “DO12”) published an open letter disclosing “longstanding patterns of emotional and spiritual abuse within Dharma Ocean, the Buddhist community led byReggie
MATTHEW REMSKI
Matthew Remski – Yoga, Writing & Inquiry. We’ve all heard the cliché: “yoga means union”. It can ring hollow when we learn that spirituality, like the unconscious, can be a broken space: We can think we’re practicing to heal our wounds, even as we deepen them.We
CONSPIRITUALITY PODCAST Conspirituality Podcast. With colleagues Derek Beres and Julian Marc Walker, I’ve been working on Conspirituality Podcast since May of 2020. Here’s our show description: A weekly discussion of the intersection between right-wing conspiracy theories and left-wing wellness utopianism. As the alt-right and New Age horseshoe towardeach other
WHIPLASH IS A TERRIBLE MOVIE An embittered genius jazz band conductor for an elite New York school emotionally and physically abuses and gaslights the mostly young men in his band, constantly. Who knows what happened in his own history for him to be this way but it was probably brutal. He plays the boys off of each other in a dominance hierarchy in which everyone pays WHAT THAT RAJNEESH DOCUMENTARY LEAVES OUT It can’t. What the Way brothers have made is an intoxicating Bollywood Western, minus the choreography. Yokels vs. invaders stage a culture war on a battlefield of orgasms and guns, fuelled by diamonds and drugs and the budget of the DA, played out against pop abstractions of orientalist woo and Americanist fantasies of freedom. THAT TIME WHEN I WAS IN A CULT AND GOT AN INCREDIBLE In 1999, a good friend of mine wrote to me about my immersion in the cult of Michael Roach. I recently found his typewritten letter during a closet clean-out, and read it again. And again. I’m retyping it out here with minor edits to protect anonymity. Though I didn’t fully absorb them then, these words haunted me for the entire year PATTABHI JOIS SEXUALLY ASSAULTED MEN: PHOTO EVIDENCE Content warning: photos of sexual assault, below. This post is intended to facilitate access to the following already-available images, which will be cited in Practice and All is Coming: Abuse, Cult Dynamics and Healing in Yoga and Beyond (March 2019).. In the first photo, Pattabhi Jois is seen sexually assaulting a male practitioner in Supta trivikramasana. TO ECO-ACTIVISTS BEING INTRODUCED TO BUDDHISM AS A SUPPORT This site hosts over 200 original posts on current affairs in modern global yoga and Buddhist culture. My aim is to popularize the use of interdisciplinary tools — from cult psychology and critical theory, for instance — towards the creation of safer practice spaces. “BETRAYAL OF TRUST”: 1991 MERCURY NEWS INVESTIGATION OF This article from 1991 has been parked on my website in PDF form for almost two years, after one of the anonymous sources for it sent it to me. It article was recently featured in Miranda Leitsinger’s investigative report for KQED, which presents two new allegations: one from 1983, and the other from 2015. The journalist, Bob Frost, standsby every detail.
QUOTES FROM RAM DASS THAT FIT THE PATTERN OF Quotes from Ram Dass That Fit the Pattern of Spiritualizing Sexual Abuse in Yoga. Not long after the glowing obits for Ram Dass started packing my feeds, Karen Rain, a trusted friend and colleague messaged me: “Did you know that Neem Karoli Baba was a sex offender too?”. No. No I didn’t. Neem Karoli Baba was Dass’s guru. ELEVEN-YEAR-OLD BOYS, TOUCHING WOMEN ON THE SUBWAY This site hosts over 200 original posts on current affairs in modern global yoga and Buddhist culture. My aim is to popularize the use of interdisciplinary tools — from cult psychology and critical theory, for instance — towards the creation of safer practice spaces.MATTHEW REMSKI
Matthew Remski – Yoga, Writing & Inquiry. We’ve all heard the cliché: “yoga means union”. It can ring hollow when we learn that spirituality, like the unconscious, can be a broken space: We can think we’re practicing to heal our wounds, even as we deepen them.We
CONSPIRITUALITY PODCAST Conspirituality Podcast. With colleagues Derek Beres and Julian Marc Walker, I’ve been working on Conspirituality Podcast since May of 2020. Here’s our show description: A weekly discussion of the intersection between right-wing conspiracy theories and left-wing wellness utopianism. As the alt-right and New Age horseshoe towardeach other
WHIPLASH IS A TERRIBLE MOVIE An embittered genius jazz band conductor for an elite New York school emotionally and physically abuses and gaslights the mostly young men in his band, constantly. Who knows what happened in his own history for him to be this way but it was probably brutal. He plays the boys off of each other in a dominance hierarchy in which everyone pays WHAT THAT RAJNEESH DOCUMENTARY LEAVES OUT It can’t. What the Way brothers have made is an intoxicating Bollywood Western, minus the choreography. Yokels vs. invaders stage a culture war on a battlefield of orgasms and guns, fuelled by diamonds and drugs and the budget of the DA, played out against pop abstractions of orientalist woo and Americanist fantasies of freedom. THAT TIME WHEN I WAS IN A CULT AND GOT AN INCREDIBLE In 1999, a good friend of mine wrote to me about my immersion in the cult of Michael Roach. I recently found his typewritten letter during a closet clean-out, and read it again. And again. I’m retyping it out here with minor edits to protect anonymity. Though I didn’t fully absorb them then, these words haunted me for the entire year PATTABHI JOIS SEXUALLY ASSAULTED MEN: PHOTO EVIDENCE Content warning: photos of sexual assault, below. This post is intended to facilitate access to the following already-available images, which will be cited in Practice and All is Coming: Abuse, Cult Dynamics and Healing in Yoga and Beyond (March 2019).. In the first photo, Pattabhi Jois is seen sexually assaulting a male practitioner in Supta trivikramasana. TO ECO-ACTIVISTS BEING INTRODUCED TO BUDDHISM AS A SUPPORT This site hosts over 200 original posts on current affairs in modern global yoga and Buddhist culture. My aim is to popularize the use of interdisciplinary tools — from cult psychology and critical theory, for instance — towards the creation of safer practice spaces. “BETRAYAL OF TRUST”: 1991 MERCURY NEWS INVESTIGATION OF This article from 1991 has been parked on my website in PDF form for almost two years, after one of the anonymous sources for it sent it to me. It article was recently featured in Miranda Leitsinger’s investigative report for KQED, which presents two new allegations: one from 1983, and the other from 2015. The journalist, Bob Frost, standsby every detail.
QUOTES FROM RAM DASS THAT FIT THE PATTERN OF Quotes from Ram Dass That Fit the Pattern of Spiritualizing Sexual Abuse in Yoga. Not long after the glowing obits for Ram Dass started packing my feeds, Karen Rain, a trusted friend and colleague messaged me: “Did you know that Neem Karoli Baba was a sex offender too?”. No. No I didn’t. Neem Karoli Baba was Dass’s guru. ELEVEN-YEAR-OLD BOYS, TOUCHING WOMEN ON THE SUBWAY This site hosts over 200 original posts on current affairs in modern global yoga and Buddhist culture. My aim is to popularize the use of interdisciplinary tools — from cult psychology and critical theory, for instance — towards the creation of safer practice spaces. ABOUT – MATTHEW REMSKI About. I have been practicing meditation and yoga since 1996, learning from teachers from the Tibetan Buddhist, Kripalu, Ashtanga, and Iyengar streams. Along the way I’ve trained as a yoga therapist and an Ayurvedic consultant, and maintained a private practice in Toronto from 2007 to 2015. From 2008 through 2012 I co-directed Yoga Festival BLOG – MATTHEW REMSKI It’s a pleasure to meet you finally. Continue reading. “Cyndi Lee Interviews Matthew Remski about Working Through the Abuse Crisis in Modern Yoga and Buddhism (+ transcript)”. Articles, Audio, Blog, Charismatic Abuse, Cult dynamics, Press & Interviews, Yoga, Yoga culture, Yoga pedagogy June 19, WHAT THAT RAJNEESH DOCUMENTARY LEAVES OUT It can’t. What the Way brothers have made is an intoxicating Bollywood Western, minus the choreography. Yokels vs. invaders stage a culture war on a battlefield of orgasms and guns, fuelled by diamonds and drugs and the budget of the DA, played out against pop abstractions of orientalist woo and Americanist fantasies of freedom.CULT DYNAMICS
He shows the same face in relation to the legal system when he fantasizes about gunning people down on 5th Avenue with impunity. But when he challenges the *actual sun*, i.e., the source of all power on earth, he’s putting something at stake that his draft-deferring, germophobic soul rarely risks: his body. “BETRAYAL OF TRUST”: 1991 MERCURY NEWS INVESTIGATION OF This article from 1991 has been parked on my website in PDF form for almost two years, after one of the anonymous sources for it sent it to me. It article was recently featured in Miranda Leitsinger’s investigative report for KQED, which presents two new allegations: one from 1983, and the other from 2015. The journalist, Bob Frost, standsby every detail.
WHEN THE GOODNESS OF A YOGA GROUP COMES FROM THOSE IT Here’s something I wasn’t able to fit into the Sivananda Yoga feature, because it veers into commentary/opinion, and because it would have stretched the word count beyond breaking.. There was a guest on Rachel Bernstein’s IndoctriNation podcast (can’t recall the name or find it now) who said something I’ll paraphrase: “The cult takes the best part of a person. “I AM NOT (WHAT YOU NEED FROM) MY BODY”: EXPANDING ON A 1. “I am not my body” communicates a felt reality: a review + another possibility . It’s been about five months since I called out Cameron Shayne’s use of the “I am not my body” meme to rationalize his DIY libertarian It’s-Okay-To-Sleep-With-My-Students ethics. It started a rich discussion that gave me a lot to think about, and softened up this critical heart of mine. BYRON KATIE’S DOMINATION TECHNIQUE: A CASE STUDY Byron Katie’s Domination Technique: a Case Study. Enough people have asked me my thoughts about Byron Katie and “The Work” that I’ll give a few here in relation to the following video. In it, Katie “helps” a woman understand that her fears of the Trump administration are unwise, with an undercurrent of “deluded”. KINO’S HIP: REFLECTIONS ON EXTREME PRACTICE AND INJURY IN Kino’s Hip: Reflections on Extreme Practice and Injury in Asana. Heyam dukham anagatam. (Pain that is yet to come can be avoided.) Yoga Sutra II:16. On June 14 th, Kino MacGregor posted a photo to her 782K Instagram and 264K Facebook followers. She’s in hero pose, her hands in prayer, eyes closed, on a beach. REGGIE RAY FLIPS HIS OWN ABUSE CRISIS INTO HIS OWN Reggie Ray Flips His Own Abuse Crisis Into His Own Ultimate Dharma Teaching. In October of last year, twelve long-time students at Dharma Village / Dharma Ocean (I’ll call them the “DO12”) published an open letter disclosing “longstanding patterns of emotional and spiritual abuse within Dharma Ocean, the Buddhist community led byReggie
MATTHEW REMSKI
Matthew Remski – Yoga, Writing & Inquiry. We’ve all heard the cliché: “yoga means union”. It can ring hollow when we learn that spirituality, like the unconscious, can be a broken space: We can think we’re practicing to heal our wounds, even as we deepen them.We
BOOKS – MATTHEW REMSKI Matthew Remski writes and presents on yoga and ayurveda in the shadows of capitalism and climate change. He is the author of eight books of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction including Threads of Yoga: A Remix of Patanjali’s Sutras.. Follow on Facebook » CONSPIRITUALITY PODCAST Conspirituality Podcast. With colleagues Derek Beres and Julian Marc Walker, I’ve been working on Conspirituality Podcast since May of 2020. Here’s our show description: A weekly discussion of the intersection between right-wing conspiracy theories and left-wing wellness utopianism. As the alt-right and New Age horseshoe towardeach other
DIAMOND MOUNTAIN
Cult Dynamics in Yoga and Buddhism: Recognition, Recovery, Resilience Fridays at 4pm ET May 1 – June 19, 2020. In this webinar series, you will be engaged in active research and conversation aimed towards elevating critical thinking as a tool of spiritual inquiry, liberating modern Yoga and Buddhism from charismatic power dynamics and abuse, and building communities of sharing and WHIPLASH IS A TERRIBLE MOVIE An embittered genius jazz band conductor for an elite New York school emotionally and physically abuses and gaslights the mostly young men in his band, constantly. Who knows what happened in his own history for him to be this way but it was probably brutal. He plays the boys off of each other in a dominance hierarchy in which everyone pays WHAT THAT RAJNEESH DOCUMENTARY LEAVES OUT It can’t. What the Way brothers have made is an intoxicating Bollywood Western, minus the choreography. Yokels vs. invaders stage a culture war on a battlefield of orgasms and guns, fuelled by diamonds and drugs and the budget of the DA, played out against pop abstractions of orientalist woo and Americanist fantasies of freedom. PATTABHI JOIS SEXUALLY ASSAULTED MEN: PHOTO EVIDENCEPATTABHI JOIS ASHTANGA YOGA INSTITUTEPATTABHI JOIS YOGAPATTABHI JOIS ASHTANGA YOGAPATTABHI JOIS ABUSEPATTABHI JOIS QUOTESMANJU JOIS Content warning: photos of sexual assault, below. This post is intended to facilitate access to the following already-available images, which will be cited in Practice and All is Coming: Abuse, Cult Dynamics and Healing in Yoga and Beyond (March 2019).. In the first photo, Pattabhi Jois is seen sexually assaulting a male practitioner in Supta trivikramasana. THAT TIME WHEN I WAS IN A CULT AND GOT AN INCREDIBLE In 1999, a good friend of mine wrote to me about my immersion in the cult of Michael Roach. I recently found his typewritten letter during a closet clean-out, and read it again. And again. I’m retyping it out here with minor edits to protect anonymity. Though I didn’t fully absorb them then, these words haunted me for the entire year BYRON KATIE’S DOMINATION TECHNIQUE: A CASE STUDY Byron Katie’s Domination Technique: a Case Study. Enough people have asked me my thoughts about Byron Katie and “The Work” that I’ll give a few here in relation to the following video. In it, Katie “helps” a woman understand that her fears of the Trump administration are unwise, with an undercurrent of “deluded”. KINO’S HIP: REFLECTIONS ON EXTREME PRACTICE AND INJURY IN Kino’s Hip: Reflections on Extreme Practice and Injury in Asana. Heyam dukham anagatam. (Pain that is yet to come can be avoided.) Yoga Sutra II:16. On June 14 th, Kino MacGregor posted a photo to her 782K Instagram and 264K Facebook followers. She’s in hero pose, her hands in prayer, eyes closed, on a beach.MATTHEW REMSKI
Matthew Remski – Yoga, Writing & Inquiry. We’ve all heard the cliché: “yoga means union”. It can ring hollow when we learn that spirituality, like the unconscious, can be a broken space: We can think we’re practicing to heal our wounds, even as we deepen them.We
BOOKS – MATTHEW REMSKI Matthew Remski writes and presents on yoga and ayurveda in the shadows of capitalism and climate change. He is the author of eight books of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction including Threads of Yoga: A Remix of Patanjali’s Sutras.. Follow on Facebook » CONSPIRITUALITY PODCAST Conspirituality Podcast. With colleagues Derek Beres and Julian Marc Walker, I’ve been working on Conspirituality Podcast since May of 2020. Here’s our show description: A weekly discussion of the intersection between right-wing conspiracy theories and left-wing wellness utopianism. As the alt-right and New Age horseshoe towardeach other
DIAMOND MOUNTAIN
Cult Dynamics in Yoga and Buddhism: Recognition, Recovery, Resilience Fridays at 4pm ET May 1 – June 19, 2020. In this webinar series, you will be engaged in active research and conversation aimed towards elevating critical thinking as a tool of spiritual inquiry, liberating modern Yoga and Buddhism from charismatic power dynamics and abuse, and building communities of sharing and WHIPLASH IS A TERRIBLE MOVIE An embittered genius jazz band conductor for an elite New York school emotionally and physically abuses and gaslights the mostly young men in his band, constantly. Who knows what happened in his own history for him to be this way but it was probably brutal. He plays the boys off of each other in a dominance hierarchy in which everyone pays WHAT THAT RAJNEESH DOCUMENTARY LEAVES OUT It can’t. What the Way brothers have made is an intoxicating Bollywood Western, minus the choreography. Yokels vs. invaders stage a culture war on a battlefield of orgasms and guns, fuelled by diamonds and drugs and the budget of the DA, played out against pop abstractions of orientalist woo and Americanist fantasies of freedom. PATTABHI JOIS SEXUALLY ASSAULTED MEN: PHOTO EVIDENCEPATTABHI JOIS ASHTANGA YOGA INSTITUTEPATTABHI JOIS YOGAPATTABHI JOIS ASHTANGA YOGAPATTABHI JOIS ABUSEPATTABHI JOIS QUOTESMANJU JOIS Content warning: photos of sexual assault, below. This post is intended to facilitate access to the following already-available images, which will be cited in Practice and All is Coming: Abuse, Cult Dynamics and Healing in Yoga and Beyond (March 2019).. In the first photo, Pattabhi Jois is seen sexually assaulting a male practitioner in Supta trivikramasana. THAT TIME WHEN I WAS IN A CULT AND GOT AN INCREDIBLE In 1999, a good friend of mine wrote to me about my immersion in the cult of Michael Roach. I recently found his typewritten letter during a closet clean-out, and read it again. And again. I’m retyping it out here with minor edits to protect anonymity. Though I didn’t fully absorb them then, these words haunted me for the entire year BYRON KATIE’S DOMINATION TECHNIQUE: A CASE STUDY Byron Katie’s Domination Technique: a Case Study. Enough people have asked me my thoughts about Byron Katie and “The Work” that I’ll give a few here in relation to the following video. In it, Katie “helps” a woman understand that her fears of the Trump administration are unwise, with an undercurrent of “deluded”. KINO’S HIP: REFLECTIONS ON EXTREME PRACTICE AND INJURY IN Kino’s Hip: Reflections on Extreme Practice and Injury in Asana. Heyam dukham anagatam. (Pain that is yet to come can be avoided.) Yoga Sutra II:16. On June 14 th, Kino MacGregor posted a photo to her 782K Instagram and 264K Facebook followers. She’s in hero pose, her hands in prayer, eyes closed, on a beach. BOOKS – MATTHEW REMSKI Matthew Remski writes and presents on yoga and ayurveda in the shadows of capitalism and climate change. He is the author of eight books of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction including Threads of Yoga: A Remix of Patanjali’s Sutras.. Follow on Facebook » BLOG – MATTHEW REMSKI “A group or movement exhibiting great or excessive devotion or dedication to some person, idea, or thing, and employing unethical manipulative or coercive techniques of persuasion and control (e.g., isolation from former friends and family, debilitation, use of special methods to heighten suggestibility and subservience, powerful group pressures, information management, suspension of VIDEO – MATTHEW REMSKI This site hosts over 200 original posts on current affairs in modern global yoga and Buddhist culture. My aim is to popularize the use of interdisciplinary tools — from cult psychology and critical theory, for instance — towards the creation of safer practice spaces. ARTICLES – MATTHEW REMSKI by Dr. Jess Glenny, Rev. Jude Mills, Dr. Theo Wildcroft. We are a coalition of elders in our communities of practice, who identify as neurodivergent and/or as survivors of trauma. We call on you – the ‘wellness’ and ‘embodiment’ communities – to bear witness, to take personal and collective responsibility, and to commit tomoving
WHAT THAT RAJNEESH DOCUMENTARY LEAVES OUT It can’t. What the Way brothers have made is an intoxicating Bollywood Western, minus the choreography. Yokels vs. invaders stage a culture war on a battlefield of orgasms and guns, fuelled by diamonds and drugs and the budget of the DA, played out against pop abstractions of orientalist woo and Americanist fantasies of freedom.CULT DYNAMICS
He shows the same face in relation to the legal system when he fantasizes about gunning people down on 5th Avenue with impunity. But when he challenges the *actual sun*, i.e., the source of all power on earth, he’s putting something at stake that his draft-deferring, germophobic soul rarely risks: his body. “BETRAYAL OF TRUST”: 1991 MERCURY NEWS INVESTIGATION OF This article from 1991 has been parked on my website in PDF form for almost two years, after one of the anonymous sources for it sent it to me. It article was recently featured in Miranda Leitsinger’s investigative report for KQED, which presents two new allegations: one from 1983, and the other from 2015. The journalist, Bob Frost, standsby every detail.
BYRON KATIE’S DOMINATION TECHNIQUE: A CASE STUDY Byron Katie’s Domination Technique: a Case Study. Enough people have asked me my thoughts about Byron Katie and “The Work” that I’ll give a few here in relation to the following video. In it, Katie “helps” a woman understand that her fears of the Trump administration are unwise, with an undercurrent of “deluded”. “I AM NOT (WHAT YOU NEED FROM) MY BODY”: EXPANDING ON A 1. “I am not my body” communicates a felt reality: a review + another possibility . It’s been about five months since I called out Cameron Shayne’s use of the “I am not my body” meme to rationalize his DIY libertarian It’s-Okay-To-Sleep-With-My-Students ethics. It started a rich discussion that gave me a lot to think about, and softened up this critical heart of mine. PEMA CHÖDRÖN ON TRUNGPA IN 2011: “I CAN’T ANSWER THE Pema Chödrön on Trungpa in 2011: “I Can’t Answer the Relative Questions”. This is a followup on notes I published about the structure, language, and impact of disorganized attachment evident in the Shambhala organization. It also provides an update on the question of Chödrön’s approach to Shambhala history, and whether itprovides
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WE’VE ALL HEARD THE CLICHÉ: “YOGA MEANS UNION”. IT CAN RING HOLLOW WHEN WE LEARN THAT SPIRITUALITY, LIKE THE UNCONSCIOUS, CAN BE A BROKEN SPACE: We can think we’re practicing to heal our wounds, even as we deepenthem.
We can love teachers and methods that might be toxic to us. We can easily confuse the sensations of transcendence and trauma. We can feel like we’re loving people and saving the world while we’re really retrenching privileges of race, gender, and class, as well as ignoring the destruction that surrounds us. THE “UNION” I FOCUS ON IN MY PRACTICE, WRITING AND TRAINING USES HEART-CENTRED SKEPTICISM TO SEE THESE SPLITS MORE CLEARLY, SO THAT THEY CAN BE MENDED, WITH WHATEVER IT TAKES. The “whatever it takes” part often means seeking both beyond my own limited resources and the conventional/patriarchal yoga literature to the writers and activists of marginalized groups, who are doing the most profound spiritual work today. I hope to support them and continue learning from them in my work. PRACTICE AND ALL IS COMING "Matthew Remski opens a window into a part of the yoga world most people have never seen — a world where trusting seekers with open minds and full hearts are cruelly betrayed. He explores how this happens, what the sometimes debilitating and pervasive after-effects can be, and how to heal from it all. By interviewing many former followers and experts in the field, Matthew offers the reader a wonderfully rich and up-to-date synthesis of data and practical information. His book is unique, as it provides a significant amount of hard-hitting personal stories and facts while simultaneously being infused with sensitivity and an awareness of the impact these can have on those reading the book who have been through trauma. I will certainly be recommending this book to my clients and colleagues."RACHEL BERNSTEIN
LMFT, Educator and Therapist, Cult Specialist, Host of the “IndoctriNation” podcast "Matthew Remski was one of the first teachers to speak out on social media about physical and emotional injury and trauma in yoga. In doing so, he created a safe space for people to connect with each other over shared experiences and ultimately heal their own trauma. Practice and All is Coming: Abuse, Cult Dynamics, and Healing in Yoga and Beyond sheds light on the sexual and physical assault that has taken place in the yoga community, while providing a resource that helps teachers and students recognize when they may be in an unsafe situation and empowers them to protect themselves. This book should be required reading for every yoga teacher training." TRINA ALTMAN, BA, E-RYT 500, PMA-CPT Creator of Yoga Deconstructed© and Pilates Deconstructed© "The future of yoga depends on our ability to reconcile a past fraught with abuse and injury. If we ignore the pain that was caused in the name of yoga, our communal body will never heal. Yoga will go the way of step aerobics and the power of the teachings will evaporate into the history books. The first step in healing is acknowledging that there is a problem, and that is what Matthew Remski so powerfully demonstrates in Practice and All is Coming: Abuse, Cult Dynamics, and Healing in Yoga and Beyond. This is a text that can heal the wounds of yoga and allow us to re-imagine it as a safe practice for everyone, free from abuse and injury."JIVANA HEYMAN
Founder and Director of Accessible Yoga "For those of us who consider ourselves yoga teachers it may be especially important to scrutinize ourselves and our community with clarity and honesty, in particular when to comes to the issue of power. Yoga, with all of its promise, is as susceptible as any other human institution to becoming an environment for the abuse of power and all the suffering this engenders. With Practice and All is Coming, Matthew Remski has done us a great service by applying intellectual rigor to help us see how destructive power dynamics can set in and fester, and then by suggesting how we can make yoga practice a safe, respectful, and empowering experience for all who show up." DAVID EMERSON, YACEP, TCTSY-F Director: The Center for Trauma and Embodiment at JRI, author Trauma-Sensitive Yoga in Therapy and co-author Overcoming Traumathrough Yoga
"I welcome the powerful voices of the courageous, truth-speaking women that are heard so clearly in this valuable study. I applaud Matthew’s sensitive and subtle exposure of power imbalance, and his impeccable intentions to bring the voices from the margins to the centre. I give thanks that his moral compass guided him to reveal a crucial issue at the heart of modern yoga, and I hope that everyone who has ever shown up to a yoga class reads this book. I recommend it as required reading for every yoga teacher training course on theplanet."
UMA DINSMORE-TULI, PH.D., PH.D. Author of Yoni Shakti: A Woman’s Guide to Power and Freedom ThroughYoga and Tantra
"Matthew Remski has written a painstaking and unflinching book that details multiple women’s first person accounts of sexual abuse at the hands of Ashtanga yoga founder K. Pattabhi Jois, and the subsequent denial and cover up within his community. This is a vital read that highlights the courage of the women who came forward within a culture of cognitive dissonance, unquestioning obedience, and magical thinking, in which pain is re-labeled as healing, injury as opening, and isolation as enlightenment. At the same time, Remski thoughtfully navigates how yoga teachers and practitioners can continue to practice yoga today in all forms, while acknowledging the darker side of its origins. A heartbreaking and illuminating read." SARAH COURT, PT, DPT, E-RYT "Matthew Remski opens a window into a part of the yoga world most people have never seen — a world where trusting seekers with open minds and full hearts are cruelly betrayed. He explores how this happens, what the sometimes debilitating and pervasive after-effects can be, and how to heal from it all. By interviewing many former followers and experts in the field, Matthew offers the reader a wonderfully rich and up-to-date synthesis of data and practical information. His book is unique, as it provides a significant amount of hard-hitting personal stories and facts while simultaneously being infused with sensitivity and an awareness of the impact these can have on those reading the book who have been through trauma. I will certainly be recommending this book to my clients and colleagues."RACHEL BERNSTEIN
LMFT, Educator and Therapist, Cult Specialist, Host of the “IndoctriNation” podcast "Matthew Remski was one of the first teachers to speak out on social media about physical and emotional injury and trauma in yoga. In doing so, he created a safe space for people to connect with each other over shared experiences and ultimately heal their own trauma. Practice and All is Coming: Abuse, Cult Dynamics, and Healing in Yoga and Beyond sheds light on the sexual and physical assault that has taken place in the yoga community, while providing a resource that helps teachers and students recognize when they may be in an unsafe situation and empowers them to protect themselves. This book should be required reading for every yoga teacher training." TRINA ALTMAN, BA, E-RYT 500, PMA-CPT Creator of Yoga Deconstructed© and Pilates Deconstructed© "The future of yoga depends on our ability to reconcile a past fraught with abuse and injury. If we ignore the pain that was caused in the name of yoga, our communal body will never heal. Yoga will go the way of step aerobics and the power of the teachings will evaporate into the history books. The first step in healing is acknowledging that there is a problem, and that is what Matthew Remski so powerfully demonstrates in Practice and All is Coming: Abuse, Cult Dynamics, and Healing in Yoga and Beyond. This is a text that can heal the wounds of yoga and allow us to re-imagine it as a safe practice for everyone, free from abuse and injury."JIVANA HEYMAN
Founder and Director of Accessible Yoga "For those of us who consider ourselves yoga teachers it may be especially important to scrutinize ourselves and our community with clarity and honesty, in particular when to comes to the issue of power. Yoga, with all of its promise, is as susceptible as any other human institution to becoming an environment for the abuse of power and all the suffering this engenders. With Practice and All is Coming, Matthew Remski has done us a great service by applying intellectual rigor to help us see how destructive power dynamics can set in and fester, and then by suggesting how we can make yoga practice a safe, respectful, and empowering experience for all who show up." DAVID EMERSON, YACEP, TCTSY-F Director: The Center for Trauma and Embodiment at JRI, author Trauma-Sensitive Yoga in Therapy and co-author Overcoming Traumathrough Yoga
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KAREN RAIN SPEAKS ABOUT PATTABHI JOIS AND RECOVERING FROM SEXUAL AND SPIRITUAL ABUSE – VIDEO INTERVIEW This past March I had the honour of finally meeting Karen Rain in person, after two years of interviews, emails, and phone calls about her experience with Pattabhi Jois. We decided to do this interview as a summation of what we’d explored so far. In the interview, we cover the challenges of remembering trauma, of bearing witness to that remembering, and the struggle to break silence. Karen gives answers to the victim-blaming responses that have been thrown at her and others. She opens up a larger discussion about the connections between asana performance and the stress response of an abusive space. She discloses some of her post-Mysore PTSD symptoms, and speaks transparently about her former complicity in Ashtanga community dynamics.Watch the video »
YOGA’S CULTURE OF SEXUAL ABUSE: NINE WOMEN TELL THEIR STORIES As the #MeToo movement hits the yoga scene, women are coming forward on social media, forcing crucial questions into the spotlight that the entire industry must now confront: Is the yoga studio consistently the healing space it is advertised to be? Or has it engendered a culture in which spiritual surrender can be conflated with physical submission? Above all, practitioners must now ask how a culture with such a robust history of abuse has also been marketed as a path to bodily autonomy, spiritual awakening, and a cure-all for both mental and physical ailments. Read more at The Walrus » NAADA YOGA’S ONLINE EDUCATION PROGRAM PRESENTS A YEAR OF AYURVEDA WITH MATTHEW REMSKI Ayurveda offers an ancient language to help you become a poet of your internal experience. Its holistic practices of mindful, sensual awareness offer resilience against the inevitable changes of season, place, work, and identity. In this online education program, you’ll receive lifetime access to over 23 hrs of video instruction, downloadable pdfs and illustrations, 6 CEU’s recognized by the North American Yoga Alliance, and more.Find out more »
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CULT CLASSICS VS. CULT SURVIVOR LITERATURE: WHAT WILL YOUR SPIRITUALREADING BE NOW?
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August 18, 2019August 19, 2019 I CANNOT SELF-REGULATE WITH MINDFULNESS NOW THAT THE WORLD ISCOLLAPSING
I used to be able to self-regulate stress pretty quickly by putting myself in view of the sky or a tree, or by closing my eyes to listento
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ABOUT MATTHEW REMSKI Matthew Remski writes and presents on yoga and ayurveda in the shadows of capitalism and climate change. He is the author of eight books of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction including _Threads of Yoga: A Remix of Patanjali’s Sutras_. Follow on Facebook » Follow on Twitter »LASTEST ARTICLES
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