[www.yogaforums.com]

This long and haunting meditation article by Matthew Remski is well worth pondering.

[matthewremski.com]

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I think the story is really about cruelty – unintentional as the weather, and as close as the flesh – toileted from parents to children and teachers to students. Diamond Mountain provides a diorama of a primal scene: children needing love, attention, and support, adult survivors of abuse both denying and manipulating these needs out of blind revenge, and how the cycle repeats.

So it might just be about karma after all, but more material and intimate than Roach may ever understand. And more complex, as love and monstrosity become indistinguishable.

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Carney’s great gift with this book is to have assembled a functional outline for a sequel that could open with a far less mystical question than that with which he begins A Death on Diamond Mountain. Reaching beyond “How much should someone strive to know their own soul?”, the sequel might open with: “How far must we go to erase our trauma?”

It’s the first question I would ask about Ian Thorson, who began disappearing into spiritualized anorexia and dissociative meditation – and erupting in compensatory bouts of rage – from the day he met Roach. Why was he so eager to vanish?
"
(Earlier in the essay, Remski writes: "In Thorson’s effects Carney finds certificates of completion for two rounds of the solipsistic Silva Mind Control courses, which Ian began at the age of eleven. (What kind of pain prompts a boy to disappear within, to visualize himself as the controlling centre of his universe?))

What in (Ian Thorson's)early circumstances led him to devalue his own body, intentions, and desires with such hostility? I’m haunted by a scene Carney relates early in his book: after Ian’s death, his mother went through his journals and cut them to shreds, removing names and ideas that pained her grieving memory. What else cut away at his voice, his subjectivity? How much of the rest of his life did he spend in a penitential cave, exiled by force or his own necessity?

I would ask it about Roach, to understand how rewriting his history through a mashup of Tibetan mythology has helped him recover from a childhood with alcoholic parents. To understand why he needs to twist Tibetan philosophy so completely as to convince himself that he stands alone in a world that exists as a projection of his will. To understand what drives his need to accept or enforce the subjective erasure of those around them as vociferously as he preserves the texts of devastated Tibetan monasteries – as if digital files of ancient books could substitute for functional relationship. To understand the interaction between his dual drives towards erasure and appropriation and how they play out along a macro-political to interpersonal to intrapersonal spectrum. Roach appropriates and erases Tibetan and Apache culture. Roach appropriates and erases the human intellect, sexuality, speaking voice, and even name of Christie McNally, dubbing her “Vajrayogini”, “immortal”, and the “Angel of Diamond”. Not content with erasing her agency, demanding that they eat from the same plate, and keeping her on a 15-foot psychic leash, Roach appropriates her very body via Tantric fantasy, mimicking her gender and appearance. Carney didn’t secure an interview with McNally. None of the old crowd knows where she is. But would we recognize her if we did?

I’ll let Shaw have the last word on cult leaders. He seems much closer to the heart of the matter than Carney or I may ever get:


This narcissist in real life, a myth in his own mind, is so well defended against his developmental trauma, so skillful a disavower of the dependency and inadequacy that is so shameful to him, that he creates a delusional world in which he is a superior being in need of nothing he cannot provide for himself. To remain persuaded of his own perfection, he uses significant others whom he can subjugate. These spouses, siblings, children, or followers of the inflated narcissist strive anxiously to be what the narcissist wants them to be, for fear of being banished from his exalted presence. He is compelled to use those who depend on him to serve as hosts for his own disavowed and projected dependency, which for him signifies profound inadequacy and is laden with shame and humiliation. To the extent that he succeeds in keeping inadequacy and dependency external, he can sustain in his internal world his delusions of shame-free, self-sufficient superiority. (loc. 561)

and

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But to my eye, the fuller Diamond Mountain story isn’t about Tibetology, or the haunted Arizona desert, or sex rituals that could either be “spiritual” or abusive. It’s not about lost texts, the dangers of meditation, or the fantastical quest for enlightenment. It’s about what people do to each other when they’re trying to escape both the world and their past.

One of the assertions that Roach made in pretty much every one of lectures I attended from 1996 through 2000 was that no-one seriously came to the Buddhist path without having suffered some kind of horrible loss. He would say things like (I’m paraphrasing from a memory here I can’t shake):


Something terrible needs to happen to you to show you exactly what this world is. My mother died of cancer. Then my brother shot himself in the head. This lady [points to someone in the front row] watched her husband get run over by a car. I have a student in Manhattan whose newborn baby died in her arms. Nurses and doctors are the best students, if they haven’t gone numb, because hey know we’re living in a slaughterhouse. Possessions can’t help you, because you’ll lose them. Relationships can’t help you, because people leave you or die. Psychotherapy can’t help you, unless the therapist knows the way out of this world, but I haven’t met any therapists who do. You should be praying for a disaster to happen to you, because then you’ll finally get it! You’ll start studying Buddhism like there’s no tomorrow, because guess what? There is no tomorrow! All these people here [distinguishing the front row from those of us in the back] – they’re the lucky ones. They’ve had some tragedy, and they know they have nothing left to do in life but to figure out how to stop their suffering, and your suffering [waving to the back row]. They’ve got one purpose. They know there’s no turning back.

The argument carried hints of the more orthodox presentation – with which most Buddhist paths begin – of the necessity for sobering up to the facts of life and renouncing mundane consolations. But Roach cranked it to a fever pitch unseen in the more austere exegetes of the Tibetan, Theravadin, or Zen methods – weeping as he spoke, stoking the otherwise healthy existential despair of his listeners into a fire of dependency. The world was “insane”, humans were lost, and normal life was intolerable to anyone with a heart and brain. Luckily, there’s a solution, Roach would say, and if you come to my next lecture, buy my book – or if you’re really serious, follow me into the desert – I’ll tell you all about it.

Roach’s ultimate punch-line was about as distorting and abusive as one could imagine. According to his infantile misunderstanding of Buddhist philosophy, all of the suffering you have experienced – your mother dying, your divorce, the patient who flatlined on your table – is your own karmic fault, and yours alone. There’s no vulnerable physical body, no outside world, no other people, no diseases, no political power structures, no rape culture, no capitalism. Or if there are – those are your fault too. Reigning supreme over all horror is your own perverse mind, projecting the trash of your debauched behaviours into the future in an unending tape-loop of mayhem. Roach used a manipulative appeal to empathy and then convinced those who cried along with him to “drive all blame into yourself”, as his favourite verse from the Lo-jong teachings states.

I watched his following swell and finally overflow every temple and lecture hall we rented as he shed the same tears literally hundreds of times in those years. When the Dalai Lama’s office publicly castigated Roach for having the arrogance to stage a event in Dharamsala during His Holiness’ annual public teachings, the secretary showed more cultural savvy in his pinkie than Roach carries in his oversized noggin by slyly addressing the letter to “Reverend”, instead of “Geshe” – his disputed title. The Tibetans have his number as a bombastic sutra-thumper in old-timey, snake-oil-faith-healing American style.

But as far as I know, Tibetan Buddhist psychology doesn’t have the non-esoteric tools needed to deconstruct where Roach might be coming from, why people might follow his charisma while insisting to the very point of death that they are following the path of the Buddha.

I think the tools exist. Roach clearly markets to what a colleague of mine, inspired by Melanie Klein, describes as a “failure of ambivalence”, in which the baby cannot learn to accept that the mother both provides and withholds, and hence the world both gives life and takes it. Via neo-Tantric visualization, Roach commodifies the fantastical internal object relations that Ronald Fairbairn describes as substitutes for healthy experiences of intimacy with others. Roach amplifies in his followers the tortured self-blaming that Fairbairn describes as the “moral defence”, in which the child finds it less painful to consider himself bad than to acknowledge the world as chaotic, or blame his caregivers for their neglect or abuse.

Consider this morbid note from Thorson to a baffled friend:


I am responsible for lots and lots of evil. Every child murder I hear about on TV: I made them all. The perception of a bad thing can only come from the imprint made in the past of having done something bad.

These aren’t just Thorson’s words. They were on the lips of everyone in Roach’s circle, including myself for a short while, until I sensed something was really off. How did we get there, and who led us to such an impossibly grandiose and self-erasing precipice?

Through personal experience and extensive research, Daniel Shaw believes that those who readily internalize the moral defence are vulnerable to traumatizing narcissists who exhibit a four-point profile:
1. The wounds of “cumulative relational trauma throughout the developmental years, in the form of chronic shaming at the hands of parents and/or other significant caregivers who are severely narcissistically disturbed.”

2. “Delusional infallibility and entitlement” in which he is “obsessed with maintaining a rigid sense of omnipotent superiority”.

3. “Externalization of shame” in which “dependency and its accompanying shame [is] assigned to belong only to others, so as to protect himself from self-loathing.”

4. “Suppression of the subjectivity of the other”, in which the identity and agency of those who the traumatizing narcissist relies upon for self-validation must be erased in order to stabilize a safely vertical power relationship. (Loc. 1110-

Mindfulness
Is mindfulness making us ill?

It’s the relaxation technique of choice, popular with employers and even the NHS. But some have found it can have unexpected effects

Dawn Foster
Saturday 23 January 2016 10.00 GMT

I am sitting in a circle in a grey, corporate room with 10 housing association employees – administrators, security guards, cleaners – eyes darting about nervously. We are asked to eat a sandwich in silence. To think about every taste and texture, every chewing motion and bite. Far from being relaxed, I feel excruciatingly uncomfortable and begin to wonder if my jaw is malfunctioning. I’m here to write about a new mindfulness initiative, and since I’ve never to my knowledge had any mental health issues and usually thrive under stress, I anticipate a straightforward, if awkward, experience.

Then comes the meditation. We’re told to close our eyes and think about our bodies in relation to the chair, the floor, the room: how each limb touches the arms, the back, the legs of the seat, while breathing slowly. But there’s one small catch: I can’t breathe. No matter how fast, slow, deep or shallow my breaths are, it feels as though my lungs are sealed. My instincts tell me to run, but I can’t move my arms or legs. I feel a rising panic and worry that I might pass out, my mind racing. Then we’re told to open our eyes and the feeling dissipates. I look around. No one else appears to have felt they were facing imminent death. What just happened?

For days afterwards, I feel on edge. I have a permanent tension headache and I jump at the slightest unexpected noise. The fact that something seemingly benign, positive and hugely popular had such a profound effect has taken me by surprise.

Mindfulness, the practice of sitting still and focusing on your breath and thoughts, has surged in popularity over the last few years, with a boom in apps, online courses, books and articles extolling its virtues. It can be done alone or with a guide (digital or human), and with so much hand-wringing about our frenetic, time-poor lifestyles and information overload, it seems to offer a wholesome solution: a quiet port in the storm and an opportunity for self-examination. The Headspace app, which offers 10-minute guided meditations on your smartphone, has more than three million users worldwide and is worth over £25m. Meanwhile, publishers have rushed to put out workbooks and guides to line the wellness shelves in bookshops.

After meditation I would do things that were out of character, acting erratically. I had panic attacks
Large organisations such as Google, Apple, Sony, Ikea, the Department of Health and Transport for London have adopted mindfulness or meditation as part of their employee packages, claiming it leads to a happier workforce, increased productivity and fewer sick days. But could such a one-size-fits-all solution backfire in unexpected ways?

Even a year later, recalling the sensations and feelings I experienced in that room summons a resurgent wave of panic and tightness in my chest. Out of curiosity, I try the Headspace app, but the breathing exercises leave me with pins and needles in my face and a burgeoning terror. “Let your thoughts move wherever they please,” the app urges. I just want it to stop. And, as I discovered, I’m not the only person who doesn’t find mindfulness comforting.

Claire, a 37-year-old in a highly competitive industry, was sent on a three-day mindfulness course with colleagues as part of a training programme. “Initially, I found it relaxing,” she says, “but then I found I felt completely zoned out while doing it. Within two or three hours of later sessions, I was starting to really, really panic.” The sessions resurfaced memories of her traumatic childhood, and she experienced a series of panic attacks. “Somehow, the course triggered things I had previously got over,” Claire says. “I had a breakdown and spent three months in a psychiatric unit. It was a depressive breakdown with psychotic elements related to the trauma, and several dissociative episodes.”

Four and a half years later, Claire is still working part-time and is in and out of hospital. She became addicted to alcohol, when previously she was driven and high-performing, and believes mindfulness was the catalyst for her breakdown. Her doctors have advised her to avoid relaxation methods, and she spent months in one-to-one therapy. “Recovery involves being completely grounded,” she says, “so yoga is out.”

Research suggests her experience might not be unique. Internet forums abound with people seeking advice after experiencing panic attacks, hearing voices or finding that meditation has deepened their depression after some initial respite. In their recent book, The Buddha Pill, psychologists Miguel Farias and Catherine Wikholm voice concern about the lack of research into the adverse effects of meditation and the “dark side” of mindfulness. “Since the book’s been published, we’ve had a number of emails from people wanting to tell us about adverse effects they have experienced,” Wikholm says. “Often, people have thought they were alone with this, or they blamed themselves, thinking they somehow did it wrong, when actually it doesn’t seem it’s all that uncommon.”

People don't talk about the risk of injury. You need a good trainer
One story in particular prompted Farias to look further into adverse effects. Louise, a woman in her 50s who had been practising yoga for 20 years, went away to a meditation retreat. While meditating, she felt dissociated from herself and became worried. Dismissing it as a routine side-effect of meditation, Louise continued with the exercises. The following day, after returning home, her body felt completely numb and she didn’t want to get out of bed. Her husband took her to the doctor, who referred her to a psychiatrist. For the next 15 years she was treated for psychotic depression.

Farias looked at the research into unexpected side-effects. A 1992 study by David Shapiro, a professor at the University of California, Irvine, found that 63% of the group studied, who had varying degrees of experience in meditation and had each tried mindfulness, had suffered at least one negative effect from meditation retreats, while 7% reported profoundly adverse effects including panic, depression, pain and anxiety. Shapiro’s study was small-scale; several research papers, including a 2011 study by Duke University in North Carolina, have raised concerns at the lack of quality research on the impact of mindfulness, specifically the lack of controlled studies.

Farias feels that media coverage inflates the moderate positive effects of mindfulness, and either doesn’t report or underplays the downsides. “Mindfulness can have negative effects for some people, even if you’re doing it for only 20 minutes a day,” Farias says. “It’s difficult to tell how common [negative] experiences are, because mindfulness researchers have failed to measure them, and may even have discouraged participants from reporting them by attributing the blame to them.”

Kate Williams, a PhD researcher in psychiatry at the University of Manchester and a mindfulness teacher, says negative experiences generally fall into one of two categories. The first is seen as a natural emotional reaction to self-exploration. “What we learn through meditation is to explore our experiences with an open and nonjudgmental attitude, whether the experience that arises is pleasant, unpleasant or neutral,” she says.

The second, Williams says, is more severe and disconcerting: “Experiences can be quite extreme, to the extent of inducing paranoia, delusions, confusion, mania or depression.” After years of training, research and practice, her own personal meditation has included some of these negative experiences. “Longer periods of meditation have at times led me to feel a loss of identity and left me feeling extremely vulnerable, almost like an open wound,” Williams says. As an experienced mindfulness teacher, however, she says she is able to deal with these negative experiences without lasting effect.

Rachel, a 34-year-old film-maker from London, experimented with mindfulness several years ago. An old school friend who had tried it attempted to warn her off. “He said, ‘It’s hardcore – you’ll go through things you don’t want to go through and it might not always be positive.’ I suppose sitting with yourself is hard, especially when you’re in a place where you don’t really like yourself. Meditation can’t ‘fix’ anyone. That’s not what it’s for.”

After a few months of following guided meditations, and feeling increasingly anxious, Rachel had what she describes as a “meltdown” immediately after practising some of the techniques she’d learned; the relationship she was in broke down. “That’s the horrible hangover I have from this: instead of having a sense of calm, I overanalyse and scrutinise everything. Things would run round in my mind, and suddenly I’d be doing things that were totally out of character, acting very, very erratically. Having panic attacks that would restrict my breathing and, once, sent me into a blackout seizure on the studio floor that involved an ambulance trip to accident and emergency.” Rachel has recovered to some extent; she experiences similar feelings on a lower level even today, but has learned to recognise the symptoms and take steps to combat them.

So are employers and experts right to extol the virtues of mindfulness? According to Will Davies, senior lecturer at Goldsmiths and author of The Happiness Industry, our mental health has become a money-making opportunity. “The measurement of our mental and emotional states at work is advancing rapidly at the moment,” he says, “and businesses are increasingly aware of the financial costs that stress, depression and anxiety saddle them with.”

Rather than removing the source of stress, whether that’s unfeasible workloads, poor management or low morale, some employers encourage their staff to meditate: a quick fix that’s much cheaper, at least in the short term. After all, it’s harder to complain that you’re under too much stress at work if your employer points out that they’ve offered you relaxation classes: the blame then falls on the individual. “Mindfulness has been grabbed in recent years as a way to help people cope with their own powerlessness in the workplace,” Davies says. “We’re now reaching the stage where mandatory meditation is being discussed as a route to heightened productivity, in tandem with various apps, wearable devices and forms of low-level employee surveillance.”

One former Labour backbencher, Chris Ruane, recently proposed meditation for civil servants, on the basis that it would cut Whitehall costs by lowering sick leave through stress, rather than making the workplace and jobs less stressful in the first place. “The whole agenda is so fraught with contradictions, between its economic goals and its supposedly spiritual methods,” Davies argues. “It’s a wonder anyone takes it seriously at all.”

Mindfulness has also been adopted by the NHS, with many primary care trusts offering and recommending the practice in lieu of cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT). “It fits nicely with the Nutribullet-chugging, clean-eating crowd, because it doesn’t involve any tablets,” says Bethan, a mental health nurse working in east London. “My main problem with it is that it’s just another word for awareness.”

My main problem with mindfulness is that it’s just another word for awareness
Over the past few years, Bethan has noticed mindfulness mentioned or recommended increasingly at work, and says many colleagues have been offered sessions and training as part of their professional development. But the move towards mindfulness delivered through online or self-help programmes isn’t for everyone. “It’s fine, but realising you have depression isn’t the same as tackling it,” she says. “I don’t see it as any different from the five-a-day campaign: we know what we should be eating, but so many of us don’t do it. We know that isolating ourselves isn’t helpful when we feel blue, but we still do that.”

Part of the drive is simple cost-cutting. With NHS budgets squeezed, resource-intensive and diverse therapies that involve one-on-one consultations are far more expensive to dispense than online or group therapies such as mindfulness. A CBT course costs the NHS £950 per participant on average, while mindfulness-based cognitive therapy, because it’s delivered in a group, comes in at around £300 a person. “It’s cheap, and it does make people think twice about their choices, so in some respects it’s helpful,” Bethan says.

But in more serious cases, could it be doing more harm than good? Florian Ruths has researched this area for 10 years, as clinical lead for mindfulness-based therapy in the South London and Maudsley NHS foundation trust. He believes it is possible to teach yourself mindfulness through apps, books or online guides. “For most people, I think if you’re not suffering from any clinical issues, or illness, or from stress to a degree that you’re somewhat disabled, it’s fine,” he says. “We talk about illness as disability, and disability may arise through sadness, it may arise through emotional disturbance, like anxiety. Then, obviously, it becomes a different ballgame, and it would be good to have a guided practice to take you through it.” This runs counter to the drive towards online mindfulness apps, delivered without supervision, and with little to no adaptation to individual needs or problems.

But for Ruths, the benefits outweigh the risk of unusual effects. “If we exercise, we live longer, we’re slimmer, we’ve got less risk of dementia, we’re happier and less anxious,” he says. “People don’t talk about the fact that when you exercise, you are at a natural risk of injuring yourself. When people say in the new year, ‘I’m going to go to the gym’ – out of 100 people who do that, about 20 will injure themselves, because they haven’t been taught how to do it properly, or they’ve not listened to their bodies. So when you’re a responsible clinician or GP, you tell someone to get a good trainer.”

People may not know they have a bipolar vulnerability until they try mindfulness
Certain mental health problems increase the risk of adverse effects from mindfulness. “If you have post-traumatic stress disorder, there is a certain chance that you may find meditation too difficult to do, as you may be re-experiencing traumatic memories,” Ruths says. “Once again, it’s about having experienced trainers to facilitate that. We’ve seen some evidence that people who’ve got bipolar vulnerability may struggle, but we need to keep in mind that it may be accidental, or it may be something we don’t know about yet.”

Of course, people may not know they have a bipolar vulnerability until they try mindfulness. Or they might have repressed the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, only for these to emerge after trying the practice.

How can an individual gauge whether they’re likely to have negative side-effects? Both Farias and Ruths agree there isn’t a substantial body of evidence yet on how mindfulness works, or what causes negative reactions. One of the reasons is obvious: people who react badly tend to drop out of classes, or stop using the app or workbook; rather than make a fuss, they quietly walk away. Part of this is down to the current faddishness of mindfulness and the way it’s marketed: unlike prescribed psychotherapy or CBT, it’s viewed as an alternative lifestyle choice, rather than a powerful form of therapy.

Claire is clear about how she feels mindfulness should be discussed and delivered: “A lot of the people who are trained in mindfulness are not trained in the dangers as well as the potential benefits,” she says. “My experience of people who teach it is that they don’t know how to help people if it goes too far.”

There is currently no professionally accredited training for mindfulness teachers, and nothing to stop anyone calling themselves a mindfulness coach, though advocates are calling for that to change. Finding an experienced teacher who comes recommended, and not being afraid to discuss negative side-effects with your teacher or GP, means you’re far more likely to enjoy and benefit from the experience.

As both Claire and I have found, there are alternative relaxation methods that can keep you grounded: reading, carving out more time to spend with friends, and simply knowing when to take a break from the frenetic pace of life. Meanwhile, Claire’s experience has encouraged her to push for a better understanding of alternative therapies. “No one would suggest CBT was done by someone who wasn’t trained,” she says. “I’d like to see a wider discussion about what mindfulness is – and on what the side-effects can be.”

Some names have been changed.

• Dawn Foster’s new book, Lean Out, is published by Watkins.




[www.theguardian.com]

He's the flamboyant £40m 'hot yoga' guru who the celebs adore. But after £5m harassment case Bikram Choudhury's British lawyer says: 'He's just a seedy sex pest in pants'

Hot yoga guru Bikram Choudhury, 69, called a 'vile sexual predator'
Lawyer Minakshi Jafa-Bodden took sexual harassment case against yogi
She was awarded £5m in damages by court in Los Angeles
Choudhury denied wrongdoing and is expected to appeal the result

By CAROLINE GRAHAM IN LOS ANGELES FOR THE MAIL ON SUNDAY
PUBLISHED: 23:37 GMT, 30 January 2016 | UPDATED: 02:51 GMT, 31 January 2016

It’s the craze that promises lithe, honed bodies and spiritual enlightenment to millions of devotees worldwide, from the vogueish middle classes to celebrities such as Madonna, David Beckham, Lady Gaga and Jennifer Aniston.
But the flamboyant 69-year-old guru behind hot yoga – whose disciples endure 90-minute workouts in 105F heat – has been described as a ‘vile sexual predator’ by his British-educated former lawyer.

Minakshi Jafa-Bodden was last week awarded more than £5 million compensation by a jury in Los Angeles for sexual harassment, gender discrimination and wrongful dismissal.

Minakshi Jafa-Bodden, left, won £5million in compensation after suing hot yoga guru Bikram Choudhury for sexual harassment in a Los Angeles court

Bikram Choudhury has inspired several celebrities with his techniques

Minakshi Jafa-Bodden, left, won £5million in compensation after suing hot yoga guru Bikram Choudhury for sexual harassment in a Los Angeles court
The three-week case gave a disturbing insight into what Miss Jafa-Bodden called the ‘sickening hypocrisy’ of Calcutta-born yogi Bikram Choudhury, controller of the fashionable Bikram Yoga franchise, who sacked her, she claims, after she refused to cover up a rape allegation.

In an exclusive and devastating exposé of what she dubbed ‘the mad, mad world of Bikram’, the 46-year-old solicitor spoke exclusively to The Mail on Sunday last night to reveal how the yogi:

Posed ‘like a king’ on a throne while devotees stroked his hair, massaged his back and ‘fondled’ him under an orange towel on his lap;

Privately branded female employees and followers of his yoga ‘fat bitches’ and ‘stupid f***king bitches’ while sexually harassing young devotees who paid thousands to learn his techniques;

Urinated in front of her when she arrived for a business meeting.

‘He is a pig, a vile, nasty human being,’ Miss Jafa-Bodden said. ‘Choudhury thinks he’s God and can get away with anything.’

Six women have filed US civil cases accusing Choudhury of sexual attacks.

Five of them claim they were raped, but so far no criminal charges have been brought against him. Last week’s case was the first time a woman had taken on Choudhury in a courtroom and won.

Indian-born Miss Jafa-Bodden, said: ‘People ask all the time how he could get away with such appalling behaviour for so long but you have to understand the world he lives in.

A class at Bikram's Yoga College of India exercising in London (file picture)
+5

A class at Bikram's Yoga College of India exercising in London (file picture)
'He is treated as a God who is the centre of the Bikram universe. People who are attracted to Bikram yoga are either very high performing, highly functioning people or those who have depression or addiction issues.

'Bikram, like any form of yoga, helps deal with stress, depression and anxiety. It’s the ultimate paradox.

'He created a therapeutic exercise for people and then he preyed upon them. He sucks people in – mostly women – makes them feel comfortable and then takes advantage of them.’

This woman who threatens to bring down the £40 million Bikram empire moved to Britain at 16 to do her A-levels and graduated in law from Birmingham University.
She still has an English accent after spending much of her early career in London.
She then worked in the Cayman Islands and had returned to her native India when, in 2011, she first heard about LA-based Bikram Choudhury after a family friend told her he was looking for an in-house lawyer.

Intelligent and smart, she is not the type of woman one would imagine falling prey to a man she calls ‘a cult leader’.

He is famed for posing in black Speedos while wearing a £1 million diamond-encrusted Rolex. He once bragged: ‘I have balls like atom bombs.’

Yet, Miss Jafa-Bodden says, entering Choudhury’s warped world cost her her job, her health – and very nearly her sanity.

She moved to Los Angeles to take up her £90,000-a-year job in spring 2011, living with her daughter Alex in a flat provided by Choudhury.

See Bikram Choudhury... The man behind 'hot yoga' in 2013

She said: ‘I was a single mother of a six-year-old so I jumped at the chance to move to LA. It was a great job opportunity and way to support my family.’

She was given a car and was sponsored for a work visa by the man who had turned hot yoga into a multi-million-dollar enterprise, with 700 Bikram Yoga Schools in 30 countries since founding his first class in San Francisco in the 1970s.
Her office was directly opposite Choudhury’s in the two-storey ‘world headquarters’ of Bikram Yoga in LA.

At first, she was charmed by her charismatic boss and his wife Rajashree, who filed for divorce last December after 31 years of marriage, yet testified for him in court last week.

Miss Jafa-Bodden said: ‘He can be very charming when you first meet him. But that didn’t last very long.

Bikram portrays himself as a spiritual leader. There was an atmosphere of complete and utter obedience to him. No dissent was tolerated.’

She began to see Choudhury’s darker side after she questioned him about complaints from women devotees of Bikram Yoga that began to cross her desk – some of them extremely serious.

‘There were allegations of rape and assault. Perhaps the first complaint was a surprise but then I began to see a pattern.

‘He told me to “fix” the women that were saying things about him. But when I refused, he became abusive. It was “f***ing bitch” this and “f***ing bitch” that.
‘I began to witness inappropriate, unacceptable behaviour in front of my eyes. He licked his fingers in a suggestive, sexual manner. He pushed his tongue through his fingers to simulate a sex act.

‘It was repulsive. I was expecting a spiritual guru but he was manipulative and in my opinion rather evil.

'He brainwashes people, saying Bikram is the only true form of yoga. He makes you feel the outside world is not real.

‘It’s a virtual reality and he will take care of you because he’s Bikram and he is God, he can do anything. And as bizarre as it sounds, you start to believe him.’
Choudhury has joked he ‘invented’ hot yoga after being so cold in his San Francisco studio after moving from Calcutta that he cranked up the heating, only to discover students were able to bend and flex more easily and enjoyed a euphoric high from excessive sweating.

A picture of Choudhury with Elvis Presley is one of several he has of him with celebrities in his American home, according to Miss Jafa-Bodden

Choudhury's house includes a picture of him with former US President Bill Clinton

Miss Jafa-Bodden said Choudhury's house is lined with pictures of him with celebrities including Elvis Presley, pictured left, and former US President Bill Clinton, right

Shirley MacLaine was an early devotee as was former Wimbledon champion John McEnroe.

Miss Jafa-Bodden said: ‘Bikram’s house is lined with pictures of him with the rich and famous – with Elvis, Bill Clinton, everyone who is anyone. Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher signed in for a class one night.’

The bulk of Choudhury’s fortune comes from training others to practise his method and from franchising the Bikram Yoga brand.

Twice a year, hundreds of trainee Bikram teachers come to LA from around the world – most of them young women – to attend nine-week courses costing £10,000.
Many regarded him as their guru and would do anything to ingratiate themselves with him.

‘The office had staff but there were scores of young, unpaid women around who I can only describe as devotees,’ Miss Jafa-Bodden said.

‘I’d go to his office for a business meeting and there would be a devotee stroking his hair, another massaging his thighs.
'When I objected he would snap, “Who’s going to do my massage then? Are you going to f***ing massage me?”

‘He told me I was a “f***ing stupid bitch”. One time I showed up for a meeting and he had the door open and was urinating in front of me.’

In court documents she outlined Choudhury’s racist and homophobic slurs, alleging that he said ‘AIDS is caused by gays’ and ‘blacks just don’t get my yoga.’

Another alleged comment was: ‘Hitler had the right idea – he was just not efficient enough.’

So why, as an intelligent and well-qualified woman, didn’t she simply walk out? ‘I felt trapped,’ Miss Jafa-Bodden replies.

‘I am a single mum. I was living in a flat paid for by Bikram. He controlled my work visa, my phone. I drove his cars. He said he’d get my visa revoked.’

She said the worst behaviour took place during teacher-training courses. ‘He would sit on a throne at the front of this vast room filled with trainees with an air-conditioning unit blasting cold air on him while everyone else was sweating madly.

‘During lectures the throne would be lowered. He would be on this throne and there would be a girl stroking his hair and another massaging his back and another stroking him under orange towels that would be placed on his lap. It was disgusting, but it was a daily occurrence.

‘The girls were emaciated because he told them not to eat. One of his sayings is, “No food is the best food.”

‘The Bikram studios that carry his name around the world are recruiting grounds for his victims.

'Those studios are required to send a certain number of students to teacher-training every year.

They are taught to seek out Bikram’s type – very thin, white, very pale. But little do these women know his world is a nightmare.

'He is a cold, calculating predator. The young trainees, they are 21, 22 years old.

'He would take the presidential suite in the hotel where the training sessions took place and would summon these girls. This is when some of the girls said he attacked them.

‘I was called to a meeting in his room one night because we had to do a conference call. I walked in and he was under the bedcovers and he patted the bed and indicated that I should get in.

‘I was terrified. Bikram looks small but he is muscular, extremely powerful and intimidating. I managed to escape but these young women look up to him and he has complete control over them.’

Miss Jafa-Bodden was fired in March 2013 after, she claims, she refused to cover up the rape allegations.

Penniless and terrified of testifying against Choudhury, her lawyer gave her a picture of Margaret Thatcher to inspire her.

She described her courtroom victory as ‘a victory for women everywhere’, adding: ‘He never once denied his behaviour in court.

'When he was asked about the abuse he just shrugged it off and pretended he was a clown, that it was a joke. But it is no laughing matter. He needs help.’

Miss Jafa-Bodden was replaced as Choudhury’s lawyer by Petra Starke, a former White House lawyer. She corroborated much of Miss Jafa-Bodden’s evidence in court.
Choudhury – who was once caught walking through an American airport with $10,000 in cash – pleaded poverty, and said he had been forced to give away his collection of more than 40 cars including Rolls-Royces, Bentleys and Ferraris, a claim dismissed as ‘pure fiction’.

Miss Jafa-Bodden said: ‘People were terrified to stand up to this man. I wanted to show my 11-year-old daughter that it’s OK to be scared but you can fight through the fear. He destroyed my life and my career.’

Choudhury denied wrongdoing in court and denies the separate claims of sexual assault.

Last night he was believed to be at his £15 million Beverly Hills mansion. His legal team is expected to appeal


[www.dailymail.co.uk]

Friends, this is something to do when you are looking into getting involved with teacher trainings, or a guru's meditation gatherings, or an ashram.

Look at as many photographs as possible. Google Images is your friend.

Look and see if most or all the people present represent a diverse cross section - especially teacher trainings.

Is everyone young, beautiful and blonde?

Or, if you attend a teacher training or meditation group, look around you. Is it just one type? Take note of who gets the front row seats, who gets special attention from the guru.

Are all ages and conditions represented?

Or just a small subsection of humanity?

Quoted from Daily Mail article above:

Quote

The Bikram studios that carry his name around the world are recruiting grounds for his victims.

'Those studios are required to send a certain number of students to teacher-training every year.

They are taught to seek out Bikram’s type – very thin, white, very pale'.

He's the flamboyant £40m 'hot yoga' guru who the celebs adore. But after £5m harassment case Bikram Choudhury's British lawyer says: 'He's just a seedy sex pest in pants'

Hot yoga guru Bikram Choudhury, 69, called a 'vile sexual predator'
Lawyer Minakshi Jafa-Bodden took sexual harassment case against yogi
She was awarded £5m in damages by court in Los Angeles
Choudhury denied wrongdoing and is expected to appeal the result

By CAROLINE GRAHAM IN LOS ANGELES FOR THE MAIL ON SUNDAY
PUBLISHED: 23:37 GMT, 30 January 2016 | UPDATED: 02:51 GMT, 31 January 2016

It’s the craze that promises lithe, honed bodies and spiritual enlightenment to millions of devotees worldwide, from the vogueish middle classes to celebrities such as Madonna, David Beckham, Lady Gaga and Jennifer Aniston.

But the flamboyant 69-year-old guru behind hot yoga – whose disciples endure 90-minute workouts in 105F heat – has been described as a ‘vile sexual predator’ by his British-educated former lawyer.

Minakshi Jafa-Bodden was last week awarded more than £5 million compensation by a jury in Los Angeles for sexual harassment, gender discrimination and wrongful dismissal.

The three-week case gave a disturbing insight into what Miss Jafa-Bodden called the ‘sickening hypocrisy’ of Calcutta-born yogi Bikram Choudhury, controller of the fashionable Bikram Yoga franchise, who sacked her, she claims, after she refused to cover up a rape allegation.

In an exclusive and devastating exposé of what she dubbed ‘the mad, mad world of Bikram’, the 46-year-old solicitor spoke exclusively to The Mail on Sunday last night to reveal how the yogi:

Posed ‘like a king’ on a throne while devotees stroked his hair, massaged his back and ‘fondled’ him under an orange towel on his lap;

Privately branded female employees and followers of his yoga ‘fat bitches’ and ‘stupid f***king bitches’ while sexually harassing young devotees who paid thousands to learn his techniques;

Urinated in front of her when she arrived for a business meeting.

‘He is a pig, a vile, nasty human being,’ Miss Jafa-Bodden said. ‘Choudhury thinks he’s God and can get away with anything.’

Six women have filed US civil cases accusing Choudhury of sexual attacks.
Five of them claim they were raped, but so far no criminal charges have been brought against him. Last week’s case was the first time a woman had taken on Choudhury in a courtroom and won.

Indian-born Miss Jafa-Bodden, said: ‘People ask all the time how he could get away with such appalling behaviour for so long but you have to understand the world he lives in.

'He is treated as a God who is the centre of the Bikram universe. People who are attracted to Bikram yoga are either very high performing, highly functioning people or those who have depression or addiction issues.

'Bikram, like any form of yoga, helps deal with stress, depression and anxiety. It’s the ultimate paradox.

'He created a therapeutic exercise for people and then he preyed upon them. He sucks people in – mostly women – makes them feel comfortable and then takes advantage of them.’

This woman who threatens to bring down the £40 million Bikram empire moved to Britain at 16 to do her A-levels and graduated in law from Birmingham University.
She still has an English accent after spending much of her early career in London.
She then worked in the Cayman Islands and had returned to her native India when, in 2011, she first heard about LA-based Bikram Choudhury after a family friend told her he was looking for an in-house lawyer.

Intelligent and smart, she is not the type of woman one would imagine falling prey to a man she calls ‘a cult leader’.

He is famed for posing in black Speedos while wearing a £1 million diamond-encrusted Rolex. He once bragged: ‘I have balls like atom bombs.’

Yet, Miss Jafa-Bodden says, entering Choudhury’s warped world cost her her job, her health – and very nearly her sanity.

She moved to Los Angeles to take up her £90,000-a-year job in spring 2011, living with her daughter Alex in a flat provided by Choudhury.

She said: ‘I was a single mother of a six-year-old so I jumped at the chance to move to LA. It was a great job opportunity and way to support my family.’

She was given a car and was sponsored for a work visa by the man who had turned hot yoga into a multi-million-dollar enterprise, with 700 Bikram Yoga Schools in 30 countries since founding his first class in San Francisco in the 1970s.
Her office was directly opposite Choudhury’s in the two-storey ‘world headquarters’ of Bikram Yoga in LA.

At first, she was charmed by her charismatic boss and his wife Rajashree, who filed for divorce last December after 31 years of marriage, yet testified for him in court last week.

Miss Jafa-Bodden said: ‘He can be very charming when you first meet him. But that didn’t last very long.

Bikram portrays himself as a spiritual leader. There was an atmosphere of complete and utter obedience to him. No dissent was tolerated.’

She began to see Choudhury’s darker side after she questioned him about complaints from women devotees of Bikram Yoga that began to cross her desk – some of them extremely serious.

‘There were allegations of rape and assault. Perhaps the first complaint was a surprise but then I began to see a pattern.

‘He told me to “fix” the women that were saying things about him. But when I refused, he became abusive. It was “f***ing bitch” this and “f***ing bitch” that.
‘I began to witness inappropriate, unacceptable behaviour in front of my eyes. He licked his fingers in a suggestive, sexual manner. He pushed his tongue through his fingers to simulate a sex act.

‘It was repulsive. I was expecting a spiritual guru but he was manipulative and in my opinion rather evil.

'He brainwashes people, saying Bikram is the only true form of yoga. He makes you feel the outside world is not real.

‘It’s a virtual reality and he will take care of you because he’s Bikram and he is God, he can do anything. And as bizarre as it sounds, you start to believe him.’
Choudhury has joked he ‘invented’ hot yoga after being so cold in his San Francisco studio after moving from Calcutta that he cranked up the heating, only to discover students were able to bend and flex more easily and enjoyed a euphoric high from excessive sweating.

Shirley MacLaine was an early devotee as was former Wimbledon champion John McEnroe.

Miss Jafa-Bodden said: ‘Bikram’s house is lined with pictures of him with the rich and famous – with Elvis, Bill Clinton, everyone who is anyone. Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher signed in for a class one night.’

The bulk of Choudhury’s fortune comes from training others to practise his method and from franchising the Bikram Yoga brand.

Twice a year, hundreds of trainee Bikram teachers come to LA from around the world – most of them young women – to attend nine-week courses costing £10,000.

Many regarded him as their guru and would do anything to ingratiate themselves with him.

‘The office had staff but there were scores of young, unpaid women around who I can only describe as devotees,’ Miss Jafa-Bodden said.

‘I’d go to his office for a business meeting and there would be a devotee stroking his hair, another massaging his thighs.

'When I objected he would snap, “Who’s going to do my massage then? Are you going to f***ing massage me?”

‘He told me I was a “f***ing stupid bitch”. One time I showed up for a meeting and he had the door open and was urinating in front of me.’

In court documents she outlined Choudhury’s racist and homophobic slurs, alleging that he said ‘AIDS is caused by gays’ and ‘blacks just don’t get my yoga.’
Another alleged comment was: ‘Hitler had the right idea – he was just not efficient enough.’

So why, as an intelligent and well-qualified woman, didn’t she simply walk out? ‘I felt trapped,’ Miss Jafa-Bodden replies.

‘I am a single mum. I was living in a flat paid for by Bikram. He controlled my work visa, my phone. I drove his cars. He said he’d get my visa revoked.’

She said the worst behaviour took place during teacher-training courses. ‘He would sit on a throne at the front of this vast room filled with trainees with an air-conditioning unit blasting cold air on him while everyone else was sweating madly.

‘During lectures the throne would be lowered. He would be on this throne and there would be a girl stroking his hair and another massaging his back and another stroking him under orange towels that would be placed on his lap. It was disgusting, but it was a daily occurrence.

‘The girls were emaciated because he told them not to eat. One of his sayings is, “No food is the best food.”

‘The Bikram studios that carry his name around the world are recruiting grounds for his victims.

'Those studios are required to send a certain number of students to teacher-training every year.

They are taught to seek out Bikram’s type – very thin, white, very pale. But little do these women know his world is a nightmare.
'He is a cold, calculating predator. The young trainees, they are 21, 22 years old.

'He would take the presidential suite in the hotel where the training sessions took place and would summon these girls. This is when some of the girls said he attacked them.

‘I was called to a meeting in his room one night because we had to do a conference call. I walked in and he was under the bedcovers and he patted the bed and indicated that I should get in.

‘I was terrified. Bikram looks small but he is muscular, extremely powerful and intimidating. I managed to escape but these young women look up to him and he has complete control over them.’

Miss Jafa-Bodden was fired in March 2013 after, she claims, she refused to cover up the rape allegations.

Penniless and terrified of testifying against Choudhury, her lawyer gave her a picture of Margaret Thatcher to inspire her.

She described her courtroom victory as ‘a victory for women everywhere’, adding: ‘He never once denied his behaviour in court.

'When he was asked about the abuse he just shrugged it off and pretended he was a clown, that it was a joke. But it is no laughing matter. He needs help.’

Miss Jafa-Bodden was replaced as Choudhury’s lawyer by Petra Starke, a former White House lawyer. She corroborated much of Miss Jafa-Bodden’s evidence in court.
Choudhury – who was once caught walking through an American airport with $10,000 in cash – pleaded poverty, and said he had been forced to give away his collection of more than 40 cars including Rolls-Royces, Bentleys and Ferraris, a claim dismissed as ‘pure fiction’.

Miss Jafa-Bodden said: ‘People were terrified to stand up to this man. I wanted to show my 11-year-old daughter that it’s OK to be scared but you can fight through the fear. He destroyed my life and my career.’

Choudhury denied wrongdoing in court and denies the separate claims of sexual assault.

Last night he was believed to be at his £15 million Beverly Hills mansion. His legal team is expected to appeal.


Read more: [www.dailymail.co.uk]
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Make sure your yoga bliss is not built upon the misery of others and financial exploitation of others.

Here is a rule of thumb when pondering whether to get involved with a dharma teacher or yoga teacher:

Dharma teaching (which includes yoga) is meant to assist us to become aware of
our cravings so that we can question those cravings and become free in relation to our cravings, rather than being manipulated by those cravings.

IMO, a yoga or Dharma teacher should not behave or speak in ways that instill craving and discontent in students.

Quote

“Jivamukti gives you this antidote. You have something now. You’ve been in therapy, you’ve done all these things, but you’re still not healed,” she said. “You feel like you want a way to move forward with your life and transform, and they give you something. They give you something you can dedicate your whole life to.”

Whether it happened or not, this statement could instill discontent in many students, then hold out the yoga school as the solution. It is merely sales talk of the kind used to make us discontented with our smartphones and think we must, must must, upgrade to New Phone Z which will make us Awesome People Living Extraordinary, Brilliant Lives.

Here is something else to consider when assessing whether to become involved at a yoga
school.

Is it what it seems?

Are newcomers and teacher trainees and staff members all on the same page?

Or is the yoga school akin to a secret ridden family?

Is yoga taught there by teachers who consider themselves workers among workers, members of the human family?

Or are upper level members and the teachers involved in a secret job -- venerating the leader as some sort of guru, with newcomers excluded from this?

No matter how you feel you have benefitted and been healed by lessons at a yoga studio, your good feelings are not clean if your good feelings are produced by
teachers who are keeping secrets from you, teachers who are competing with each other to flatter the guru, and who are putting themselves into debt so as to obey the teacher and take special classes.

[www.yahoo.com]

comments

[www.yahoo.com]

[www.slate.com]

“where the lines between workplace and ashram were blurred and where supervisors doubled as gurus"

Quote

At Jivamukti, Lauer-Manenti was known as Lady Ruth, an honorific bestowed on her by Geshe Michael Roach, a tantric Buddhist most well-known for leading a three-year silent retreat in the Arizona desert at which one of his followers died.

[culteducation.com]

Note that the yoga teacher is described as having formerly studied with "Geshe" Michael Roach, a most controversial neo Vajrayana guru

[culteducation.com]



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/07/2016 11:04PM by corboy.

The comments following this article are well worth reading.

The basics:

Quote

On thinking about it, the victim could probably easily win if she can prove the following:

1. Did the victim have good reason to believe that if she did not comply with Lady Ruth's requests, her career would be negatively affected?

2. Did Jivamukti make it clear, if unwritten, that dissent of any kind was intolerable?


If either statement is true, then Faurot has a solid case. Universities and corporations understand this so why shouldn't a stinky old ashram?

Quote

I've done yoga for more than 15 years, and studios like Jivamukti and Bikram and the teachers mentioned in this article have been a total turnoff for me. If everyone is crowding around someone and fighting to get into their class, I go to another class. When people are expressing wide-eyed devotion to the person beaming beatifically at the front of the room, that makes me look a lot more critically at the person who's at the front of the room. And if a yoga teacher isn't capable of bringing their own water to class, then I don't really know if they're capable of teaching me anything valuable.

Quote

These predators become experts at identifying the people who will be most vulnerable to their advances.

Quote

I was just going to post the same thing! The fact that power was given means nothing in this regard. To an extent, we've "given" power to many adults in our lives, like our bosses. This woman was in a teacher/boss capacity and manipulated an intimate relationship. The fact that the relationship was entered into willingly initially should have any bearing.

Corboy: How abusers work -- selecting exactly those persons who are less likely to
fight back or leave. The person who wrote the comment below is referencing stage
hypnotists, but this strategy is used by opportunistic Lotharios and at worst,
by molester types. One Zen master who later resigned in disgrace had bedded a
number of adult women students. The way he found his targets, was to test various women. One way he did it would be to walk alongside the lady and then bump into her. If she protested or vigorously moved away, that signaled that she was not not worth the risk.

If the lady didnt back away or protest, this signaled that she was potential prey.

Corboy can inform you that growing up terrified in a bad family can leave a person (male or female) afraid to speak up or fight back when someone tests them in this manner. One tends to go into a 'freeze' response.

Quote

The problem is that abusers work like those entertainment hypnotists: they start with a simple request of say, 50 people, and find the 30 people suggestible enough to go along with it. Then they slowly escalate the requests, winnowing down the field from 30 people willing to do some of the requests, then 20 people willing to do half the requests, 10 people willing to do most of the requests, until they have three people who are so suggestible that they're willing to humiliate themselves because they're gullible enough to believe they're truly hypnotized.

Blaming the victim -- and rebuttals to that.

Quote

It may be cultish, but Holly made a choice to worship there. Nobody forced her.

. 1 day ago
No nobody forced her. But remember, this was both her boss, and her pastor. A double dose of influence - and after spending all that money, can you blame her for being afraid to fall out of favor and therefore loose the good (well paying) shifts?
FlagShare2A Fine DisregardTarakanaLikeReply

The P
The P 23 hours ago
. Nobody forced her but it's not like they stated up front that her job would include creepy behavior from her supervisor/spiritual advisor as well as retribution if she spoke out against these abuses. There were clear negative impacts to her job as a result of her complaints against her supervisor. It's pretty clear cut sexual harassment and there are laws in place to hold people and businesses accountable for this behavior.
FlagShare

Corboy: The worst victim bashing occurs when persons dare to speculate that the
victim suffered from some sort of psychiatric disorder.

Keep the eye on the ball, folks. The law. Again, one discussant summed it up:

Quote

On thinking about it, the victim could probably easily win if she can prove the following:

1. Did the victim have good reason to believe that if she did not comply with Lady Ruth's requests, her career would be negatively affected?

2. Did Jivamukti make it clear, if unwritten, that dissent of any kind was intolerable?


If either statement is true, then Faurot has a solid case. Universities and corporations understand this so why shouldn't a stinky old ashram?

A thoughtful overview from 'Pine State'

Quote

There have been plenty of scandals involving south Asian mystics and gurus. I spent some time at Satchidananda Ashram and was aware of the allegations, though not in depth, against its founder before I went to stay for an internship program. Coming from a Protestant Christian background, guru worship never felt right to me, but my experience there actually made me ambivalent when I did learn more about the allegations. On one hand, I get annoyed with people who think that woman have nothing better to do with their energy than falsely accuse others of sexual misconduct toward them. On the other hand, the competition for closeness to the guru had to make me wonder whether jealousy could lead to the accusations. (To be clear, I had no personal contact with Satchidananda, just the monks and nuns conducting the program.) After I learned the extent of the allegations, my first instinct took over, but there were good and spiritually gifted people there (who were also betrayed, IMO) and it didn't make me devalue my experiences there.


The only difference I see is that this is happening in a newer generation of U.S. yogic culture that is in upscale studios and not spartan monasteries. The offenders seem to be western teachers. I don't doubt that guru worship creates a setting that is ripe for letting unethical people commit sexual abuse. The desire to turn yoga into an exercise program has made westerners forget that it's a spiritual practice. That could be a good thing for the many who need it, but it holds the same dangers that deference to religious authority figures has generated for many religions.

Quote

Human Kindness Foundation in Durham N.C, which is an ashram-style commune based on helping prisoners was exposed when their founder/leader and guru Bo Lozoff was found to be sleeping with just about everyone working there.

(URL inserted by Corboy -- [www.indyweek.com]

Bo died in a motorcycle crash not too long after the sexual escapades were exposed and the place shut down. It re-opened after his death and is still operating today. He had required the workers to give up all personal wealth/property and devote themselves entirely to the cult.

Look at the history of Kripalu Yoga Center. The contrast between the bare-walled cells that the students/disciples slept in versus the beautifully appointed house the guru built for himself is pretty striking.

Ironically, after guru was unmasked as serial sexual predator, many Kripalu-ites joined up with John Friend, who, of course, turned out to have the same predilection for sleeping with his youngest, hottest students.

\

(Corboy. Damn, it. Decades ago, I donated in support of Kindness House. I even attended a couple of Bo Lozoff's lectures. Am very, very sad that he turned into just another guru bully. I can tell you that Bo's first book, "We are All Doing Time" was and is, a charming and delightful read. And...it does put Bo Lozoff in a very good light. Must tell you that prisoners are as vulnerable as elders and young children. They dared not refuse Bo, or they'd lose probation and be 'violated' back to prison and with bad marks in their records.)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/07/2016 11:45PM by corboy.

Prisoners are as vulnerable a group as elders and young children.

One is sentenced to do time in a prison. One is not supposed to be
sentenced to be a tortured slave to a megalomaniac.

(Corboy: In the 1990s, I sent checks to support this guy's ashram. Learning all this has made me heart broken.)

This article is lengthy but well worth reading.

The two faces of Bo Lozoff

[www.indyweek.com]

This disclosure about Neem Karoli Baba is very interesting. I was not aware that
the old coot abused his students and conned them to believe this was emancipatory.

Quote

Lozoff's guru is the now-deceased Neem Karoli Baba, whom Lozoff claims to have seen in a dream when he was 8 but never met. Author Ram Dass described Baba in his biography, Miracle of Love, as a "master of abuse" who sheltered criminals but also had sex with his devotees. Baba tormented devotees with "playful" abuse such as making arbitrary and often conflicting demands and humiliating them publicly, as a means to "loosen the minds" of followers.

Catherine Wessinger, professor of The History of Religions and Women's Studies at Loyola University in New Orleans, said Baba's biography is relevant in analyzing Lozoff's behavior.

"He's got a spiritual calling, or he feels he does," she said of Lozoff. "He feels he's following his guru in terms of the service he was doing, but also it's possible he was following his guru in terms of sexual activity. He just seems blind to the fact that these women were not in a position of having much choice. Their choices were pretty limited, given their circumstances. He doesn't really see that."

The sexual power dynamic between Lozoff, a spiritual teacher, and the woman parolee and other female acolytes was at best unhealthy and at worst abusive, according to Wessinger and another religious studies expert.

Sexual yoga and tantra "can be abused," Wessinger said, adding, "Ideally, it's about two partners engaged in spiritual practice together. The inequality in these relationships [at Kindness House], and also the lack of knowledge on the part of the women, would have put them at a disadvantage. I don't see where it would have been spiritually beneficial to the women where they weren't equal partners in that sexual and spiritual relationship."

She said Lozoff's insistence that he was a "mystic," and not a teacher, was specious.

"Lozoff is claiming he's not a guru, he's not a teacher—he's claiming to be a mystic. Yet, how would these women have known anything about sexual energies, tantra, chakra, unless he taught it to them? That would have put him in a teacher role."

Timothy Miller, professor of Religious Studies at the University of Kansas and an expert on intentional communities, said a common problem among all faiths is for leaders to have unchecked power.

"I think it's bad for people to be in a position of leadership where not only do they have authority and power, but also they have people looking up to them and telling them how wonderful they are."

He said that, in an environment of adoration, it's hard to "keep your bearings."

"If he [Lozoff] set down these rules, and expected people to follow them, there's no reason to think he didn't intend to follow it himself, originally," he said. "But things change, and you get carried away. And people are sexual beings, men and women alike. It's a temptation that's there."

Miller said having a mystical calling is common across religious beliefs, and in the proper perspective, can be beneficial.

"What becomes a problem is that you decide, therefore, you're superior," he said. "It can make you think 'I'm so spiritually advanced that the normal rules don't apply to me.'"

Letters to the editor of Indy magazine after the article was published.

For full text read here:

September 3, 2008

Quote


Going off about Lozoff

Editor's Note: Our Aug. 27 cover story, "The two faces of Bo Lozoff," generated significant response from supporters and critics of the spiritual leader. The Indy stands behind the story; we made two corrections (see note on story).

Shortly after the interview with Lozoff, we received and confirmed information that he had contacted one of our sources by e-mail and phone, pressing her to discuss with him why she approached the Indy. The Indy also received e-mails from Lozoff and his supporters asking us not to run the story.

Before the story was published, Lozoff contacted his supporters via e-mail, criticizing the Indy and suggested "if they feel so moved" they should write letters to the paper. This isn't to say that all the supportive letters were prompted by that e-mail, only that there was an attempt to organize such an effort.

A full transcript of the interview between reporter Matt Saldaña and Lozoff is posted on the online story. There are more than 50 comments from readers online. More letters will be printed next week.

A few:

Quote

Melissa Lozoff
Durham

The writer is Bo Lozoff's daughter-in-law.

I was a tremendous admirer of Bo Lozoff, the Prison Ashram Project and Kindness House. I met him and the staff in 1996 and began volunteering regularly, as I revered their simple lifestyle, devotion to service and spiritual practices very deeply. Shortly after I began volunteering, Bo created a Spiritual Order that I became a novice and then member of. I did not take the precepts, requirements or vows lightly and was delighted to have found a structured, accountable mechanism to give my spiritual life a greater emphasis.

In fall 2002, I began dating a woman whom I had met while volunteering at Kindness House. Within a very short period of time I discovered that she had been involved with Bo sexually and romantically. I was crushed, outraged, in a state of utter disbelief.

In the weeks following, there was a major damage control effort prompted by Bo and endorsed by the board: how this was all sacred, spiritual and mysterious. I went on to marry this woman in haste despite a resounding amount of information that suggested I might want to wait. I look back now and see that I was in a haze of naivety and spiritual hypnosis. I take full responsibility for this.

Yet I never heard a word from Bo or any member of the Board. No "Sorry, buddy, no hard feelings." These acts are not, in and of themselves, inexcusable or irreparable. But what is excruciatingly violating and traumatizing is the silence. Bo had no accountability for his actions to me whatsoever. And, perhaps even more frightening, no accountability to the Board.

My marriage has all but dissolved. I don't want to imply that Bo is the sole reason, but I've never been able to put that incident behind me. I hope someone or something can help Bo. I hope I can open my heart and trust again.

Bill Wagner
Hillsborough

I have volunteered at Human Kindness Foundation for over five years, mainly reading and responding to a portion of the 500-plus letters they receive weekly from prisoners. I know what Bo's writing means to them. Many of these inmates have opened themselves up to spirituality after reading Bo's book We're All Doing Time. In the forward of that book, the Dalai Lama writes, "It is futile to harbor hatred and ill-will even towards those who abuse us."

Unfortunately, it appears that Mr. Saldaña and some of the people interviewed for the article are coming from such a place of hostility. I don't necessarily agree or disagree with Bo's unconventional style of spiritual healing. Nor do I dismiss the suffering that some individuals feel over what happened to them in their relationships with Bo. However, I believe that lashing out at him and HKF with such malice is counterproductive. Such enmity will negatively affect the work of HKF, and all organizations that promote spirituality and service to humankind.

I sought Bo's help when I felt completely stuck in my life, precisely because I knew him to be unconventional and that he would think outside the box. We met together several times in his office (which did have a window) and spoke at length. I credit him with helping me on my spiritual journey and encouraging me to continue to work at my current relationships, including the one with my life partner. I am forever grateful not only to Bo, but to HKF for following their calling to serve God and humankind.
RB
Durham

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I'm the woman in the article who arrived in 1999. I really don't think Bo understands the harm he has caused; otherwise why would he continue to minimize and invalidate my experience so much? For Bo to call our relationship "mutual sexual behavior" is not taking into account the power differential and my prior history of abuse. Bo describes the situation as "painful and confusing to us both," whereas I'd call the fallout downright devastating. My life and my marriage have mostly been a mess since I left Kindness House, and while I've done a tremendous amount of personal healing, my marriage is also ending from what I consider the toxic fallout of this situation.

The only reason I approached the Indy is because I don't want other women (or men, for that matter) to be hurt. Yes, this is a private, personal matter, but Bo has a very wide reach, thus my inclination to go with a public venue and warn followers who are not aware of Bo's other side. People who came to KH as vulnerable as I did deserve to know (even now) what they're getting into, since Bo does not have any checks and balances on his behavior.

The fact that Bo engaged in deceitful behavior that took advantage of me emotionally, psychologically, spiritually and sexually, not just once but over a sustained period of time, and not just with me but with other women, is a violation and betrayal of relational trust that must be condemned and condemned loudly and publicly, as the scandal of pedophilia within the Catholic priesthood has taught us. As the gay community often reminded us during the days when public support for AIDS victims was weak, "silence = death."

Name withheld by request
Chapel Hill

As a volunteer and friend of Human Kindness Foundation for 15 years, and a constant visitor to Kindness House over the lifespan of that community, I am absolutely certain that Bo Lozoff has never "psychologically terrorized" or been physically violent with another human being.

The parolees who came to Kindness House brought plenty of their personal issues into the daily life of the community, to the extent that often its other members were not able to get their own work done. Bo never stopped caring about, supporting and showing incredible generosity to anyone who came to Kindness House, including specifically those who "came forward with allegations."

It is tragically easy for someone who has no direct experience of the circumstances, and is crediting only one side of the story, to create an impression of what is already assumed. And for the public to then assume implications to be truth. Bo Lozoff has given the whole of his life—every iota of it—in service to others. I don't know of anyone else about whom that could be said.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/08/2016 12:59AM by corboy.