ACM Group Yoga trendy but self-serving
Posted by:
karenpf
()
Date: March 20, 2016 09:06PM
I first got involved with ACM Group Yoga when I met the founders at the Sydney’s Holistic Business Network in 2002.
I fondly remember Samudra as their most welcoming soul, a lovely holistic doctor from London who sadly passed away from cancer in Bondi at Easter 2006.
She was in my view as close as it gets to an enlightened being but was taken from us before her 40th birthday, this was a difficult time as she’d always welcomed many spiritually-minded people into her apartment, we’d had many heartfelt meditations and yoga sessions there.
I became involved with a group of people who spent time with Samudra in her last year. I wouldn’t say nursed her because with her wisdom and kindness she delighted us.
In hindsight the other people who founded ACM Group saw an opportunity to take advantage of the intense emotions among Samudra's friends and we all started getting together even five or six times a week, there would have been 20 or more of us around Christmas 2005 at least.
We started talking about advanced meditation techniques and had a few rebirthing sessions even in Samudra's lounge while she was battling cancer. They were not properly handled in my view and one of the group developed schizophrenia possibly as a result of a rebirthing-gone-wrong and was no longer welcome.
One of the ACM Group founders, who used to be an advertising salesperson, renamed himself with an appropriately guru-like name Swami Satlok Premananda during this period and asked me to facilitate some advanced conscious meditation workshops around Bondi. After Samudra passed away, we started doing free intro nights in Lane Cove and the Blue Mountains.
I later discovered that a few of the founders had been trying to persuade Samudra to leave her estate to them as a spiritual gift. When her mother arrived to care for her, and later her father as she neared her passing, they also tried to get the parents to make a substantial donation to set up a centre in her honour. The signs were there early on but I didn’t know it at the time.
Despite the challenges of being with Samudra while she battled cancer, during that time I started to feel relieved to have found a community with like-minded people and a sense of global consciousness. It started to take over my life. I didn’t mind helping run the evening meditation and yoga nights, even when they started charging a small fee for them I continued doing the work for free. It was good to belong to a group who’d been through a very upsetting experience but come out the other side with a soulful life purpose.
With Sydney house prices going through the roof it didn’t bother me when my house became a place for Jurgen and Daniel to come and stay with me (rent-free I might add), though I did feel a little uncomfortable when they seemed to both have a rotating schedule of female acolytes who would stay over as well. My place was labelled the tantra palace by my family - and a neighbour complained about the comings-and-goings but as an ex-Sannyasin I disregarded them as repressed.
It’s when we moved to the Blue Mountains that the structured and materialistic sides to ACM Group started to show their true colours. I joined in the trend of course, becoming Ma Vasumati, the enabler and recruiter. The intro nights had become weekend workshops and, justified as necessary for paying the rent on our centre, the workshops were priced at $800 per weekend, and we lesser lights of the organisation were given sales quotas - it suddenly started to feel less like a community and a bit more like a business. But we all reaffirmed with each other that it was for the greater good.
There was a rush by the top dogs to adopt their spiritual names - we had everything looking right to the outside world. The names manifested a hierarchy which increased the fawning around them.
ACM Group Yoga was supposed to be a pure space where spirit and love could manifest for world peace and enlightenment. So I found it weird that one of the leaders started showering his attention on one devotee - who just happened to be physically attractive and from a well-to-do Sydney family. An out-and-out spiritual narcissist, she was almost always seated at the front of the classes and group meditations. I started to find the whole thing even more awry than when they were dossing at my house in Sydney, the way the devotees would crowd around the acharya and he would be grooming this young woman.
Their big success was when one of the older members died and much to the horror of her daughters, she left most of her assets to the group. The look of glee and triumph on the face of the leaders disturbed me. I hadn’t given them my property, I’d rented it out, but my rent money went into the group while I continued living the ascetic life, on a vegan diet and being not far off a breatharian - their pure water diet as they call it. As soon as they got the inheritance they spent every weekend hunting for a new centre and in the end that money bought their new premises - but those of us on the inside certainly know whose name ended up on the title!
ACM Group Yoga has questionable aspects as regards their advanced programs. The cost involved in doing these 12-month courses is a long way from the days of doing free meditations. Where's all this money going to? They say they’re focused on the spirit plane and are non-material, so why do they charge thousands of dollars to do their programs? I started to question whether it could be some sort of scam or whether someone's exploiting the group at the the top. Everyone is so gushing about Acharya and the work he's doing for planetary consciousness, but when I suggested we start making the group financially accountable, I was stone-walled.
They promote the charitable work they do in India, helping outcasts and the building of the orphanage, but I urge people who are reading this to be careful about getting involved with this group. I’m not saying they’re the worst cult ever, but I have questions about their operation and the behaviours of their top teachers. Some things don’t match up and the signs from within increasingly pointed to it being a system to defraud the vulnerable and unwary.
It’s when I got called into a meeting and asked to sell my property and give the money to the group, that my materialistic self-preservation started to kick back in.
I was told this was a spiritual weakness on my part, but I’d already given every aspect of my life to them for many years, except my property, which I cannot take away from my children.
As expensive and stressful as life in Sydney is now, I can understand people wanting to escape the rat-race, I feel I should warn people about this community. If in a quest for enlightenment and happiness, I suggest you look elsewhere.
I fondly remember Samudra as their most welcoming soul, a lovely holistic doctor from London who sadly passed away from cancer in Bondi at Easter 2006.
She was in my view as close as it gets to an enlightened being but was taken from us before her 40th birthday, this was a difficult time as she’d always welcomed many spiritually-minded people into her apartment, we’d had many heartfelt meditations and yoga sessions there.
I became involved with a group of people who spent time with Samudra in her last year. I wouldn’t say nursed her because with her wisdom and kindness she delighted us.
In hindsight the other people who founded ACM Group saw an opportunity to take advantage of the intense emotions among Samudra's friends and we all started getting together even five or six times a week, there would have been 20 or more of us around Christmas 2005 at least.
We started talking about advanced meditation techniques and had a few rebirthing sessions even in Samudra's lounge while she was battling cancer. They were not properly handled in my view and one of the group developed schizophrenia possibly as a result of a rebirthing-gone-wrong and was no longer welcome.
One of the ACM Group founders, who used to be an advertising salesperson, renamed himself with an appropriately guru-like name Swami Satlok Premananda during this period and asked me to facilitate some advanced conscious meditation workshops around Bondi. After Samudra passed away, we started doing free intro nights in Lane Cove and the Blue Mountains.
I later discovered that a few of the founders had been trying to persuade Samudra to leave her estate to them as a spiritual gift. When her mother arrived to care for her, and later her father as she neared her passing, they also tried to get the parents to make a substantial donation to set up a centre in her honour. The signs were there early on but I didn’t know it at the time.
Despite the challenges of being with Samudra while she battled cancer, during that time I started to feel relieved to have found a community with like-minded people and a sense of global consciousness. It started to take over my life. I didn’t mind helping run the evening meditation and yoga nights, even when they started charging a small fee for them I continued doing the work for free. It was good to belong to a group who’d been through a very upsetting experience but come out the other side with a soulful life purpose.
With Sydney house prices going through the roof it didn’t bother me when my house became a place for Jurgen and Daniel to come and stay with me (rent-free I might add), though I did feel a little uncomfortable when they seemed to both have a rotating schedule of female acolytes who would stay over as well. My place was labelled the tantra palace by my family - and a neighbour complained about the comings-and-goings but as an ex-Sannyasin I disregarded them as repressed.
It’s when we moved to the Blue Mountains that the structured and materialistic sides to ACM Group started to show their true colours. I joined in the trend of course, becoming Ma Vasumati, the enabler and recruiter. The intro nights had become weekend workshops and, justified as necessary for paying the rent on our centre, the workshops were priced at $800 per weekend, and we lesser lights of the organisation were given sales quotas - it suddenly started to feel less like a community and a bit more like a business. But we all reaffirmed with each other that it was for the greater good.
There was a rush by the top dogs to adopt their spiritual names - we had everything looking right to the outside world. The names manifested a hierarchy which increased the fawning around them.
ACM Group Yoga was supposed to be a pure space where spirit and love could manifest for world peace and enlightenment. So I found it weird that one of the leaders started showering his attention on one devotee - who just happened to be physically attractive and from a well-to-do Sydney family. An out-and-out spiritual narcissist, she was almost always seated at the front of the classes and group meditations. I started to find the whole thing even more awry than when they were dossing at my house in Sydney, the way the devotees would crowd around the acharya and he would be grooming this young woman.
Their big success was when one of the older members died and much to the horror of her daughters, she left most of her assets to the group. The look of glee and triumph on the face of the leaders disturbed me. I hadn’t given them my property, I’d rented it out, but my rent money went into the group while I continued living the ascetic life, on a vegan diet and being not far off a breatharian - their pure water diet as they call it. As soon as they got the inheritance they spent every weekend hunting for a new centre and in the end that money bought their new premises - but those of us on the inside certainly know whose name ended up on the title!
ACM Group Yoga has questionable aspects as regards their advanced programs. The cost involved in doing these 12-month courses is a long way from the days of doing free meditations. Where's all this money going to? They say they’re focused on the spirit plane and are non-material, so why do they charge thousands of dollars to do their programs? I started to question whether it could be some sort of scam or whether someone's exploiting the group at the the top. Everyone is so gushing about Acharya and the work he's doing for planetary consciousness, but when I suggested we start making the group financially accountable, I was stone-walled.
They promote the charitable work they do in India, helping outcasts and the building of the orphanage, but I urge people who are reading this to be careful about getting involved with this group. I’m not saying they’re the worst cult ever, but I have questions about their operation and the behaviours of their top teachers. Some things don’t match up and the signs from within increasingly pointed to it being a system to defraud the vulnerable and unwary.
It’s when I got called into a meeting and asked to sell my property and give the money to the group, that my materialistic self-preservation started to kick back in.
I was told this was a spiritual weakness on my part, but I’d already given every aspect of my life to them for many years, except my property, which I cannot take away from my children.
As expensive and stressful as life in Sydney is now, I can understand people wanting to escape the rat-race, I feel I should warn people about this community. If in a quest for enlightenment and happiness, I suggest you look elsewhere.
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