Yoga Scams
David Forsee aka Swami Gopalananda came into my mind yesterday. I had read a tweet by a psychotherapist saying it was unethical to put her needs ahead of the patients needs.
I am a teacher of fine art. I got there by deprogramming from the notion that my needs are subservient to expensive yoga teachers who were highly charismatic charmers like David.
I was lonely and vulnerable depressed and anxious. My cultural background was/is orphan poverty hippie new age so to meet people I attended 12 step, tai chi, yoga and didn’t really meet anyone that had much to offer until I stumbled upon a yoga group where the teachers were trained to convincing pretend that they loved me unconditionally. I was their target market, highly intelligent and in transition and in pain. I had been criticized out of a 20 year career by the childish office politics of supposed friends.
This fake love was/is not sustainable but it took years to unhook from these charming narcissists. They made sure to keep enough social distance through hierarchy so it was hard to smell a rat. I wrote a book about it. Essentially the harm comes from the criticism they hand out creating anxiety and then medicated by the distraction of the yoga mindfulness practises, a nice little dependence cycle. The Dali Lama uses the same technique when he lovingly tells you are an uncompassionate loser. These cult recruiters have been successful for centuries.
I got out of it by learning to ask myself if there is any evidence for the criticism, internalized or otherwise. At the same time I was training in art where criticism ideally means, ‘What were you going for and how do we get you closer?’ My likes and dislikes as a teacher don’t enter into it.
So I got unhooked from these charming leeches including Edi, the one that I was living with for 9 years.
What remained was the residual love affair with a convincing liar like David. I needed his approval, like food. I was convinced he loved me and was a friend, and was in many ways a superior human being so if he liked me I had some self esteem. My psychotherapist wrote a book and it deprogrammed me from the notion. I learned that if you have self esteem you can lose it and then you can be manipulated by threat of loss for other peoples purposes, typically financial. Now I don’t have self esteem I have strategies for satisfaction and I leave myself the hell alone. I simply ignore the con artist guru in all her/his forms.