What happens when MLM sales and neoliberal life coaching collide with a yoga charisma that oozes with pseudofeminism? Where do we even begin? Exploitation. Heartbreak. Toxic mimicries of therapy, mentorship, political awareness, and community.
In this investigative report, Matthew digs into the background of a recent article posted to Medium called “Open Letter to Elena Brower.” He interviews the author, Tatum Fjerstad, who Brower mentored from 2014 to 2016, and Liz Fullen, who worked as Brower’s unpaid yoga class assistant for approximately three years. He’ll also play excerpts from a legally-recorded Zoom call in which Brower gives non-consensual “coaching” to a stranger.
Friend of the pod Dr. Natalia Petrzela joins the story to recount her personal brush with the Handel Coaching Method. Brower is a Handel “expert coach”, and has merged the Method with her yoga training to produce peak cognitive-dissonant messaging:
You’re fabulous, but you're fucked. You’re already perfect and you know what’s right for you, but you have a lot of work to do, and I can show you how to do it.
Other themes include “performative therapy abuse”, the perils of unlicensed therapy, and how the power pyramids that hide in plain sight may be more vulnerable than we know, especially when we begin to talk about them clearly.
Show Notes
Open Letter to Elena Brower. CW: spiritual and emotional abuse | by tatum fjerstad | Sep, 2021 | Medium
mlmtruth.org's killer list of research and resources
New Presidential Diamond announcement: Brower
Conspirituality Instagram post on "Performative Therapy Abuse"
Yoga Teachers Are Not Doctors, Doctors Are Not Priests
IYNAUS independent investigation of Manouso Manos
The American Yoga ReVolution with Iyengar disciples Manouso Manos and Patricia Walden
“Betrayal of Trust”: 1991 Mercury News Investigation of Sexual Assault Allegations Against Manouso Manos — by Bob Frost
The Yoga Mogul: John Friend, Creator of the Anusara School
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