When I started my path to yoga I was living in the woods of Northern Minnesota living the life of poverty. It was a difficult time filled with horrors of child custody issues, custody payments and a husband that found working at a job oh so hard…and me, I had an art degree so yeah I was not employable in the small town I lived near by. Finding yoga for me was a Godsend. It was a way I could work on my own time and at my own place or other places I could talk people into letting me teach. It helped me and I wanted to help others.Everything in the beginning was awesome.

When the world decided yoga instructors had to be certified, the world of commerce reaching its lovely hand into this world, that made things difficult for me. For one, I was in the woods of Northern Minnesota, where was I going to find certification? In walks Kundalini yoga and Yogi Bhajan. In the beginning he was a great teacher with great information. I was so happy. So that’s where I looked. Being very naive to the word Guru, I had thought it something a teacher earned and wasn’t self assigned. To my surprise anybody with the gumption could call themselves a Guru and gather a bevy of slave/students to make their life much easier and boom a yoga school was born and the most expensive certification I had ever heard of. Or at least for me.

Now let’s be clear at first I thought his work was awesome and I lived far enough away to keep myself safe, not to mention I wasn’t a young thing so no fear of his wandering eye. I read his books and learned his teachings. And it was way later I realized these self appointed Guru’s took their teachers teaching and made them their own, or a combination of teachings as long as they came from India or anywhere but here. What did we white folk know? But Guru knew how easily manipulatable we were. It made us fish in a barrel. Just like Bikram, all those scantly clad fish swimming close to him how could he resist.

When I went for training was when I saw”him” and wouldn’t you know it the smell of, ugg that’s gross, all over him. My mama didn’t raise a fool, so off I went back to the woods and taught the yoga that stirred my heart. I am actually one of those that was teaching because I needed the direction and union of body mind soul that my incoming students also needed. I was very dedicated to being better and more.

Of course I was in a very Christian spot so of course the “how could you worship Satan in this way?” was ever abounding, but finally Yoga became a staple of teaching that brought with it a form of self healing that lots of middle aged women started needing. All the women illnesses were picking up the pace and forms of easy movements and self empowerment were necessary to get out of bed and continue on. So I taught and I taught, never giving in to the teacher as I felt so far away.

But when I went back for women’s camp, great idea spoiled by the Guru, you saw that the organization for what it was. He was a God allowed his kingdom. It was all, look like us and be like us. Then they broke the teacher training into parts so it took 4 rounds rather that one, money money money. I was so smart about this level of bull shit plus didn’t have the money to be a real notice to him. So I just carried on.

It’s the same story for almost anything that claims spirituality as its base. Christians churches need you to tithe to show your true love for God. Your local spiritual coach needs you to pay hourly and see me over and over. We were making self empowerment and spirituality a commodity and thus the fall. And the cults were actively courting you. What I hate the most is that chanting was my heart, nothing brought me greater joy than chanting in group of what I thought we’re like minded people. I still love singing in church. But that’s not what they are looking for, its always how are you and how can you contribute to our cult/yoga school/christian church? You wanted and needed to belong, We felt alone and if sick really alone. It made us easy targets.

Yogi Bhajan used to tell us that if you messed with a student you would reincarnate as a cockroach. What did the priests tell themselves as they abused children? That they would go to Hell? The power was firmly in their hands and they used it against us. So when next teacher kept saying he didn’t want his picture taken or published and he would go after pictures he didn’t want out there, he had a lawyer whose job was scouring the internet for his image, we thought this was because he wanted the message of his work to be the forefront of his mission not what he looked like…think of the naïveté of that. He was just like the rest, his teachings came from somewhere and we just ate up his blessed word like it was gospel.

If we do not recognize the cult until we are in it what are the chances of getting back out of it. Yeah, its a lot of work filled with the essence of shame. There must be a lot of teachers who fucked up out there because there are sure a lot of cockroaches on this planet. See one step on it!

See the truth, its usually right under your nose…