I sit here, taking deep breaths and contemplating the last 25 years of my yoga experience. The first style I ever practiced was called "Kundalini Yoga As Taught By Yogi Bhajan". I found it at a Gold's Gym in Southern California while lifting weights and seeking a new practice that could help me age gracefully. I was looking for a new exercise regime after being a collegiate athlete for the past 5 years. I was young, open, and excited to try something new. My teacher was an amazing women, mother, and Sikh who practiced what she preached and spread so much Love through her teaching. It was an empowering, healing, and transformational time in my life. Ten years of practice with my teacher led me to seek out a teaching career in yoga. I was a middle school teacher turned Holistic Health Practitioner. The practice helped me find my true identity and connect with my soul on a very deep level. I had been sexually molested as a young teenager, and there was a lot of heart healing and forgiveness work on my plate. This style of yoga was a deeply healing practice and journey into the depths of my soul. The Kundalini Yoga teacher training I had signed up to take in India was cancelled last minute, and I was looking for other learning opportunities when I found the style of yoga that I ended up getting certified in. (I am not allowed to use the name of the yoga style or the name of the teacher I studied with because of the threats I have received from their lawyers. This move shows to me that they are afraid I will share the truths that I know that would expose who they really are as an organization.) I studied and practiced this new style of yoga in New York City, and then taught in Southern California for the next 15 years. I received a lot of wisdom and knowledge from this experience, but over the years, there was an unsettling reality unveiling. My husband took the training as well, and we were both invited to teach in the yoga teacher training soon after that. We were able to get a closer look at the daily operations, handling of money, and the power that was being misused in a greater way year after year. This teacher claimed to be able to "see the unseen", walk through walls, and have magical powers that allowed him to talk directly to the spirits that hold all of the cosmic wisdom of the universe. He came off as a type of super human, and some students truly believed he was the reincarnation of Jesus of Nazareth. This teacher said he was trained under Yogi Bhajan for many years, and he served as Yogi Bhajan's financial advisor and "spiritual advisor" of the Universal Kabbalah and ancient mystic teachings. We stayed in this community, taught and worked for mostly free the entire time, and gave our hearts and souls to this cause of "changing the world for the better" from 2006 until 2021, before waking up in a nightmare. New management, outside support, and "other" people hired from the outer world started uncovering that this group was never a legitimate non-profit business, even though they had been practicing as one for many decades. New and former students started revealing sexual relationships with the teacher, and so many truths began surfacing in our process of leaving the cult. That was what we realized we were in... a cult. Books began being published about Yogi Bhajan's sexual abuses, rapes, drug trafficking, and so many other disheartening crimes, and we started questioning our own teacher and his ability to look past such horrific behavior in order to keep his reputation high in the community/cult. His inner staff, "the disciples" we light-heartedly called them, went along with participating, no matter what this teacher asked them to do. There was a scary reality facing us both deeply, and we couldn't stay quiet much longer. We brought our concerns to the staff around the time when we were about to extend our aromatherapy business into a collaborative contract with this group, and we were met with silence. No one responded to our questions with any clarity or truth, but instead, the teacher called them together to let them know we were being cut from the community. Without knowing he had made this decision, we also decided it was time for us to leave. Word got back to us of the meeting he called in response to our letter to not partner, and the entire reality we thought we were living in was demolished. The truth was extremely painful and hard to swallow, and we had a lot of guilt for being so devoted to something so abusive for so long. This is what a cult experience creates in its followers. We see it in the spiritual world, in politics, and in various groups of people with narcissistic leaders. Greed, power, and control take over, and the followers become enslaved by the reality that has been created for them.
Scroll forward to this past week, and the "Breath of Fire" documentary that has been playing on HBO. We watched all four shows of this documentary in one afternoon. There were so many similarities with the groups, and Yogi Bhajan was a common thread. He created a blueprint for the yoga cult that was followed by others after his death. One of those people was the woman in the video, Guru Jagat. We experienced another one of them in the cult we were a part of for all of those years, and there are others that continue to abuse their power to this day. This has had us feeling that we too need to speak up and share our story. We have been demonized by some of his followers for speaking our truth, and we have let go of hundreds of "friends" and fellow yogis that are blindly following a cult leader and choosing not to look at the truth. While watching the documentary we learned there was a company called "Rama International" that these leaders owned, and it has left us feeling indifferent about our own company name (which we came up with in 2007, not knowing there were others out there with similar names). We are using our experiences to help others and empower people to see what they never wanted to accept before. As we come to the end of the Kali Yuga, the Light shines brightly on the truth and reveals what we need to see in order to move forward. We hope that we can continue to move our bodies for healing, chant mantra for the soul, and practice mudra therapy for health and wellness without having to bring in the dark side of these teachings. We are still navigating our way through it all, as it takes a long time to unravel who we have been for so long and who we really are beyond this experience. All we know is that there is no teacher or human that we will lie, cheat, or abuse others for. We believe the truth sets us free, and we have been on this journey of revealing truths for many years now. We are not perfect ourselves, and we have made mistakes throughout our lives. We have never claimed to be perfect or "holy" people. The difference between making mistakes and purposefully causing harm is the person who continues to do what they are doing after understanding that their behaviors are hurting others. It is in deciding that taking advantage of people with open hearts is not right and should not be done. Cult leaders prey upon highly sensitive, often lost, broken, or soul-searching type of people who want to do good. These communities are filled with Loving and caring beings who want to be a positive force in the world. It is morally wrong to do what they do, and they continue to do it in bigger and more harmful ways as time goes on. We are here to say enough is enough. By opting out of a cult, we no longer empower them to hurt us with their actions and behaviors. Hopefully, by sharing our experiences, we can shed Light for others and help empower anyone who wants to leave an abusive relationship, but feels that they can't.
I will end this short discussion by saying that we hope by teaching and sharing yoga with this group for the past two decades, we haven't brought any harm to anyone. We all have to decide for ourselves what we choose to feed and grow in our lives and what we wish to dissolve or end. We are not here to tell anyone what to do, and we also want to be transparent of our life detour that ended with heartbreak, as well as profound growth. Every challenge exists to help us grow, learn, and evolve. We hope to continue to move forward as gracefully as we can into Truth, Love, and Integrity. Thank you for listening to our story.
Would you like to share your story? We will be restarting our podcast in the coming months to offer a space for deeper discussions. We are open to this and many other topics that may be difficult to talk about. However, the more we air out the darkness, the better the Light can shine. We look forward to what the future holds, and we are open to where our experiences guide us.
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