Surviving Modern Yoga

Cult Dynamics, Charismatic Leaders, and What Survivors Can Teach Us

De: Matthew Remski, Theo Wildcroft PhD - foreword

Narrado por: Matthew Remski

Duración: 16 h y 21 m

Resumen del Editor

Grounded in investigative research and real survivor stories, Surviving Modern Yoga uncovers the physical and sexual abuse perpetrated by Ashtanga yoga leader Pattabhi Jois—and reckons with the culture, structures, and mythos that enabled it.

Yoga culture sells well-meaning westerners the full package: physical health, good vibes, and spiritual growth. Here, investigative journalist Matthew Remski explores how cultic dynamics, institutional self-interest, and spiritualized indifference collude to obscure the truth: Harm happens in plain sight.

Through in-depth interviews, insider analysis, and Remski’s own history with high-demand groups, Surviving Modern Yoga brings to light how we’re each susceptible to cult abuse and exploitation. He shows how, with the right kind of situational vulnerability and the wrong kind of guru, the ideas we hold close about ourselves—like It wouldn’t happen to me or I’d speak up for victims—fail to protect us.

Remski reckons with his own complicity in spiritual power dynamics, and shares how a process of disillusionment allowed him to recognize harm. He does the same for listeners, peeling back the veneer of yoga marketing to reveal the abuse, assault, and silencing perpetrated against seekers who trusted Jois as a mentor, their guruji—even a father figure. Each survivor speaks in their own words, on their own terms, reclaiming agency against an insular, in-group culture that enabled a charismatic leader’s devastating harm—and positioned him as its only remedy.

Surviving Modern Yoga also includes practical tools to help listeners:

• Understand how high-demand groups trap would-be targets
• Evaluate their own situational vulnerabilities
• Learn to listen for loaded, red-flag language
• Cultivate their literacy of cult tactics

©2024 Matthew Remski (P)2024 North Atlantic Books

Reseñas de la Crítica

"With interviews and real stories of recovery, Remski presents us an authoritative guide on the effects of sexual abuse, misconduct, and trauma in the modern, globalized yoga world as well as an analysis that invites the possibility of change to this culture of abuse. This book offers hope and practical solutions for those who seek an end to the cycle of trauma, abuse of power, and sexual violence in yoga culture today."—SUSANNA BARKATAKI, founder and director of education at Ignite Yoga and Wellness Institute

"This text centers the voices of the female victims of serial abuser Pattabhi Jois, and it illuminates the wider psychoanalytic and structural conditions that enabled such abuse.... Remski has established himself as one of the most perspicacious and important scholar-practitioners of contemporary transnational yoga."—ANN GLEIG, associate professor of religion and cultural studies at the University of Central Florida

"This is a text that can heal the wounds of yoga and allow us to reimagine it as a safe practice for everyone, free from abuse and injury."—JIVANA HEYMAN, founder and director of Accessible Yoga