Intention vs. Impact, Trickle-down Violence, and Doing the Systemic Work: Francesca Cervero and Matthew Remski Discuss Practice and All is Coming

It was a real pleasure to discuss the book with DC-area yoga teacher and trainer Francesca Cervero for her podcast, the Mentor Sessions. Such great questions. Transcript is below.

 

 

Transcript:

Francesca Cervero: 00:00:00

Hello and welcome to the Mentor Sessions. I’m your host Francesca Cervero. The Mentor Sessions is a meeting place for Yoga teachers who want to be supported and thinking critically about their teaching. While you’re here, expect to have your ideas about right and wrong challenged and your deepest need for nurturing and support met by a fellow sister on the pad. Today we have a really special guest talking about his newest book. I have Matthew Remski joining me on the podcast today and we’re talking about his new book Practice and All is Coming, Abuse, Cult Dynamics and Healing and Yoga and Beyond.

If you don’t know Matthew, let me just tell you a little bit about him before we get started. Matthew Remski is a yoga teacher, industry consultant and author of nine previous books including Threads of Yoga, a Remix of Patanjali’s Sutras with Commentary and Reverie. As a survivor of two cults, his work has been pivotal in illuminating the shadows of globalized Yoga and Buddhism and showing that disillusionment and critical inquiry can be gateways to mature spirituality. He facilitates modules in philosophy, history, culture and community health in yoga teacher training programs internationally. He lives in Toronto with his partner and their two children. Matthew, welcome. Thank you for being here.

Matthew Remski: 00:01:30

Thanks so much Francesca, it’s really great to hear your voice again and thanks for the opportunity to speak about the book. Continue reading “Intention vs. Impact, Trickle-down Violence, and Doing the Systemic Work: Francesca Cervero and Matthew Remski Discuss Practice and All is Coming”

“Abuse in the Yoga Community”: Josh Summers Interviews Matthew Remski

Thank you to Josh Summers for interviewing me about Practice and All is Coming. You can download the mp3 here. Transcript is below.

Trigger warning: descriptions of sexual and physical assault.

Transcript:

Josh Summers: 00:00:06

Hi Matthew, how are you doing?

Matthew Remski: 00:00:07

I’m good. Thanks for having me, Josh.

Josh Summers: 00:00:09

Thanks so much for coming on. Let me introduce us. I am Josh Summers. I’m a yoga teacher and licensed acupuncturist. And this is Meaning of Life TV. You are Matthew Remski, a yoga teacher as well also an industry consultant in the Yoga Industry and an author of several books. Most recently you’ve written a book about problematic group dynamics in the yoga world and it’s called Practice and All is Coming: Abuse, Cult Dynamics and Healing in Yoga, and Beyond. So I should say, you know, is it’s really nice to meet you. This is kind of an odd sort of endorsement to you, but, right at this point I’d say you’re the main reason I go onto Facebook.

Matthew Remski: 00:01:00

That’s, that’s mixed. I’m happy to hear that. And I’m sorry to hear that all at the same time.

Josh Summers: 00:01:06

No, no. I mean, for me it’s positive because there isn’t that much, worth following on Facebook. But, I came across your work maybe two or three years ago. Someone shared something you had blogged about, about abuse and some of these problematic dynamics in the yoga world. And I just kind of got into following what you had to say about it and it really seemed like you had some trenchant analysis that was deeply missing in the broader conversation. So I want to dive into that. Talk about what’s going on in Yoga land, uh, what’s problematic about it and what might be some ways that things can be remedied. But as way of introduction. You are yourself a survivor of two cults, and I know that part of this work in this book has been a bit of a healing journey for you. But how did you come to a focus on the Ashtanga yoga situation in particular and what was going on in that that you felt needed to be highlighted? Continue reading ““Abuse in the Yoga Community”: Josh Summers Interviews Matthew Remski”

Yoga and Buddhism Reform Movements: 16 Red Flags

Yoga and Buddhism Reform Movements: 16 Red Flags

As one yoga and Buddhist organization after another implodes, reform efforts are afoot. Some, if not most, are well-intentioned. But the industry is still unregulated. It’s an economy that runs on opportunism, and co-optation is standard.

So how can you determine whether those who step forward to lead reform are acting in good faith and not self-interest? That they aren’t simply re-establishing the same dynamics and silencing the same voices? How do you know whether they are, unconsciously or not, more interested in preserving the social and economic structure that fostered the abuse than they are interested in really listening to what survivors have to say?

How do you know whether they’ve done the extremely hard work of seeing through and overcoming cultic dynamics? After all, it is harrowing to even try to make different choices and foster new patterns when you’ve been in a cult, which is always terrifying members into pursuing power and position instead of equality and transparency. Continue reading “Yoga and Buddhism Reform Movements: 16 Red Flags”

How Good Book Stores Become Unwitting Retailers for Yoga and Buddhism Cults

(With great love and care for independent booksellers everywhere.)

 

As part of my tour to promote Practice and All is Coming, I was invited by a well-beloved bookstore in a major North American city to give a presentation and sign copies as part of their author’s series.

This gorgeous bookstore is proudly independent, and has supported spiritual seekers, social progressives, and environmental activists for decades. The staff were kind and professional and encouraging.

I arrived early for the AV check and looked around. Behind the little stage area where I was supposed to stand stood the entire yoga section.

And there they all were.

It was strange and tense and activating to see piles of yoga books written by or associated with abusive leaders and institutional betrayal. I was there to present an argument against the messages and the media of exactly these books.

At the risk of wearing out my welcome, I made use of the paradox in my presentation. When I offered the following slide of The List of yoga organizations that have unresolved abuse histories, I was able to tie almost every one with a book from the shelf. I was worried about making the staffers uncomfortable, but they were really grateful and supportive. Who wants to sell compromised goods, after all? Continue reading “How Good Book Stores Become Unwitting Retailers for Yoga and Buddhism Cults”

Iyengar’s Charisma of Incoherence, and Selected Indoctrination Defence Statements

Ann Tapsell West posted two videos of Iyengar abusing students yesterday. If you don’t know West, her 2018 ethics complaint against Manouso Manos led to the recent independent investigation that found multiple allegations of sexual misconduct by Manos (including against West herself) to be credible. This has led to his decertification by IYNAUS, and the Iyengar family forbidding him from continuing to use their name and trademark.

West has since turned her attention to the systemic issues that her case has helped further illuminate. On May 9th, she published a “Reparations List for Survivors of Manouso Manos Sexual Assaults”, addressing the complicity of senior leaders, and institutional betrayal in the wider global community: Continue reading “Iyengar’s Charisma of Incoherence, and Selected Indoctrination Defence Statements”

How Do You Know If You’re Spiritually Bypassing?

Here’s an interview originally published on the Yoga Outreach blog. I’ll be presenting and panelling at their upcoming conference in Vancouver, on May 25.

YO: The term Spiritual Bypassing (SB) is becoming more common – what does it mean?

MR: I want to say up front that I’m not that fond of how the term is used. Typically it reinforces an individualistic diagnosis of what’s really social problem. I’m a cult survivor and that’s my research area, and so my approach is to look at SB not as something individuals do because they’re psychologically lazy, but as something they are taught to do by spirituality organizations that benefit from indoctrinating them into the idea that their product will answer all questions.

That said; SB is when a spiritual ideology, jargon, or community leader encourages a person to believe that all problems are solved or solvable. But what’s really happening is that the person is avoiding or defending against more obvious and entrenched psychological or physical wounds. Continue reading “How Do You Know If You’re Spiritually Bypassing?”

Yoga Work and Climate Chaos: a Note


I obviously think it’s really important to illuminate abuse in spiritual communities. It’s as important as advocacy work for any survivor group. Abuse survivors hold up the mirror.

And yet in the shadow of climate chaos, is it visible? Is it efficient? Is the scope broad enough, and scalable? Are venal spiritual communities worth the attention while entire nations operate as cults, and are pushing others into the sea?

What does it mean when you’re doing good work — the work you’ve made, trained for, the best work of your life, perhaps — in a culture based in economic and privilege excesses that both accelerate and will be wiped out by climate chaos?

Most projects of substance, whether undertaken alone or in groups, take five years. A graduate degree, a book, a training curriculum. Reviewing and reforming standards at Yoga Alliance. Five years is also one predicted window for seeing the first ice-free Arctic summer, which may provoke a methane tipping point, and then an exponential temperature rise. Continue reading “Yoga Work and Climate Chaos: a Note”

Listening to Survivors is a Survival Test (Or: Neoliberalism and Yoga Rise and Implode Together)

It was Brian Culkin who first got me thinking in socio-economic terms about modern yoga. He talks about yoga as the de facto religion of neoliberalism: preaching individualistic empowerment through flexibility, adaptability, leaning-in to challenges, self-reliance, lowering expectations for structural support and change, and creating facsimiles of community where real communities used to be. Later, my thinking was bumped along by an amazing essay by Lavrence and Lozanski on how Lululemon, especially in earlier days, wove these themes into its athleisure fabrics and stitched it all up with random orientalist clichés.

Along this trajectory it became clear that yoga infrastructure was inseparable from urban gentrification. I remember Diane Bruni telling me how much rent Downward Dog had to pay for its two-studio space in Toronto’s Parkdale in the mid 2000s. It was something like 10K/mo. She said that making that rent in the summers was touch-and-go. I was shocked: this was Toronto’s most popular/lucrative yoga space, and they were just hanging on? Moreover: this was their second home.

They had moved west and down-rent along Queen St. from their first space on Spadina, which was in a building that used to house garment factories. So the studio itself owed its birth to the shuttering of manufacturing in Toronto’s downtown core. They practiced in the rooms that used to make the clothes that they practiced in. Downward Dog was actually featured by Naomi Klein in the first pages of No Logo, who gives it as an example of who and what moves into a North American urban space when jobs get shipped to the lowest-paying labour market. Continue reading “Listening to Survivors is a Survival Test (Or: Neoliberalism and Yoga Rise and Implode Together)”

Update: IYNAUS Apologizes to Manos Victims; Abhijata Iyengar Acknowledges Abuse at Convention

In an email sent out to members last night, the IYNAUS Executive Council for the first time apologized directly to the women who gave their testimonies to the independent investigation into Manouso Manos. The email also details commitments to reform. Its content resonates with several of the guidelines laid out by Karen Rain and Jubilee Cooke in their recent article “How to Respond to Sexual Abuse Within a Yoga or Spiritual Community With Competency and Accountability.”

The apology coincided with a speech given by Abhijata Iyengar at the current convention in Dallas, which continues through Wednesday. By email, IYNAUS President David Carpenter reported that Iyengar

devoted 30 minutes or so to discussing her own experience being molested, stating unequivocally that sexual touch is unacceptable, telling individuals not to fear coming forward with complaints, expressing empathy for victims, and reemphasizing the centrality of physical adjustments in Iyengar Yoga and their benefits.

A transcript of Iyengar’s remarks is forthcoming. Continue reading “Update: IYNAUS Apologizes to Manos Victims; Abhijata Iyengar Acknowledges Abuse at Convention”

“A Hamster Wheel of Self-Help.” Conversation with Rachel Bernstein on IndoctriNation Podcast (Pt. 2)

Here’s Part 2 of my conversation with Rachel Bernstein on her IndoctriNation podcast. Part 1 is here.Please consider supporting her work by subscribing to the podcast via Patreon.

Continue reading ““A Hamster Wheel of Self-Help.” Conversation with Rachel Bernstein on IndoctriNation Podcast (Pt. 2)”