This week I virtually met a yogi, who posted an open letter to her beloved yoga teacher Elena Brower.
If you have not heard of Elena, she is a prominent figure in the yoga community. If you google her, you will see her name on many podcasts, yoga events, she is the teachers’ teacher. She was an inspiration to me too in terms of building a beautiful and thriving yoga community.
While most of yoga teachers I know are broke and can hardly make the ends meet, Elena is an outlier, her business is no doubt very successful and it keeps growing and expanding.
However, this week I look at Elena from a different angle when Tatum Fjerstad, Elena’s (once very close) student published her open letter.
If you don’t want to read it (even though she is a good writer and I read her piece in one go), I will summarise it here for you: emotional and mental abuse, gas-lighting, controlling and manipulation, exploitation of Tatum as an unpaid assistant in classes and a downline in doTERRA MLM (by the way, I love their oils, but not their business).
Why I am writing about this to you?
Because I too was part of three spiritual cults where gurus abused their students and I want to make sure you don’t fall prey to any charismatic yoga teacher like many of us did.
Red flags to pay attention to:
your teacher is being glorified by the community and no-one questions their actions no matter how contraversial they may be
teacher clearly has favourite students that form exlusive inner circle
exploitation of students (free assistants, volunteers, unpaid or unfair work / exchange)
teacher never shares about his/her mistakes and is not open to receiving constructive feedback
giving you uncontructive feedback, belittles you, shuts down discussions that are challenging for them
It’s very important that we stop glorifying yoga teachers or other spiritual leaders. As we all know now, they oftentimes cause a lot of harm and hurt not held accountable. This is including gurus, church priests, cult leaders. We all are human and we still are learning and making mistakes.
So if you feel that something is not right in your next yoga class , workshop, or training - speak out. Or walk away from that teacher, class, training.
A good yoga teacher is supposed to empower you and pass on their knowledge so that you can sail your boat on your own. It’s not a relationships of favouritism and attachment. Quite on the contrary, a good teacher will instill freedom, courage, and independence.
I was lucky enough to have met such a teacher. Namkhai Norbu Rinpoche always said “Don’t follow me from one retreat to another. Take care of your finances. Live your life”.