Yoga
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In the yoga world’s latest #MeToo episode, activists are rising up against the spiritual institution that failed them
In January, I reported that one of the world’s most celebrated yoga empires was shaken to its core by a single Facebook post. Julie Salter, 63, had turned the polished branding of Sivananda yoga inside out by writing that its founding saint, Swami Vishnudevananda, had sexually and physically abused her during the 11 years she’d spent as his unpaid personal assistant, prior to his death in 1993. The organization has responded by launching an independent investigation, and individual centers are debating whether to remove the guru’s portrait from its altars around the world. …
An ex-disciple of Swami Vishnudevananda reveals a decade of abuse, sparking a crisis in Sivananda yoga that is still unfolding
Early on December 10, 2019, in the dark of her modest redbrick apartment, Julie Salter, 63, sat at a spartan desk before a glowing blue screen. The dialogue box displayed nine paragraphs that had incubated over the two decades since she left her position at Sivananda yoga — a global network of ashrams and retreat spas once rooted in hippie yoga evangelism, but now famous for yoga tourism and professional training. At 5:15 a.m., she clicked “post” on a testimony of sexual and psychological abuse committed by the group’s founding saint.
“With all the hagiography around Swami Vishnudevananda and his…
Great Escape
There was no chisel involved, no rope of bedsheets. But with the help of a willing accomplice, I found a way out.
A few years ago, I escaped from prison. I’d been fantasizing about it for years, but the precipitating factor was a fight between two fellow inmates that left one in the hospital and the other in solitary confinement.
It was 8 p.m. Slim, a tall, skinny dude, had been gossiping with a friend. “Yeah, son, I’ma holla at you later, boy,” he yelled down the tier as the conversation wrapped up. “That shit was crazy!”
I was standing in my doorway, just keeping a quiet watch on my surroundings, when another inmate, Shaolin, rose from his bed and made his…
Kindness, love, and body acceptance are in short supply in the world of work. In female-filled yoga studios, it’s a different story.
By my second year of law school, I was desperate. I was exhausted and wracked with anxiety. When I woke up one day in excruciating pain and unable to move my head, I hobbled over to the university health center, where I got a big shot of muscle relaxers in my right flank. Over the next two weeks, I took my final exams in a cloud of prescription painkillers and Flexeril.
The next semester, instead of signing up for my usual high-impact cardio or boxing class at the gym, I decided to try yoga.
It stuck (and it made my…
Power Trip
It took me 20 years to reclaim my agency and overturn the shame
[Content warning: This post contains photographs of sexual assault, published with consent from the victim.]
When the stories about Brett Kavanaugh emerged, there were photos of him everywhere. I wondered how this impacted the women who came forward. Would seeing all those photos — not to mention live televised testimony — cause distress and remind them of the torment they have described? Or would it be reassuring to see photographs of him alongside articles written and read by millions of people who believe and support them?
Photos of the man who sexually assaulted me are ubiquitous. While he is not…
Meghan Daum
I tried it and I kinda loved it
The first rule of goat yoga is you do not talk about goat yoga. It’s too embarrassing. What does it say about you that you paid $30 to take a one-hour vinyasa flow class in which small goats climb on your back and run through your legs? What does it say about our world that on a Sunday morning you can drive to an acting studio on a Hollywood side street and pack in with dozens of other people doing sun salutations while farm animals dart — and occasionally defecate — between your legs and on your feet?
GEN
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