The Conspirituality Report

The Pseudofeminist Rise of Essential Oils Star Elena Brower

How yoga, life coaching, and MLM sales can make for a toxic blend

Abridged from Conspirituality Podcast Episode 74: “Elena Brower Could Stop Selling doTERRA.” Full episode includes interview clips.

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher

From 2012 to 2017, I worked as a yoga teacher and trainer at a swanky downtown Toronto yoga studio. Posh neighbourhood. High-end retail space on the first floor. The warm and altruistic owners ran interesting and pricey classes in the two upstairs studios, and hosted a reputable teacher training programme.

At some point in early 2016, or perhaps before, the owners met Elena Brower, a New York yoga celebrity with an international following. Brower had also been building a multi-level-marketing (MLM) fiefdom on the doTERRA essential oils platform since 2013.

I don’t know how or where that first meeting happened. Perhaps the owners travelled to a yoga conference, or to Brower’s studio in Manhattan. For a while it was a thing for ambitious Canadian yoga studio owners to travel to New York, Los Angeles, or San Francisco on business reconnaissance, to see how the big hitters in the industry were…