A Cult Within a Cult: Charlotte Medlock on Guru Jagat

[00:00:00] This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be considered legal, medical or mental health advice. The views and opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the podcast and are not intended to malign any religion, group,

[00:00:12] club, organization, business, individual, anyone or anything. I'm Sarah Edmondson. And I'm Anthony, air quotes Nippy, Ames. And this is A Little Bit Culty. A podcast about what happens when things that seem like a great thing at first go bad.

[00:00:36] Every week we chat with survivors, experts and whistleblowers for real cult stories told directly by the people who lived through them. Because we want you to learn a few things we've had to learn the hard way. Like if you think you're too smart to get sucked into something

[00:00:49] culty, you're already prime recruitment material. You might even already be in a cult. Oops, you better keep listening to find out. Welcome to season six of A Little Bit Culty. Welcome back everybody to A Little Bit Culty. We got a doozy.

[00:01:20] This is a topic, kundalini, that we've been meaning to cover for a long time. The challenge was, is that there's a lot of different arms or tentacles, if you will, to this story. A lot of gurus going on here.

[00:01:31] A lot of gurus. And don't you worry, fear not dear culty listeners, there will be more on this topic. This is just an episode of one particular component of the kundalini world. Gurus beget gurus, wouldn't you say? Yes. And today we will be speaking about

[00:01:46] the late Guru Jagat, born Katie Griggs, who was a prominent figure in the world of kundalini yoga. At the height of her fame, she was reportedly a personal guru to Hollywood stars like Kate Hudson

[00:01:57] and Alicia Keys. A young white woman isn't exactly what you would think of if you were casting for a classic yoga guru. But as Guru Jagat, Katie Griggs had a kind of 21st century guru star quality in spades. She was charismatic, photogenic, and made for the internet, wouldn't

[00:02:14] you say? Yep. She was also a magnet for controversy, as my British friends say. Controversy. A staunch defender of none other than Yogi Bhajan. In case you don't know who that is, he was the man credited with bringing kundalini to the West and later accused of rape,

[00:02:29] sexual misconduct, and financial wrongdoing. More on that later. Guru Jagat built the Ramayana Institute for Applied Yoga Science and Technology in Venice, California around Yogi Bhajan's teachings. And from the Venice queendom, the women formerly known

[00:02:42] as Katie Griggs gained a massive following that was drawn to her from her mix of glamour, millennial style humor, and her seemingly approachable take on yoga and spirituality. Before her death, she was a podcaster, an author, and the owner of both fashion brand

[00:02:55] and a record label. She died in 2020, reportedly from a pulmonary embolism suffered after an ankle injury. But Guru Jagat's slash Katie Griggs' questionable legacy lives on. To paraphrase a Vanity Fair article published after her passing, Guru Jagat's death left her adherents in two camps,

[00:03:12] the ones who were bereft because they lost their last apostle, and the other camp, the former members who called it a cult, rife with abuse and were relieved that she was gone. They could finally tell their truths. Our guest today is Charlotte Medlock,

[00:03:24] and she was swept up in the world of Guru Jagat and the Rama Institute in a way that left her emotionally and physically drained. And she's one of those members of the latter camp who is now talking about the dark realities they experienced in Guru Jagat's orbit.

[00:03:37] We're chatting with Charlotte about what she thought she was getting into, where and when it all started to go off the rails, and how she got out. Stay tuned also for the documentary that will be dropping soon about this particular cult

[00:03:48] within a cult. Here's our conversation about Guru Jagat, Kundalini Yoga, and the Rama Institute with Charlotte Medlock. Charlotte, welcome to A Little Bit Culty. Thank you. How are you doing? I know you've really like just your life has just exploded on TikTok and probably in reality. Yes.

[00:04:18] I'm guessing. Wait, wait, wait, hold on. TikTok's not reality? How are you doing? I'm doing great. What's it like? I mean, I went on TikTok like four months ago. And I was like, all right, I'm ready. I'm ready to tell the story. And I got on there and

[00:04:35] I immediately went viral. And the response has been crazy. I'm like, I've been talking to so many people and like sharing stories and like making friends offline. So it's been great. Amazing. How did you choose TikTok? It's really easy to go viral on there.

[00:04:53] And for me, it was easier because you're just basically talking to strangers on the internet. And I felt like with Instagram, there's so many people on there that I know. And then also a lot

[00:05:06] of the cult people are on there. So I didn't want them to see. So I went on TikTok. I made sure to block all of the cult people and then told my story. Smart. Has anyone reached out to you about it from the cult?

[00:05:18] No one has reached out to me. I mean, I've gotten some comments from Kundaloons, as I like to call them. That's awesome. And I'm like, oh, okay. Like, I mean, sometimes I just delete it. Sometimes I leave it. Sometimes I block. You don't engage though. You don't?

[00:05:37] I don't really engage. Respond. No. Smart. Well, let's start from the beginning. Let's go back. How do we get here? Take us back to the beginning. How did you stumble across this group and what drew you in?

[00:05:49] So I moved to LA 12 years ago, and I'm still in the same apartment because it's rent controlled in LA. And I was working at a consulting job and it was really stressful. And so I was exploring

[00:06:06] different types of yoga to help me relax. And LA is like the Mecca of yoga. I tried every form of yoga. I did vinyasa, I did ashtanga, I did yin, I did like, and then there was like Kundalini

[00:06:19] yoga studio, like right by my house. And so one night I walked in, I bought like the little like five intro class pack. I did my first class and I was like, this is really weird because everyone's wearing white and they're wearing turbans. And that we're like chanting

[00:06:39] these weird mantras and doing these weird poses. But I went to work the next day and I was like, I feel great. Like I feel like so clear headed and I feel so relaxed. And so I kept going back

[00:06:53] and just doing Kundalini yoga casually. And then flash forward a couple of years, I had quit that consulting job. And I was like, I don't have a plan. I'm just going to like live off my savings

[00:07:05] and like try to like find my purpose. And that didn't happen. I just like drained my savings and I didn't know what I wanted to do. I was really stressed out about it. I was feeling

[00:07:19] really hopeless and like nothing was working out. And I had a lot of shame about it. And I just felt like I need to make a big change. And I decided to do a Kundalini yoga teacher training. So I like

[00:07:32] took like the little money I had and like I signed up for this training. And that's kind of when the indoctrination started. What did that look like? I mean, obviously, you know a lot more now at the time, there's some probably great things about it.

[00:07:47] Yes. And where you preyed upon. Okay. Backing up a little bit at the studio, Yoga West, that was like a couple of blocks from my house. One of the first classes that I took there was with Guru Jagat, AKA Katie Griggs. And so

[00:08:01] that's when I was really enthralled by her. And I followed her on socials and I was like following her journey and I was like watching her blow up. And I watched her found Rama Institute

[00:08:15] and I started going there for classes as well. Okay. So she left Yoga West. Can you remind me? I think I actually may be taking classes there. I was going to say, have you been to Yoga West? Was that in Santa Monica? It's on Robertson Boulevard.

[00:08:26] Did we go there? I know Robertson. What area is that? Pico Robertson is like the neighborhood. It's like Beverly Hills adjacent. I don't think I did actually. No, I'm thinking of a different, I think of Yoga Works. I'm sorry. Yes. I've been to Yoga Works. Nevermind. Different.

[00:08:41] It's not there anymore. Okay. So you do this yoga teacher training and you're thinking about being a yoga teacher or just doing it to deepen your practice? So here's the thing with Kundalini Yoga. They talk a lot about like, they have all these different meditations that like activate

[00:08:55] different things. And so there are these like prosperity meditations and like meditations to like activate your destiny. And so I was like binging those. I was like, this is going to activate my purpose in the world. And it's going to make all of these magical things happen.

[00:09:14] Like I was very desperate and I was willing to do anything. And then as I was doing these meditations, I definitely was having like confirmation bias where things would happen. And I was like, oh, it's because I'm doing Kundalini Yoga.

[00:09:27] And what was appealing about, do you want to call her Guru Jagat or Katie or? Katie. Katie. Well, we won't Guru fire anymore. All right. So what was appealing about her? Like what was she like for those who weren't there? Like paint a picture for us.

[00:09:41] She was so confident. Like she could really work a room. She was really funny and she could just, she was a great orator. Like she could just talk and talk and talk. And in like a 90 minute class,

[00:09:57] like sometimes she would lecture for up to like 45 minutes. And so while you're sitting there just getting like all of the word salad, you're just like, whoa, she's really smart. She's like talking about all these like crazy things, like DMT secretions in your brain. And then also like

[00:10:17] bringing in like pop culture stuff. And she just seemed really cool and like down to earth. And she made Kundalini Yoga for me, like less intimidating because she was so young and like relatable. Yeah.

[00:10:33] It kind of reminds me a little bit of what, how we thought of Lauren Salzman with NXIVM, like young and relatable. Yeah. And funny. And funny too. Funny is my main filter. Yes.

[00:10:42] Because I walk into those things and I'm looking at you and I'm rolling my eyes most of the time, but if someone- By you, he means yoga classes. Yeah. No, I'm talking about you when you would bring me. Oh yeah.

[00:10:53] But if the person was funny, that's when I start to pull out my hall pass a little bit and go, okay, if you're funny, I mean, you're speaking a language that I think everyone,

[00:11:01] and I would, my indictment of you would be on pause, I guess for a minute. And she was funny. Yeah. Yeah. That got me. Like she did not take herself seriously. And like, I would genuinely laugh at her jokes. That's the key.

[00:11:15] Or at least she appeared to not take herself seriously. Yes, that's right. Right. So it was a bit of an act maybe. And also, was there an element of like the glamour of it?

[00:11:25] Because I know she had some pretty big names in Hollywood following her at a time, right? Yeah. By the time I started working for her, Alicia Keys and Kate Hudson had done blurbs

[00:11:35] for her book that was coming out and she was getting a ton of press. And so that legitimized it. I was like- That's buy-in. Yeah. And this was like 2010s wellness in LA. So it was, and like influenza culture and everything.

[00:11:50] And I was just like, a star is born. Like she is about to be the next Gwyneth Paltrow goop situation. I totally get that. It's easy to look back with hindsight, but at the time when all this was going on,

[00:12:04] there was a groundswell of all this stuff going on and nothing had really failed in that way where there was all the abuses of power going on. There hadn't been that first one to happen. The Me Too thing hadn't happened yet. Nothing had happened. Right when, yeah.

[00:12:18] Enormous to give people the wisdom to look back right now. Otherwise we'd still be in the age of it. Also if I had been there versus Yoga Works, because we were doing NXIVM in 2010 in LA. You would have enrolled Charlotte.

[00:12:30] I would have probably enrolled you, but I probably could have been enrolled by her being an aspiring actor. And that was also very glamorous and exciting. Yeah. They roped in a lot of aspiring actors because Kundalini Yoga activates your aura and

[00:12:44] your radiant body. They would tell people to just do three minutes of Breath of Fire before you go into an audition, you're going to get the job. Right. Of course. Let's write this down.

[00:12:56] So they had a lot of actresses at the Kundalini Yoga classes in LA. I mean, they had Demi Moore and the girl who plays Regina George in Mean Girls. And the original one. Bunch of mean girls. There's a bunch of them. Rachel McAdams. Yeah, Rachel McAdams.

[00:13:11] It was Rachel Madez? Yeah. Bam. Oh wow. Bam. Nippy also has a mind for this. You could be, you just throw random bands from across the decades and movies. It's weird. Like a Rain Man kind of thing. Anyway, okay. So you did the Yoga teacher training and then

[00:13:25] you started working for her. You got an internship, right? So two months into my teacher training, I had some freelance jobs. I was just barely scraping by. And I was on Instagram one day and then I saw her personal assistant

[00:13:41] posted a job posting like, Team Guru Jagat is hiring, need help with the book launch or whatever. Because Invincible Living, her book was about to come out. And I saw that post and I was like,

[00:13:54] this is my dream job. I immediately applied. I interviewed, I got the job. It was an internship. It was a three month trial internship, $300 a month stipend for the first three months. And I started working full time right away.

[00:14:10] When did you start seeing the red flags? In the teacher's training or when you started working for her? When I started working for her, everything... I mean, the teacher training, there was some

[00:14:20] off-putting parts, but I had already accepted so much by that point because I had been practicing for years. And I'd also been watching Katie's classes on Rama TV. So I was already just in this

[00:14:36] world. And so, yeah, I just blindly accepted all of the teachings. And then when I started working for her, it was amazing. Everything was great at first. And she seemed just as fun

[00:14:52] and charismatic and funny to be around offstage as she was on stage. So I was like, I was like, this is great. And then she had a great team of... I loved all the girls that worked

[00:15:04] for her. And I immediately became friends with all of them. And so I was like, this is amazing. And then that was the bait. And then the switch didn't come until six months later.

[00:15:16] Okay. And before the switch, what was your day-to-day life there? I know you worked really hard and you were hustling to do things for her. She had a book launch. And what were you doing? On the computer, doing yoga? What was your life?

[00:15:28] In the morning, we would do Katie's 9 a.m. class. And then we would immediately go over to her house and have a never-ending meeting where we would all be like... This is every day?

[00:15:41] This was every day. And we would sit in a circle and we would just be on our computers and we'd be working and chatting and getting cafe gratitude bowls. And then... Yes, my dream job.

[00:15:56] And we would maybe go on a walk or go back to Rama and do the evening class. And then I would sometimes work more at home when I got home later in the evening. And then at 630 the next day, immediately start again.

[00:16:12] How did you get away with not doing the 4 a.m. wake-ups? I just couldn't. I need sleep. I can't wake up that early. Although some days I would just because there would be a special day where we would have to do a two and a half hour meditation

[00:16:26] at 4 a.m. And then I would just be zonked for the rest of the day, just completely out of it. But girls on the team did it. They woke up at 4 a.m. Katie did it every day. I was like...

[00:16:40] And waking up at 4 a.m., that's the most powerful time to meditate because it cleans your subconscious mind. It purifies the negative thought forms. And when you purify the negative thought forms, then you become superhuman. We get it.

[00:16:55] All that out of a bag of shit. I mean a bag of... What is it? All that in a bag of whatever. That's your journey. But also, it can be sleep-depriving, obviously. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. We were all sleep-deprived. Even though I was like,

[00:17:08] I need... I'm not waking up at 4 a.m. I still, whenever I woke up, I made sure to do my meditations. And then I was completely overworked. And so right from the get-go, I was just completely consumed.

[00:17:22] There's no like reishi hot chocolate coffee that can pick you up out of that when you're that tired. No, but we did... There was like this matcha place on Abbot Kinney that we would go to. True-taste matcha.

[00:17:33] That we went... We went there a lot. We called them like Green Crack or something. And they would crack us out. We were so over-caffeinated. I believe it. And just back for a second, the people who don't know what Cafe Gratitude was...

[00:17:48] By the way, so the whole NXIVM group would go do a training and they would all go to Cafe Gratitude and you could order things. The smoothies... No, they told you to order I am...

[00:17:55] No, no. But the smoothies and the bowls were named things like I am magnificent, I am joyful, I am grateful, I am... I am narcissistic. Did I hear correctly that it shut down? Do you know? Oh my God. I had... I don't know.

[00:18:09] No, there's two of them. There's two of them. Yeah, there's one in like on Rose Avenue. And then I think there's another one in like West Hollywood or something. Larchmont. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Larchmont. Yeah. I would go out of my way to have meetings at Cafe Gratitude.

[00:18:21] You would. Do not take it from me. They may still be in action. I hope they are because I still love them. But also a little bit culty, right? Like just the whole vibe. Yeah. A lot of Kundalini's. Yeah, I worked at the Rose Avenue one.

[00:18:32] A lot of man buns. A lot of man buns. Anyway, so back to you. This is the life. This is the lifestyle. Your peak living in LA, which I totally get. But what were some of the red flags that were popping up that you

[00:18:46] didn't really recognize at the time? Any concerns you had? And did others have concerns too? I mean, I was concerned at first about how I was like, I really want to work here, but

[00:18:57] I am not getting paid enough. So I was only getting paid $300 for the first three months. That was the first month? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And so, and it was just like, the work was relentless. And I remember being on,

[00:19:11] like, it was like New Year's Eve and they, I got a message at like 10 PM and it was like, hey, can you do an email to go out tomorrow morning? And I stayed in on New Year's Eve

[00:19:20] to like do the email. I was like, okay, I'll do whatever it takes to like prove myself. That is such a part of it is like you have to do whatever it takes and you know that if you don't, somebody else will. Yes.

[00:19:35] Right? So like there's that constant hustle to be in good graces. Yes. Right away, like I really wanted her approval, like, and I would do anything to prove myself. And yeah, like six months in, I would say we were at Rama having a meeting and

[00:19:52] then another girl on the team had like made a mistake in an email and Katie just turned to her and was like, she's like, you made the same mistake twice. Like what the fuck is wrong with

[00:20:05] you? You better increase that Sadhana and just going on and on and on until the employee like had tears streaming down her face. And I was shocked. Like I had never seen her lash out like

[00:20:15] that. And I was really uncomfortable. Like it was like watching somebody like spank their kid in public or something. I don't know. It was like really uncomfortable. So like I just like got up

[00:20:28] and I was like, I'm going to go get like a coffee. And I had like my hand on the exit door to leave. And then Katie was like, she's like, oh, Charlotte doesn't like it when I yell,

[00:20:38] ha ha ha. Like trying to like laugh it off and like normalize it. And I was like, oh God, I'm so glad that wasn't me. That was really like horrific to watch. But then obviously like the verbal abuse started with me soon after that.

[00:20:53] What did that look like? So like, I don't know, like a week after that happened, I made a typo in an email and I got a call from Katie at like seven in the morning. And I was like, oh God. And then she just starts

[00:21:08] laying into me and just, she was just like, what? I can't believe you made this fucking mistake. Like what the fuck is wrong with you? And this is like the most important thing we do. Like I need

[00:21:19] to be more careful with like reading these emails, just going on and on and on. And I just like, I had to like lie down because I was so shocked and I just took it. I didn't know what else to

[00:21:31] do. I was like, I internalized it. I was like, I must have really fucked up. Yeah. That's normal. Yeah. And then I was also in teacher training. We were, you know, Yogi Bhajan, he's the founder of

[00:21:42] Kundalini Yoga, total psychopath. But he was a Saturn teacher and Saturn teachers give you the really hard, tough love to help you grow. So when you get yelled at by your spiritual teacher,

[00:21:56] that's getting an adjustment and that's making you stronger. So in my head, I was like, okay, this is just part of the game. Like I just have to get stronger. It seems like all these guys and women are Saturn teachers.

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[00:22:29] It's a lot of fun over there, people. This show is brought to you by BetterHelp. Is it just me or is this year stuck on fast forward? Slow down 2024. What's the rush? Pump the brakes. I always think that when life goes so fast,

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[00:25:17] Let's get back to this episode of A Little Bit Culty. It's a good one. In hindsight, normally all these quote gurus are after money, sex and power, right? What do you

[00:25:27] think she was after at that time? And how do you think she knew when to turn the switch of I've got you now I can be who I really am to you. She was one way, one way, one way. And then she knew it

[00:25:38] was okay to reveal that side. Right, right. Yeah, I think she was strategic about that for sure. It seems that she had to have been. Yeah, she was smart. I think she knew what she was doing.

[00:25:50] And so she was very careful to not show that side of her to me because she valued me. And she really laid it on thick at the beginning and really, I mean, the love bombing, I guess. And then she was

[00:26:05] like, all right, Charlotte's comfortable, mask off. She's not going anywhere. I have her. And did you have conversations with other people that you were around about that? Did you all notice this or was this something that you're going through alone? Could you share? Could you

[00:26:18] talk? Did you have an outlet? The morning that that happened, where I got my first tongue lashing, I went to Rama and I remember commiserating with the personal assistant. And I was like, oh, I was like, I really got it this morning. And I was like,

[00:26:36] tear, cry, cry. We were laughing about it, laughing it off. And it was just normalized. So there's a culture of normalizing. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting. It's clever how that happens. I think people don't understand how that can happen. Yeah. I mean, we do.

[00:26:52] Most people hear the story and go, oh, never take that shit. Well, maybe you wouldn't take that shit if they did it the first day. Right. But after a while, you start to recognize it as a culture. You bought in. And you bought into the whole thing,

[00:27:04] including that you're going to need some tough love to grow. There's a tangential example I can give. There's a study and you can probably find it on YouTube. I don't remember what it's called, but it basically has actors coming.

[00:27:15] There's three actors in a waiting room. And every time a bell rings, all the actors stand up like in a waiting room for like a dentist or something like that. And then they introduce new people and the new people come in.

[00:27:25] They're sitting down reading a magazine when the bell rings, everyone stands up. And one person will be looking around like, why are these people standing up? And then they'll ring the bell again. And the fourth person will just stand up

[00:27:34] because everyone else is without even understanding why the bell and what it means or anything like that. They're just following along. They're just following along with the masses. So take that experiment, apply it to your life.

[00:27:44] Maybe you're not susceptible to it. You wouldn't do it. But I think a lot of people, that study is very indicative of how we just kind of follow along with what everyone's doing.

[00:27:54] And that becomes the culture, so to speak. So anyway, my kind of two cents to that whole thing. Just heads up, we are doing a separate, totally separate episode about Yogi Bhajan

[00:28:06] and more of the sexual abuse and the stuff that happened to the kids in particular and things over in India. There's a lot of people that we're in touch with. We're just making that episode.

[00:28:17] I'm not sure if it'll come before or after this one, but when you were in it, had you heard any of those allegations? Were you aware that there was scandal or that had not really broken yet?

[00:28:28] I'm trying to think of the timeline of when this happened to you. I hadn't heard anything until, I mean, 2019 when my boyfriend brought it up. But I- Because you were still in, you were still in at that point. Oh yeah, I was still in it. He had done

[00:28:43] some research online. He found the court cases and stuff. And he brought it up to me, trying to get me to think critically about it. And I just completely shut it out. I was like, no,

[00:28:56] no, that's just, that was like a takedown. It's not true. And then 2020 when Premka's memoir came out, that's when things really exploded and I couldn't ignore it any longer. But even then, I still compartmentalized it. I was like, I can't deal with that.

[00:29:13] I was in touch with Premka briefly to have her on the podcast, but I don't, it seems like she did the memoir and then kind of needed to disappear, was my sense. Yeah, yeah. With her.

[00:29:23] Yeah. Yeah, I think she got a lot of, I'm sure that was a lot for her. Yeah, yeah. She got a lot of shit from the community because I think people are very,

[00:29:33] were very confused, right? It seems like there's still a lot of people, and we'll get to this more at the end, but who just still love Kundalini and seem to be able to separate it from the teachers. Yeah, separate the teachings from the teacher, whatever.

[00:29:46] Yeah. Let's come back to that. But I want to know more about what was your final straw? My final straw. Oh my God. Well, it took me three times to leave. It took me three times to quit

[00:29:57] because I knew it was a horrible, toxic environment. And as the years went by, Katie got just increasingly more insane and it became just unbearable. How so? What was insane and unbearable? What was she doing?

[00:30:15] Everything became more grandiose, I think, as her ego just inflated and she needed to keep adding on more programming, more this, more that, more this. And then we were a small team and we were trying to

[00:30:28] manage it all. And she just also became more abusive. And it seems like every other day, we would be getting, we used WhatsApp, so that was our Slack. And every morning we would just get

[00:30:42] these all caps messages where she was just berating us, like, what the fuck is wrong with you? Fuck you all. And just a total... Wow. And I'm like, ugh, I can't deal with this anymore. And it was also happening... I never knew when

[00:31:00] I was going to be in the hot seat and there was this one time I had this... There's a lot I can go into for this. Whatever you feel comfortable with. Yeah.

[00:31:12] The first time that I attempted to quit was she got married, by the way, to somebody 20 years younger than her. She married a brother, a younger brother of one of my coworkers. And she had this

[00:31:29] wedding in Scotland. And then a month after that, she was like, all right, we're going to do our wedding party on Thanksgiving weekend in the Grand Canyon. And expected all of us to drop

[00:31:43] our plans to have our holiday with our family to go be with them and celebrate their wedding. And I was really not wanting to go on the trip. And then anyway, it ended up getting snowed out.

[00:31:59] And I basically was home alone on Thanksgiving because my boyfriend had already gone to be with his family. And anyway, I ended up working that weekend doing our Black Friday sale.

[00:32:13] And it was just the worst Thanksgiving of my life. And I was like, I can't believe this is my life. And I was just feeling really sorry for myself. And then that Monday after the holiday weekend,

[00:32:26] Katie asked to get on a Zoom with me. And I get on the Zoom and she just lays into me for a full hour. And she was like, I can't believe that you fucked up this Black Friday sale. You left so

[00:32:38] much fucking money on the table. And I got off that call and I was like, I just completely lost it. I had a nervous breakdown. And that was the first time that I actually went and talked to a

[00:32:54] therapist. I'd never been to a therapist before. And Kundalini Yoga, they say you don't need therapy because it's the Aquarian age. That makes sense. Yeah. And when I was talking to this therapist, it was funny because there was this little clinic

[00:33:09] down the street from my house and they did 15-minute free emergency sessions. And I was telling her about my story and she was like, can I ask? She's like, is it Kundalini Yoga? And I

[00:33:22] was like, yeah. And she was like, I know what that is. She was like, I used to be a marketing director at Yoga Works. And so I was like, oh, this is interesting. And just having this conversation

[00:33:34] with her, somebody on the outside, I was like, I need to leave. I need to quit. And so I wrote my resignation letter and then I was like, I'm going to sleep on it. So I didn't send it. And then

[00:33:46] a few days after that, Katie requested that I come to class. And so I came to the class and I was feeling very resentful, not wanting to be there, not wanting to be around her.

[00:33:58] And she started like, oh, poor Charlotte, she's not feeling well. And just kind of was patting me on the back and telling everybody to be nice to me. And so she basically reeled me back in

[00:34:12] and I was like, all right, I'm going to give it another shot. I have hope this will change. Right. So you just illustrated a classic pattern for how narcissistic personalities work based on

[00:34:25] our travels and our conversations. And we had an experience about a year ago, I was working with someone who said some stuff to me that when they said it, I was like, that's it. I just don't let

[00:34:36] people treat me like that and whatever. And I saw the snapshot of the behavior and they call me the next day. And they kind of were talking, it's civil. And I noticed in my body, I started to

[00:34:46] feel better about the person while I was on the phone with them. And I got off the phone with them and I felt better about them. And I watched the whole process in place. And if I didn't have

[00:34:55] the wisdom of my experience, I'd been like, OK, you know. Give them another chance. Give them another chance, whatever. But because I had my experience, I was like, the real person they are is the person that when things were stressful and their real personality came out

[00:35:10] under a stressful situation, they were brutal. And that's when I kind of like, and I tell Sarah, anytime someone is brutal with you like that, it's probably a good indication that it's time for you

[00:35:24] to just peace out or at least have an arm's length relationship with them until they demonstrate that, hey, maybe that was a one-off and whatever. But for me, I'd seen enough with this person to go,

[00:35:33] no, that was it. But I didn't let them. And I watched myself feel better. I saw myself go neutral and then feel better about them. But I didn't take the bait. I took the fishhook out. But that's

[00:35:44] a great example of how they work. And I'm sure it'll never happen to you again next time. If someone ever treats you like that, you won't. Well, it'll happen again. You'll just be smarter.

[00:35:51] Yeah. My alarm bells go off if I feel like somebody is trying to control me or manipulate me. I just immediately get triggered. That's your wisdom. And I was just wondering, did the therapist also agree you were having a nervous breakdown? And the

[00:36:05] reason I was asking that is because I often said afterwards when I was waking up that I was having a nervous breakdown. But I actually am not sure because I never got assessed. But one theory I

[00:36:15] had was it's actually just I was letting myself feel. It's like feeling these things that I'd suppressed. And it's just a lot when you actually let it out. Oh my God. That's exactly what it was because Kundalini Yoga is all about suppressing your emotions. Yogi Bhajan said-

[00:36:33] Emotion is commotion. Emotion is commotion. And so anytime you have an emotion, that's a sign to go meditate it away. And yeah. So there was so much that I was just stuffing and it all just came out.

[00:36:48] Right. Because you're stuffing it to just show that the tools work. Yeah. Is it stuffing while pretending to process? Yeah. It's also known as spiritual bypassing. That's like- That's spiritual. Okay. Got it. Got it. You're like, I'm so enlightened. I'm just like so in the...

[00:37:04] My shafty is cleared and I'm so... Right? Yes. Although I will say every time I break a little bit late, you have a nervous breakdown. Every time I break a little bit late in the car. Oh, in the car. Yeah. Oh, it's just not okay.

[00:37:19] That's called PTSD. That's for a sec. No, no, no. She'll be on her phone. She'll look up and go, oh my God, Nippy. I'm like, Sarah, I've been at this for about 30 minutes.

[00:37:26] He doesn't break soon enough in my mind. When you see the red lights, you break. He takes his time. But when you're on your phone and you need to look up and see what happens. This is not about our car driving habits. Okay. My point is...

[00:37:35] I'm using it as an opportune. My point is those types of yogis are unbearable. Because I still practice, right? Like I still love to do yoga. I just don't go to Kundalini. I don't go to Bikram. I don't go anywhere where

[00:37:50] there is a dogma to learn or a teacher to guru-ify. I just don't. Are you sure about that? I'm sure. I chose my yoga studios very, very carefully. Do you still practice, by the way? I still do stretching. I like a downward dog once in a while.

[00:38:04] That's what I call it. I call it stretching. Nippy calls my yoga stretching. Thank you. So you tried a few times. How did you actually leave? That... My little nervous breakdown was at the end of 2019. And then in 2020,

[00:38:19] the memoir comes out. Premka's memoir. And then just... I mean, all hell breaks loose. There's this huge backlash. Everyone in the Rama community is demanding that Katie make a statement. And she ignored it for a long time. She was just hoping that it would go away.

[00:38:39] But we were getting so much pushback on our socials. And we were told just anytime there was a comment of somebody asking, like, can you speak on this? We were just told to delete and

[00:38:52] block, delete and block. And so we kept that up for a little while. But it wasn't going away. And in her little Zoom programs and everything, people on the calls were asking questions. And

[00:39:06] and it wasn't very like 5D femme of her, you know, when the founder of Kundalini Yoga is getting me to. So she eventually... We put out the statement, which was this video called

[00:39:22] The Futile Flow of Fate. And it's the most culty video you could really ever watch. It's on YouTube. And we put it out on all of our platforms with the comments turned off.

[00:39:35] And when that happened, I was like, oh, I was like, this is such... This is bad for business. This is such a bad PR move. I could even see that. And also, internally, I was watching Katie try to

[00:39:53] grapple with this. And so she would say things like, you know, it was 1969. Everybody was fucking back then. We haven't seen the video. And for those who haven't also like what was the overall what was her angle? What was her response? Was it if you could summarize it?

[00:40:08] She wasn't in the video. It was made by her spiritual teacher, Hattie Jeevan, aka Steve, who is really he's he's the Keith Raniere of this whole operation. I would say. Really? Yes. I would say he's the Keith Raniere and Katie was more of like Nancy, not Nancy. Pam?

[00:40:29] No. Lauren? Not Lauren. The one who was on the show, Smallville. Oh, Allison. Yeah. Got it. So where does that put Yogi Bhajan? Yogi Bhajan is not Keith Raniere? Well, I guess he was like the Keith Raniere of his time. Right. There's two Keith Raniere's. Two Keith Raniere's.

[00:40:48] Yeah. I think we call Rama like a cult within a cult. So the Futile Flow of Fate video was basically calling Pamela Dyson a liar and basically saying that on the spiritual path,

[00:41:04] you have the fate path and you have the destiny path. She was once on the destiny path when she was Premka, but now she's Pamela. And so now she's on the fate path. And then once you're on the fate

[00:41:16] path, you can never get back to the destiny path. And the betrayal of your spiritual teacher is the worst thing you can do. How convenient. What a great little mechanism for protection of a being.

[00:41:32] Okay. So the Kundalini, the world that you're in, the yoga is rooted in some sort of principle or tenet, correct? Yes. Okay. So how would you encapsulate what Katie did with those principles? How were the principles

[00:41:47] leveraged to abuse? And then where did you fall into the abuse, I guess? In what capacity were you abused? How does Western culture just grab these ideas and go, oh, I can run with these and abuse them?

[00:42:02] I think she was very indoctrinated herself and she was definitely trained by Steve. And he was like a master. He knows NLP. He's a hypnotist. He's a scary dude. What was his name? Not Steve, but the other name? Hadi Jivan.

[00:42:20] So Steve is saying, hey, go off, call yourself Guru Jagat, and this is how you do it? Yes. I don't know for sure, but I think he was sort of behind the brand management of her. Got it.

[00:42:28] And basically she really was devoted to him. And in the same way, we in the inner circle were devoted to her. And we believed that she had a special mission to come to the planet and

[00:42:44] deliver these teachings and modernize Kundalini yoga to raise the frequency of the planet. And that was the belief system. And I believed that by devoting myself to her, I was making my life

[00:42:58] more meaningful. And we talked a lot about energy. Kundalini yoga is all about energy. And so when you give to your spiritual teacher, you're getting so much in return, energy-wise. There is a somewhat truth to that. You could take it out of the yoga community and say, hey,

[00:43:19] look, I got a great coach. He's giving me his energy. I'm taking his energy and applying it to my life. The term energy or whatever. But I think- It gets mystical.

[00:43:28] Yeah. The word energy gets used in a way because it's a nebulous term that you can make mean whatever. And when she's saying energy and you're saying energy, but you guys both have a thought object of energy, and you're operating under that premise. So it's kind of-

[00:43:42] It's different interpretations of the word energy. Right. Just ripe for like, follow my energy. I'm like, okay, whatever that means. I'm also, quick tangent, I've been texting with one of my very best friends of all time who is

[00:43:55] she used to be, she also grew up in Kundalini, but also was in texting with me. And then we all kind of left all of it at the same time. So she's like, wasn't deep in it, but practiced a lot of

[00:44:05] the things. And her and I both did the, what's it called? Beautiful, Blissful, Bountiful with Guru, what's her name? Sonatum. Car. No, that's the singer. Is it the song? No, this is a book, a prenatal yoga book. Oh, Gurmukh.

[00:44:19] Gurmukh. Yeah. So we did the Gurmukh. I never went there. I never went to, but I like read the book and I loved it. Like that's the book I gave to like all my pregnant

[00:44:27] friends. And anyway, I was just texting with her and I'm like, I'm tackling Kundalini today, just so you know. And she goes, take down that bitch, LOL. And then also she wrote, as you were

[00:44:37] saying that Kundalini energy just is, and that's, it's available to all and that's a good thing. So is that true? Do you think like, is it just your tap? Like it's a tool to tap into like

[00:44:48] a good energy and, but she's making it while I'm giving it to you. And that's where the problem is. You know what I mean? I mean, I don't even know. I mean, energy could mean whatever. I mean, I guess in my mind it was

[00:45:01] like, and we talked a lot about like destiny and like you're liberating yourself. You're eliminating karma and you're becoming the highest version of yourself. Right. It's like the Kundalini version of NXIVM. It's like remove your limiting beliefs,

[00:45:16] shed your old blah, blah, blah. For more background on what brought us here, check out my page turning memoir. It's called Scarred, the true story of how I escaped NXIVM, the cult that bound my life. It's available on Amazon, Audible and at most bookstores.

[00:45:31] And if you want to see that story in streaming form, you can watch both seasons of The Vow on HBO. Hey, we all have those days when the thought of cooking or hitting the grocery store just feels

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[00:47:03] Having lived the stuff of true crime in real life, you'd think that I wouldn't want to delve into solving mysteries in my free time, right? Well, not so fast. I'm actually a big fan of

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[00:47:30] teasing mysteries of the roaring 20s, search for hidden objects from the parlors of New York to the sidewalks of Paris, and you can sharpen your powers of observation while you play. That's

[00:47:40] a better use of your time than doomscrolling any day, in my opinion. Right now I've made my way to a chapter called The Good Woman of Cortona and it's a long story, but let's just say I'm snooping

[00:47:50] around the back room of a tailor's workshop and I will find the next object. And it's kind of a long story, but let's just say I'm snooping around the back room of a tailor's workshop and I will find

[00:47:59] my next object in my quest any moment now. Here's hoping. So fun and a great way to kill time while I'm waiting in line at the supermarket or having a nice slow morning after a busy week. And TBH,

[00:48:10] I'm starting to think I may have missed my calling. Sarah Edmondson, international mystery solver reporting for duty. Sounds good, right? Escape into a world of mystery. Download June's Journey for free today on iOS and Android. Enjoy. Break time's over people. Let's get back to this

[00:48:26] episode of A Little Bit Culty. It's a good one. The consistency in like the majority of these stories is like everyone seems to have this kind of sense that there's something bigger. Anytime

[00:48:40] someone tries to put language to it and claim that they've got an answer to what that something bigger is, right? It's always ripe for abuse. Like even as a kid, when you wonder and you have an

[00:48:51] imagination, even when you look at the night sky, you kind of go, okay, there's something else there. You don't know what it is. It's a feeling. And then, you know, look at what's going on our

[00:49:01] time. Religion can say, oh, I've got a direct line to God, you know? And this is the spiritual version of it. Like I have these answers and it's energy. And then you can go extreme in any sort of

[00:49:13] world and say, you know, oh, that explanation of that, there's something else out there makes sense to me. While I roll my eye at the Kundalini and Sarah would take me there, there were aspects

[00:49:23] of like, oh, that's pretty cool. I like that. And you felt so good. It was not enough for me to make it my path. Well, that's my question for you now. Where do you think the good feeling comes

[00:49:32] from now that you're this far on? Oh, wait, we haven't got to how you got out. I know. We're going to get there. We're going to get there. One question at a time.

[00:49:40] How did you leave? Okay. So the Premka thing was happening and that was driving Katie batshit insane because she couldn't stand losing subscribers and people and not being totally worshipped all

[00:49:55] the time. So that's what it's about for her. Yeah. And so you can kind of see the wheels are coming off and she was getting more erratic and her moods were like changing a lot. And she just was

[00:50:08] horrible to be around. And she was gaining weight at this point? And she's like, you know, I think she was an emotional eater because Kundalini yoga, you can't drink, you can't do drugs. So really all we could do to like take the edge off is like

[00:50:24] eat. Like I gained weight too, but yeah, I was around, she ate constantly. It's like, she had like Postmates premium and like order it like six times a day. Yeah. She's gaining weight. And I think she was not sleeping as much either. She already didn't sleep a lot,

[00:50:42] but she was not healthy. And the pandemic happened during this time. And we had to close down all of the studios and all of the people who worked in studio were furloughed. And I was one of the

[00:50:55] employees that they kept on payroll and all of the other employees that were furloughed were told to get on pandemic unemployment assistance. And they were continued, they continued to work while they were like technically on unemployment, but because the unemployment office was so backlogged,

[00:51:15] they couldn't like, everybody was working, but they weren't getting paid. And so morale just on the team was like extremely low. And so Katie decided to have this like clearing the air zoom call. And this was like on a Sunday and it was with a family constellation therapist,

[00:51:36] which is not a real therapist. And that with her work, it was sort of like, and we had done this before, like as part of like a team building thing, but she basically

[00:51:46] like goes around to each person on the team and like goes into the nervous system and speaks what that person is feeling to the group. So it can be cleared and healed. And we get on this call

[00:52:00] and nobody wants to be there. And she starts going around the zoom and she, I'm like one of the first people she picks on. And she's like, Charlotte has, you have a glitch in your nervous

[00:52:13] system. And like, if you could just like smooth that out, like you could be a lot more productive at work. I'm like working 12 hours a day. I'm like what glitch? And the whole call was just

[00:52:26] like propaganda. And she starts talking about Katie and she's like, Katie has a mission on this planet. She needs to bring these higher frequencies to the planet and you all need to stop

[00:52:39] talking bad about her. She should get an Oscar for acting like a human being when she's not in business meetings, she's talking to Saturn and Mars. And we were just like, okay. And she's like,

[00:52:53] Katie said yes to her mission. Are you going to say yes to yours? And then everybody unmutes and they're like, yes. And at this point I got off that call and I was just like, what the fuck?

[00:53:03] I was like, I don't think, I don't know what is going on, but I don't know if I can continue to do this charade. This is just so ridiculous. So I was starting to wake up a little bit.

[00:53:15] And then I had a one-on-one call with that family constellation therapist. And I was like, I want to see what the glitch is about. And she told me that Katie, she's like, Katie is wearing

[00:53:27] a t-shirt that says figure it out. If she were to die tomorrow, it would say figure it out on her gravestone. She's like, Katie doesn't have time for you. You need to figure it out. And I

[00:53:37] was like, this is weird. We're trying to run a business and she's the CEO of the company and I'm the marketing director. And I feel like I can't really talk to her and I'm really stressed

[00:53:48] out and nothing's changing. And so after I had that little one-on-one call, I decided to quit for real. And so I took my resignation letter that I wrote a few months back and I sent it. And then

[00:54:01] Katie called me two minutes after I sent the email and she just was like, oh my God, what's going on? Can we talk about it? And then we had this hour conversation where she just was saying,

[00:54:15] she said all the things I wanted to hear. She was like, you're so brilliant. I don't want to lose you. I will give you a three month paid vacation and you can have 40 weekends for the next

[00:54:27] month and a half. And I was like, great. I was like, this is everything I wanted. I wanted to feel like I'm valued at this company and I want to feel I have some benefits. So I was like, okay,

[00:54:42] let's try it. And then we tried it. And then of course, nothing really changed and it was still just all consuming and the work never stopped and things just weren't getting better. And then the

[00:54:55] George Floyd protests happened in June of 2020. And in LA there was a lot of looting and Katie publicly, she was having black women come on her Instagram lives. And she was talking this big game. And then internally she was sending everybody MAGA TikToks and just talking about how

[00:55:20] there's better ways to protest and all of this stuff. And she was full on Trump supporter, full on QAnon. So why do you think that was? I mean, at this point she was totally red pilled. Why pick that extreme and then front the other? She'd lose followers.

[00:55:36] She would lose her platform because her platform was very liberal. And when Me Too happened, she based a lot of her content around that. And then with the pandemic, she also talked about,

[00:55:53] I mean, the vaccine hadn't come out yet. So she wasn't anti-vax. She was just talking about how to boost your immune system and stuff. So with whatever is happening, she took the mainstream liberal view to appeal to her audience. Her audience, yeah.

[00:56:09] Wouldn't it seem that she was more aligned with the left in the yoga community? How did she get pulled into the right? Yeah. Why would that be her? Which by the way, Nip, you didn't know this, but this was when she was on my radar

[00:56:22] because people were telling me about the QAnon stuff that she was spouting. The QAnon thing. Yeah. But how did she get it? What was her influence there? Do you know? How did she tap into that?

[00:56:31] Well, conspiracy theories were always just a part of the culture at Roma. We would always make jokes about the Illuminati and reptilians. But she did actually... I mean, I did too for

[00:56:49] a time. I believed in this stuff. It was just part of the worldview. And I think things accelerated with the pandemic. And then you had documentaries coming out like Plandemic, which she sent to everybody on the team to watch. And she was just becoming more radicalized because

[00:57:08] Steve is totally into this stuff. He's just a crank who just... He barely leaves his house. He's just on YouTube watching all of these crazy conspiracy theorists like David Icke and Kerry

[00:57:20] Cassidy and just binge watches that shit. And he would have these calls with Katie in the mornings, and he would just tell her this is the news of the day and it's all crazy conspiracy bullshit. Oh, that's where he... That's where she got that.

[00:57:37] Anything Steve said, it's like the word of God. Okay. So she's parroting Steve. Yes. And she's becoming- And Steve's online. ... radicalized by this stuff. And she spent a lot of time on... She did her own YouTube research,

[00:57:50] she was watching all these QAnon documentaries. This is what she did all day long during the pandemic. Not a good time for so many of us. Yeah. I still had enough, I don't know, I still had enough rationale to be like,

[00:58:03] okay, this is insane. Luckily, I still had my boyfriend who was a major tether to reality. And we went out of town during this time of the week of the protests. And it was on that trip where

[00:58:17] I was really struggling. I was like, I know I deserve better. But at the same time, I'm still terrified to leave because I was indoctrinated to believe that I'm going to be on the fate path.

[00:58:32] I'm going to lose all of the spiritual progress. They would say once you leave the dharma, you start back karmically at square one. And I had done many, many years of practice and I was like, what's going to happen to me?

[00:58:48] I was also told these stories of people getting cancer or getting into car accidents, just getting bad luck. So I thought if I leave, are all these bad things going to happen to me?

[00:59:00] So I was terrified. But my boyfriend, he had this notes app with all the reasons why I should leave. And we had this night where we were just going back and forth. And I was like, well, what about

[00:59:13] this? And he was like, well, like saying things are never going to change. You need to get out. And so after that trip, I sent in my final resignation letter and I was done. Did she try to get you back again?

[00:59:25] Nope. I finally found the courage to leave. And I was like, you know what? If I'm on the fate path, fuck it. At least I'll have my sanity. Autonomy. Yeah. Autonomy too. Yeah. Anyone tried to get you back?

[00:59:37] No one tried to get me back. There were a lot of conversations during that time where I was talking with other people on the team. And they tried to give me the same stuff that I had heard

[00:59:49] throughout all my years there that were like, you're being cold turned into a diamond. You're going to get so much stronger. One day you'll be able to just... Katie is going to scream

[01:00:00] in your face and you're just going to be able to have no emotion. You're just going to be able to take it. And I was just like, I don't know if I... I don't think that's ever going to happen.

[01:00:09] And nor should you want that. That's something that people are like, wait, that's not okay. Yeah. No one says that. They're like, oh man. So that was four years ago? Mm-hmm. When you did the math right? Yeah. The pandemic?

[01:00:21] That was 2020. I left in June of 2020. And I thought, I was like, okay. At first I was like celebrating. I was like, fuck yeah, I'm free. And then I had this grieving period where I was

[01:00:35] just like, when I was at Rama, we had so much purpose. Everything, it was ecstatic. It was so grandiose. And then I was like, well, what do I do now? I lost all my friends and everything.

[01:00:45] And I think it was August of 2020 that the first episode of The Vow premiered. And from that first episode, I was like, oh my God, I was in a cult. Oh, you hadn't figured out the cult. I hadn't figured it out yet.

[01:00:58] Oh wow. Even though your boyfriend was in a cult? He never used the word cult. He was just like, this is not good? He never used the word cult. He was just like, this is a bad situation. And yeah, I kind of

[01:01:10] thought, all right, I'm just leaving a bad job. I still practice Kundalini Yoga out of, just like insurance. I was like, just in case. I just want to make sure. So I was still doing

[01:01:19] my practice every day. But after that first episode, there were just so many parallels and all these light bulbs were going off. And then at some point, I was like, oh my God, I'm

[01:01:29] going to be a cult. I'm going to be a cult. And then that sent me on a whole journey of deprogramming and reading all the cult books and listening to all the podcasts.

[01:01:38] What were some of the things that were helpful for you? What's your healing journey been like? I think it really helped to understand, to try to just make sense of what I was a part of and

[01:01:49] understand the psychology of cult leaders. And yeah, I read a lot about narcissism and that really helped me understand how I was manipulated, how she got her hooks into me.

[01:02:06] So yeah, just reading a lot about that. And yeah, I think for me now, I'm just so much more gentler with myself. With Kundalini Yoga, it was so hardcore. It was like, wake up early, take your cold shower, do these hardcore meditations. And I've really learned throughout

[01:02:28] this healing process to just really give myself a break, to not be so perfectionistic. I like to take naps. I like to just relax and enjoy life. We don't always need to be

[01:02:41] striving for this crazy ideal that I was chasing after. And I don't even really know what I was... It was like, we were just constantly chasing after spiritual transformation. You got to get

[01:02:53] in your meditations. It's a power day. It's an eclipse. It's a full moon. You got to do your thing. And I think those altered states were what really kept me hooked into the thing.

[01:03:06] It felt really mystical and everything, but I think... I don't know. It really just hijacked my critical thinking and kept me trapped. And what was the fate of the jag? Did you ever to say anything to her? Yeah. Did you ever confront her?

[01:03:20] After I sent the letter, she wanted to get on a call with me. And so we got on this call with her and the CEO, who's like the Nancy of the whole thing. Because I put in my two weeks

[01:03:33] and she was like, we need you to wrap up by the end of the week so we can all move on and then click. That was it. How rude. Yeah. How many years had you spent with them at this point?

[01:03:45] Almost four. And then she died how long after that? She died a year after that. And that was from an ankle injury that caused a... Well, she broke her ankle, right? Yeah. From what I understand, she was in Germany

[01:04:00] and she slipped in the shower and she broke her ankle. And then she flew back to California. And I guess she wasn't really taking good care of it or elevating it because she got a pulmonary embolism, went into cardiac arrest and she died.

[01:04:16] She had a surgery. I didn't know. Oh, yeah. She had a surgery and then had... Yeah. And then had a... Because normally pulmonary embolisms can happen after a surgery, particularly in your legs because a clot will go up and clot your lung.

[01:04:27] Wow. And how did that affect the community? I mean, I watched from a distance online and everybody seemed rattled. But the narrative that they painted was like, okay, she's completed her mission on this planet and now she's left her body and she's going to...

[01:04:46] She'll reincarnate and come back again and continue to do this work. That's sad. Wow. Yeah. Does the institute still exist? It does. I don't know how. I honestly don't know how because they lost their star. They lost their cash cow. I really don't understand, but

[01:05:02] I'm sure they just have wealthy donors or something. What would you say to people who are still supporting it? What would your advice be if this episode somehow manages to reach them?

[01:05:12] It's hard. I mean, I really love a lot of the people who work there. I loved my coworkers and it is heartbreaking to see them trapped. And I just want to let them know that I still love you

[01:05:30] and I'm here for you on the other side. And I really hope that they can figure it out and find their way out. Yeah. Yeah. That's good advice. One of my good friends from high school, my friend April, she texted me after she saw the first

[01:05:46] episode of The Vow. She has known me since I was 15 and we were friends in New York when I took my first training. When she texted me after seeing the first episode, she's like, it's sad it turned

[01:05:56] out to be that. And I thought that was a very human take on it. All the joking aside and all the cult stuff and all that stuff, it's just sad that people's goodness are leveraged and it turns

[01:06:07] out to be something like that. It spoke a lot about her and to have that perspective on these groups or whatever, it's just sad that it turns out to be that even that she died, that's just a sad story. Super sad. It's really tragic. It's tough to see.

[01:06:21] Yeah. I definitely had some grief about it. Absolutely. Grief about it because she was also in a sense a victim herself and she lost her life. And I think she really lost it because of this.

[01:06:37] Because of this. Also the weight gain thing and all that stuff, I'm sure she just got so delusional about the laws of cause and effect as it pertains to food. And I'm sure that related to her ankle breaking and all that stuff.

[01:06:49] Right. She would brag about how... She was like, I just went to my acupuncturist and they said I have the organs of a 17-year-old. And so she really thought that because she was doing so much kundalini yoga, she was just pristine on the inside. And there's another

[01:07:08] kundalini yoga teaching that says a yogi gets to choose when they take their last breath. And she really believed that. So she thought that she could control the uncontrollable. Yeah. Well, you pick and choose your justifications, right? That's a pretty enticing promise. Yeah.

[01:07:28] You know, to control the uncontrollable. Good for you for getting out and turning it into wisdom, your story into wisdom. That's great. And what's it been like now that you've gone viral and TikTok and you're sharing openly? What's life been like now?

[01:07:41] It's been good. I mean, I'm having fun on there. I'm having fun telling my stories. And I'm also writing a memoir about my experience. And I think that's sort of like the last phase of

[01:07:55] my healing journey is just to kind of make it into art and tell the story in full. And I've always wanted to write a book, so this is perfect. I have a story to tell. When will that be out?

[01:08:08] I don't know. I have like a shitty first draft written and I have a book proposal and I'm just trying to find the right agent. I can guide you and share with you my very steep learning curve. Yes. Yes, I read your memoir.

[01:08:23] Oh, thank you. I appreciate that. Charlotte, it's been so great chatting with you. I cannot wait to read your book and see what goes on in your life next. And I hope that people

[01:08:33] continue to reach out to you and wake up from the cult within a cult and that eventually you get all your friends back and you can go to Cafe Gratitude and, you know, eat those bowls. I'm in the juice.

[01:08:46] Oh my God, I'm in the juice. Okay, when I come to LA next… We should get a tutorial about TikTok. Yes. When I come to LA next, please take me to Cafe Gratitude and also I'm going to follow

[01:08:55] up with you about TikTok because I really have to get my old ass on board. Yes. My old ass. Your old ass on board. It's fun. Amazing. Thank you for taking your time here with us. It's been great. And I'm glad that

[01:09:10] the vow could be part of your healing journey in some way. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me. You guys are my heroes, for real. Thanks, Charlotte. You like what you hear? Please do give us a rating, a review, and subscribe on iTunes or

[01:09:26] wherever you listen. Every little bit helps us get this cult awareness content out there. Smash that subscribe button. You know what to do. Anything with guru… Red flag? Red flag for me. Always has been.

[01:09:39] I know. Are there real gurus out there? Are there actual real gurus who don't want to… Rule. …extort something from you in some way, money, sex, or power? I don't know. Maybe that's another episode. Yeah, maybe.

[01:09:51] As a reminder, as we said at the beginning, we do have other intros lined up for some of the children that were born into or brought into Yogi Bhajan's original Kundalini group. There's been a lot of controversy around his particular teachings. Again, this is just the tip of

[01:10:08] the iceberg. Please do hang tight. I'm sure more is going to come out. More is coming out, including documentaries on the subject. Thank you for listening. Reminder, we will be talking about this more on Patreon where we now

[01:10:21] have silver fanny packs for those who are interested in joining the inner circle. Troy Ames has a joke that he shares every week. Troy, our son, will share a joke every week. And as you know, $5 a month gives you

[01:10:33] four bonus drops every month. That is less than the price of a fancy lavender latte. See you next time! 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 Thanks for listening everyone. We're heading over to patreon.com slash a littlebitcultynow to discuss this episode. In the meantime, dear listener, please remember,

[01:11:07] this podcast is solely for general informational, educational and entertainment purposes. It's not intended as a substitute for real medical, legal or therapeutic advice. For cult recovery resources and to learn more about seeking safely in this culty world,

[01:11:22] check out a littlebitculty.com slash culty resources and don't miss Sarah's TED talk called How Cult Literate Are You? Great stuff. A Little Bit Culty is a Trace 120 production, executive produced by Sarah Edmondson and

[01:11:34] Anthony Nippy Ames in collaboration with producer Will Rutherford at Citizens of Sound and our co creator and show chaplain slash bodyguard Jess Temple-Tardy. And our theme song Cultivated is by John Bryant.