Free Your Inner Guru

In this compelling conversation, Kathleen shares how a courageous and empathetic friend led her to understand the deep-seated racism and white privilege underlying her beliefs. Kathleen shares how stepping away from her former community put her on a path of healing and awareness of cult dynamics in her midst.

In this first episode of 2022, Kathleen Oh and Laura take a deep dive into psychedelics, altered states, politics and predators in the world of personal transformation. And why it’s necessary for all coaches to critically evaluate the training and bigwigs in their coaching lineage.

Kathleen Oh is an integration coach helping people on their self-exploration journeys. She educates and guides curious explorers through microdosing psychedelics & breathwork, and most importantly, heal and expand into all that’s possible. She is sought after for her authentic, soft-but-confident approach.

Personally, Kathleen has overcome childhood trauma, depression and addiction.

Offline, Kathleen lives in Niagara, Ontario, loves to hike with her dogs. She feels most connected when in nature. Her favourite moments are in the darkness and the deep cold of a Canadian winter.

Dr Janja Lalich – janjalalich.com

Take Back Your Life Recovery Workshops

Past episodes: Dr Janja Lalich, Nathanael Garrett Novosel, AdaPia D’Errico

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Before Sean became a photographer, he studied theology and worked as a Baptist priest in South Africa. You’re going to hear about his journey into and out of the priesthood, then into photography, why he started his Youtube channel, and wrote his recent book The Meaning in the Making where he demystifies the creative process.

You’re going to love this rich conversation. It touches on all the topic categories of this podcast: creativity, spirituality, finding and using your voice, and stepping away from structured, institutionalized religion.

As we close out 2021, Sean gives us a real sense of what it’s like to bring all parts of ourselves to our work, as evidenced in his philosophical approach to photography. He wants us to put our voice out into the world, imbue it with more meaning to tell a better story and give a deeper truth.

This is an intense and hopeful conversation, one that I hope takes you into the next year with a renewed creative focus of your own.

I give you The Meaning in the Making, a conversation with Sean Tucker.

Sean Tucker, The Meaning in the Making: The why and how behind our human need to create

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I am delighted to have Sarah and Nippy join me for a “part 2” conversation that begins on A Little Bit Culty today!

One of my goals is that both of our extreme experiences be relatable to new age and self help consumers.  Take away the branding and sex trafficking of NXIVM, and the head shaving and fatal sweat lodge of my experience, and what remains is a seemingly regular self help organization. Maybe it is. Maybe it’s a cult. Maybe it’s both.

One thing is certain: Our hindsight can become your foresight.

Listen as we explore sales and recruitment tactics, coercion, the mind-fuck of “at-causedness,” and “the NXIVM flip,” which you’ll find everywhere in new age and self help circles, masquerading as personal responsibility and looking to yourself as the creator of everything in your life, including narcissistic and cult abuse.

Sarah Edmondson is a Canadian actress who has stared in the CBS series Salvation and more than twelve films for the Hallmark Channel and Lifetime. In 2019, Sarah published Scarred: The True Story of How I Escaped NXIVM, the Cult that Bound My Life.

Nippy Ames has come full circle back to what he was born to do: performing, creating, and truth telling. He’s proving to be an emerging voice in the conversation around what it means to be an upstanding man, husband, and father in 2021.

Sarah and Nippy discuss their healing process with the help of experts and fellow survivors on their podcast A Little Bit Culty.

2 ways to win Sarah’s memoir:

Draw to be held on Instagram Live – December 30 at noon ET

Books:

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Shulamit is a resilience and mindset consultant who uses her background as a trauma therapist to help women identifying entrepreneurs manage their mindset and pilot their emotions so they can overcome the anxiety and isolation of running a business.

You may remember Shulamit from our conversation in Episode 88: Cult Dynamics and Abusive, Intimate Relationships. When we finished, it felt like there was a lot more to cover. So here we are. My hope for this episode is that it gives you context for your own experience, for the experience of someone you care for, and for the abusive culture and systems we are immersed in, whether we are conscious of it or not.

Before we go any further, I don’t think I’ve ever given a trigger warning before, and I don’t like them for a couple of reasons. First of all, they can be triggering in and of themselves and put us into a heightened state where we expect to be triggered. And so then we’re triggered. It’s that good, old self fulfilling prophecy. Secondly, I’m not your parent here to protect you from challenging topics. Otherwise nobody learns and this podcast wouldn’t exist. However, this is an episode that might best be consumed in a quiet place with a warm tea or coffee and a journal nearby, or on a quiet walk, so that you can absorb and reflect at your own rate and pace.

I’m told that this is how many of you listen to this podcast. I’m not saying this to turn you off. I just want you to know, because I became emotional midway through and we had to take a little break before guiding the conversation into reflecting on what it’s like to wake up to abusive relationships in our life.

And how to use self compassion to self-regulate so we can engage our creative problem solving and ask for help. I think this is a serious but hopeful conversation. And I want to be thoughtful about what your experience may be when you consume it. So I guess I am invoking my protective super power after all.

Like always, if you receive value from this episode, please leave a review and sharing it with others. Follow @freeyourinnerguru and @the_entrepreneurs_therapist on Instagram and consider supporting the podcast on Patreon, where you’ll have access to the ongoing conversation in our Discourse community for as little as $5 a month.

Episode 88: Cult Dynamics and Abusive Intimate Relationships with Shulamit ber Levtov

Duluth Wheel of Power and Control

Duluth Wheel of Culture

Article: Nine Perfect Strangers Made Me a Punchline and Now I’m Punching Back

Judith Herman, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence–From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror

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In the process, they recognized that cult dynamics run rampant in our society and are particularly prevalent in the self-help and coaching industries.

Jenny and Mark now bring an anti-cult approach to all their work, with a knowledge that breaking free from undue influence is key to living authentically and doing what matters most.

Jenny Cornbleet and Mark Futterman are instructional designers, coaches, and consultants. They help people discover what they most want to express through life and work, live according to their values, and make their projects as impactful as possible.

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Steve McCready is the host of The Sensitive Rebel podcast. He is here to interview me about life before, since, and lessons learned from my involvement in the self help industry and my involvement in “that sweat lodge.” Over on the Sensitive Rebel, you will find an episode called Laura Tucker Helps Steve Free His Inner Guru.

Steve McCready is a coach with a background as a psychotherapist. Steve and I share many interests including psychology, photography, and creativity.

After a couple of Zooms geeking out on art and gear, we had a “what if” conversation about interviewing each other. To shake things up, we decided to be guests on our own shows!

The timing is serendipitous. The 12th anniversary of the Sedona sweat lodge was October 8th. A dozen years later, I’m still peeling back layers of this experience and sharing them, but mostly on other podcasts!

Steve’s background as a therapist enables him to hone in on challenging topics with empathy. He speaks with authority to their impact on psychology and mental health, making him the perfect host for this conversation.

No joke, by the time we finished, I was tempted to title this episode “Would Someone Please Just Give Me a Red Flag?!?”

Thank you, Steve for being a kind and empathetic host. My interview of Steve for episode 23 of The Sensitive Rebel is here

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Gerette Buglion and Lisa are two of the founders of #igotout. They believe now is the time for survivors of cult dynamics to share their stories with unflinching honesty. Every story matters, and the ripple effect of speaking up can make a difference.

Survivors of cultic abuse can raise awareness of undue influence and coercive control. The goal is to change the cultural acceptance of abuse of power in all kinds of groups, not just cults.

Gerette and Lisa join me to share the story of how #igotout was formed, characteristics of cult dynamics in today’s society, and how survivors can find support at igotout.org.

Gerette Buglion, B.A. in Elementary and Special Ed, is the author of An Everyday Cult. She earned her ‘Masters Degree’ in Cult Awareness Education from the school of life. Gerette co-manages operations and communications of igotout.org, is a spokeswoman and activist for the movement and hosts Writing to Reckon, an online workshop where survivors of cultic abuse write their I got out statement.

Lisa owns, designs, and manages the igotout.org website intended to support the #igotout movement, as well as makes most of the material and posts for the social media accounts. She is the main point of contact for #igotout communications through email and messaging on the #igotout social platforms.

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Laura shares her response to the line five minutes in to the first episode of Nine Perfect Strangers:

“Remember those people who died in that sweat lodge? They thought they were being enlightened, but in reality they were being cooked.”

This episode includes the article Nine Perfect Strangers Made Me a Punch Line and Now I’m Punching Back – Survivor of That Sweat Lodge Stands Up For Survivors of All Bad Gurus and the conversation that has come to life as a result.

Mentioned in this episode:

Article: Nine Perfect Strangers Made Me a Punch Line and Now I’m Punching Back

Episode 87 – Dr Janja Lalich: When Self Help Turns Cult

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Regina Louise is a remarkable human being who engages in this conversation with grace, intelligence, empathy and generosity.

Before Regina wrote her latest book Permission Granted, she authored two bestselling memoirs: Somebody’s Someone and Someone Has Led This Child to Believe in which she shares her journey that included being in thirty foster homes as a child. Her memoirs became the award-winning Lifetime movie I Am Somebody’s Child: The Regina Louise Story.

Regina joins me to explore topics of the day, including racism, privilege, being a social agent, COVID19, and how writing her 2 memoirs prepared her to write to Permission Granted, her first non-fiction self help book.

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Wolf Terry is a contributing writer for Yoga Journal. She left teaching yoga at the beginning of the pandemic after years of working at every level of the $88 billion industry in order to become a full-time writer.

In 2018 Wolf lost her younger brother and best friend to suicide, mere months after her child was born. Since then she has been an advocate for mental health, as well as an outspoken activist on crucial social justice issues.

Wolf recently came under fire in the Yoga and Wellness community for her Yoga Journal article “Getting Vaxxed Was My Act of Ahimsa” in which she calls out the yoga community for abandoning its ethics.

Host Laura Tucker is a survivor of the 2009 fatal sweat lodge at a spiritual and self help retreat in Sedona, Arizona. She and Wolf discuss their common concerns for the yoga, wellness, spiritual and self help industries including:

Wolf Terry’s Yoga Journal article – Getting Vaxxed Was My Act of Ahimsa

Yoga Journal’s teaser post on Instagram

The Story Behind Free Your Inner Guru

Documentary – Enlighten Us: The Rise and Fall of James Arthur Ray

Wondery podcast – Guru: The Dark Side of Enlightenment

Conspirituality Podcast – Ep 61 – From Anti-Feminism to Anti-Vax with Dr Annie Kelley

Dr Annie Kelley’s podcast Vaccine: The Human Story

Free Your Inner Guru Leadership Community on Discourse

Lindsay Keefe Yoga Therapy

Steve McCready – The Sensitive Rebel Podcast

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