E8 First Person Charlottesville - Yogaville Survivor

Charles: Before we get started, a quick content warning. The following story contains mentions of sexual abuse and suicide and could be difficult to listen to. 

Maxicelia: Welcome to First Person Cville, the podcast. I’m your host, Maxicelia Robinson. I’m also a co-host of ‘In My Humble Opinion’ from 101 Jamz. Back in 2015, Brianna Patten was struggling with an undiagnosed Bipolar 2 disorder. Brianna: So most people think of bipolar as rapid mood shifting, but bipolar two is you're depressed most of the time, and then kind of randomly maybe like once or twice a year, like a mania or psychosis would happen. and I was a sophomore in college. I wasn't really enjoying myself. I had switched my major like five times at that point, and attempted suicide. And at the end of that semester, I said I need to take a break from school because it's stressful, I don't know really what I'm doing here. So I worked at Yellowstone National Park for that summer. And while I was there, someone said, there's this place in Virginia, it's kind of weird, but I think you'd like it, it's called Yogaville. And I was like, “oh, I'll look into it.” Maxicelia: Yogaville is a spiritual community located in Buckingham County. It opened in the 1980s and was the brainchild of Swami Satchidananda — a guru who created a practice called “Integral Yoga.” (He was also famous for giving the opening address at Woodstock.) At Yogaville, practitioners can take workshops — or join weekend-long retreats — or be trained as Integral Yoga instructors — or even live and work in residence there. Brianna: And they had a program on their website that was $500 for a month. You learn about yoga philosophy and live a yogic lifestyle and live in the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia. And I said, I can do that for a month. And that's how I ended up there. Maxicelia: As your story goes, it was great you thought maybe you had found the answer to your mental health needs and maybe a new kind of lease on life so to speak. Brianna: Yeah, that first month was really amazing. I think the routine every day of structured, you wake up in the morning, you meditate, then you do a yoga class, you eat a healthy breakfast, maybe do some service, which could be cleaning or working in the kitchen or working on the farm that they had there. A lot of really smart, people and very friendly. So I was really enjoying myself and was feeling my mood improve. I was not really familiar with Hinduism at all. I had taken a lot of yoga classes and enjoyed the physical aspects, but at Yogaville I had learned a lot about the more complete version, and yoga classes is only one small aspect. And they say that doing the physical postures is to stretch you out so that you can prepare for meditation and kind of seek enlightenment is that. So I was really intrigued by that and had this whole new world opened up to me and was learning a lot. Maxicelia: Okay at any point during that one month time period, did things seem a little weird to you? Brianna: It felt very kind of old, like the carpet was still from the 70s. Swami Satchidananda actually died in 2002. So I never met Swami Satchitananda personally, but most of elders there knew him while he was there and talk about him like he's alive, his pictures everywhere, they have a wax figure of his body in his tomb there. So I was a little bit weirded out. But I had already paid so I figured, you know, it's just a month, I can do it. And I ended up liking it after only a few days there. I really enjoyed it. Maxicelia: When the month-long program was over, Brianna took a job in Death Valley, California. But it was…just way too hot. So she quit and moved back to Yogaville to start a more intense version of their training. Brianna says her parents were wary about her living at Yogaville, at first. Especially her mom — because Brianna shaved her head to make holding some yoga postures easier. Brianna: Yeah, she was really sad about that, And my dad was like, oh, I like your hair like that. And, but then after I came back and I was enjoying it more, and they saw that I was happy and enjoying myself, they obviously knew about my suicide attempt, and they were like, you know, if you're happy, and you seem like you're really healthy here and you have a lot of good connections, I think this is good for you. Maxicelia: So you get back, and shortly thereafter, it sounds like things change for the worst. Brianna: Yeah, I started hearing more about the negative aspects about Yogaville, how these, I guess more like the ashram politics of different swamis who were, I Guess, almost competing for authority. And it's just a tight-knit community. So everybody kind of knows each other and hearing about drama in that regard, but then also hearing things about how Swami Satchitananda,  just, I heard rumors that he was taking advantage of some of his devotees sexually. Maxicelia: And ultimately ended up having an experience that could have led to something much worse with one of a guest speakers. So this gentleman approached you and told you that, the goddess, I guess, that was on his necklace, he believed that you were the reincarnated version of that goddess, and wanted you to go back to his room so they could talk to you more about it. Brianna: I mean, when he said that, I was like, that seems probably not true, but you know, there's nothing else to do on a, you know Wednesday or Thursday night in Yogawille. So, you know I might as well go and see what happens. I wasn't expecting what was gonna happen next, but I- There was a lot of just weird, eccentric people in Yogaville. I just thought that was another one of those. Maxicelia: And then what happens next? Brianna: Yeah, so he tells me to sit down in a chair in his hotel room. It's called the Lotus Guest House there. And he goes, he said, I'm gonna go to the bathroom. And then he comes out like just naked in a towel. And then he walks behind me and, touches me and pushes his body against my back and then as soon as that happened I just ran out of the room. Maxicelia: Did he say anything? Brianna: I think, it's kind of blurry but I think he told me, he was like wait, don't go or something like that and I was like, I think I remember saying sorry. I was sorry, I have to go. But I just, yeah, I just left. Maxicelia: Brianna immediately went to find a friend and told him what happened. But they both decided not to tell anyone else, especially authority figures at Yogaville. Brianna says that Yogaville had strict policies against being in the rooms of members of the opposite sex. She hadn’t even told the elders about her bipolar diagnosis, out of fear that they wouldn’t accept her — or kick her out. Brianna: And I had seen other people get kicked out for small infractions. Again, it was very political. And I was like, I don't wanna press my luck because I already didn't really have a lot of money. I was only making. Like $70 a month, so I had nowhere to go and I also liked a lot of what was going on there. I liked my friends there. So I wanted to not tell anyone. Maxicelia: But as time went on, I guess others, the discussion comes up one way or another and others share with you similar experiences. Brianna: Honestly, mine was like, compared to other people's was not bad at all. There's a lot of people still that have had worse experiences. And with, not with guest presenters that I've heard of, but like long-term residents at Yogaville. Maxicelia: And so you were at Yogaville for, I believe, four years. Is that right? Brianna: Yeah, about that. I had traveled in and out of those times, but I always went back to Yogaville And then I left right before the pandemic. But still worked for them virtually and still like wanted to believe in the mission and everything. Maxicelia: So, you have a lot of what seems like red flags. What do you think was still causing you to want to have that connection with them. Brianna: I think as I experienced so many benefits, especially in the beginning, and I had seen my health change in a positive way, I thought that this mission was important that even if I experienced some bad things and other people may have experienced some bad things, this is so good that it should be shared. And since leaving, over the past couple years, I've been reading a lot of. Literature from cult scholars and talking to other people who had left. And the mission is a big part of why people stay. Like if they get you to believe in this mission that integral yoga can help you get healthier and all this stuff. Maxicelia: So what was your breaking point, the thing that said, okay, I can't be here anymore, I have to leave. Brianna: Well, I actually, up until that point, I hadn't had an episode of Mania, and I had this manic episode at the time, and ended up being hospitalized for that, and getting on medication and everything. Maxicelia: Was that brought on by your experience with the one guy or just in general? Brianna: I think it was cumulative stress that was happening, because now I've realized after understanding this diagnosis more that something that can trigger me going into mania or psychosis is if I'm under a lot of stress. So I work really hard to not be under stress, so that doesn't happen. But I was definitely very stressed out at the time. It was partly because of that experience, but mostly I was finding more about what had happened to children who went to the Yogaville school and how they had been abused. And there's been people who have gone on the record to talk about this abusive experience at the school and how people had covered that up. And I had. I was really trying to investigate at the time. I was sneaking around the office building where I was working, because I had gotten a full-time job there, so I wasn't doing that program anymore. But I was going into all these files and trying to find things. Maxicelia: It turns out that accusations of abuse by Swami Satchidananda went back at least to the 1990s. More recently, in 2021, three women who grew up in Yogaville accused a former resident of grooming and abusing them when they were children. In 2022, one of Swami Satchidananda’s former secretaries told Yogaville’s leadership that she had been abused by the guru. “He took advantage of many of his female students’ innocence and adoration and continually mimicked the life of a celibate monk while living differently,” she wrote. Yogaville and Integral Yoga leaders addressed these allegations by saying that they did not believe that they could comment on, quote, “incidents that occurred thirty to fifty years ago.” Brianna Patton severed ties with Yogaville in 2023. When she left, she asked leadership to remove her image from their website. She also asked for a formal apology and reparations for the harm Swami Satchidananda and other residents of the ashram have caused. But she isn’t holding her breath. Instead, Brianna is seeking out more stories and collecting them in a podcast called, “Surviving Satchidananda.” Brianna: And I don't really think my goal was to get back at them. I was just so frustrated that they. Like it'd been covered up for so long. And whenever you Google Yogaville or Swami Satchidananda it's only positive things. And I was just frustrated that this story isn't really out there. There's obviously people that have come forward, but it was so buried like deep in the internet that you wouldn't really see it. So I think part of it was just like curiosity and wanting to get to learn more about it. And also just, I want this to be on the record. So it's a more balanced story is out there. Maxicelia: So I want to talk about the much bigger picture of individuals who are placed in leadership positions, because we don't have to look at just yoga or the yoga to find someone who is in a leadership position. Who is manipulating and sexually abusing, and things are being covered up, and victims are being blamed, and people are afraid to speak out, like that permeates the faith-based community, you know? Happens in our Christian churches, happens in our Baptist churches, happens in our Catholic churches. It's a real problem. Brianna: Yeah, it's not unique at all. Like you said, it happens in churches and schools and different religious instances and also in political environments. And I think what needs to happen in specifically yoga spaces, there needs to be a clear and unbiased reporting system because when I was at YogaVille... The people that I would report to. I believed   their interest was in protecting the ashram and protecting the image of Swami Satchitananda, and it wasn't in protecting someone who may have been hurt from my perspective. So. Like some sort of separate board where people who don't have that authority can objectively investigate these things that happen. I think that's a start. Yeah, I don't know if I know what the full solution is because this has been going on for such a long time. But I think the more people talk about it, the harder it is for people to ignore. So I think with my podcast, before I started it, if someone had said something, they'd be like, oh, that person's crazy. That was something that I was told when I had asked about the women that had come forward. They're like, oh, you know, that's just one crazy person. But if so many people are coming forward and saying these things, well, it's kind of hard to deny that. In. I think my goal is just to make people aware of what's going on, specifically at Yogaville, so that they at least know what they're getting into before they go. My goal isn't to shut the place down or anything, because I know people are still gonna go there, but if people hear what's happening, then maybe their decision could change. 

Max: You can find Brianna's article about Yogaville at charlottesville tomorrow dot org. Charlottesville Tomorrow attempted to reach out to Yogaville for comment on the story, but received no response. Brianna’s podcast, “Surviving Satchidananda” is available wherever you listen. We want to hear your story — and tell the story of our community, together. Share your perspective with First Person Cville at cvilleinclusivemedia.com/projects. The First Person Cville podcast is a production of Charlottesville Inclusive Media. It's hosted by me, Maxicelia Robinson, and the In My Humble Opinion Talk Show. Like what you hear? Subscribe and follow us at imhotalkshow.org. This episode was produced by Kelly Jones. Music for this episode came from Epidemic Sound. IMHO music was from God Vamps by Miguel and Morris with NYC Bangers on production. 

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