Recently, during a Hive partner meeting, the issue of wellness “gurus” came up. It came up because of experiences some community members have had with people claiming the “guru” mantel whose practices are incredibly harmful to others. Here’s the thing. We have all been taken in by these kinds of folks. Why? Because our universal need to belong, be seen, and be heard is immensely powerful and sometimes, is not readily accessible in our communities or families. Getting to know ‘the secret,” or “how to be successful in 30 days,” or “how to lose weight quickly and easily” are enticing ideas. We have all wanted to be around people who “know” how to get those things. We want to be inspired. We want to be included. We crave community.
Besides, what’s wrong with wanting to feel your best, with wanting to “live your best life,” or “to be the best version of yourself?” There’s nothing wrong with those desires. It can, however, become problematic due to the potential and very real impact of coercive control and exclusion which often happens with “gurus.” Coercion, control, and exclusion lead people to feel worse than when they first met the “guru.” Let’s be clear. Wellness is a global industry that is expected to reach $7.5 trillion by 2025. Enter the “guru” whose only intention is to make money. Weaponized Wellness is a phenomenon where well-intentioned concepts, practices, and beliefs are coopted, appropriated, twisted, and exploited for profit. And the methods for “making a profit” include emotional and mental manipulation that can inflict harm in all domains of health.
French Philosopher Michel Foucault posed a metaphor of the Panopticon which explored the relationship between systems of social control and people in a disciplinary situation. In Foucault’s view, power and knowledge come from observing others and creating a system of “self-surveillance” to gain power and knowledge. Self-surveillance requires us to scrutinize every aspect of our lives and to find them wanting in comparison to other people. In this panoptic space, we lose the ability to see ourselves as we truly are. And when we lose that ability, we are easy prey for folks who want to gain power through coercion.
If we are fixated on “total wellness” we join gyms, we take yoga retreats, we drink kombucha, we weigh ourselves, we punish ourselves, and we invariably harm ourselves. This desire to “be well” is mindlessly driven by social media and its impact on what we ought to be or do to belong, which includes but is not limited to, wealthy, thin, fit, vegan, mindful, wary of Western medicine, and afraid of not “measuring up” to these ideas of perfection. The “guru” thrives on this internal conflict and chaos. Under the guise of well-meaning charisma and advice, we are offered the secret to total wellness and connection to a mentor. The “guru” uses manipulation tactics to enforce acquiescence to his/her unbalanced power that demands unquestioned compliance with their “program.”
Should someone not achieve the promised results the “guru” has sold, the devotee is rejected for not conforming blindly to the program. See, it is never the fault of the guru for selling junk. It is always the fault of the person seeking enlightenment because the seeker simply did not try hard enough. In this way, the “guru” avoids accountability and responsibility for the coercion in which they engage. In other words, you obsessively take hot yoga, watch yourself in the mirror next to excessively thin individuals, and berate yourself for not being like that so you restrict your intake of nutrient-dense calories to the point that you develop an eating disorder. The “guru” will tell you that’s your own fault because they didn’t “tell you to do that.” Not directly at least. But they ARE telling you that in every look of disapproval, exclusion, comparison, and unrealistic standards that even they themselves cannot tolerate. The harm caused by these practices is transferred onto the individual who is then left to unpack and restore themselves after the eventual abandonment by the “guru.”
For a long time, I’ve struggled with the wellness community’s insistence that anyone can
lead people to heal. I struggle with anyone who claims to be a healer in any way because that level of egotism is alarming to me. I struggle with people who barely finished high school trading on “research they’ve done” on the internet or in chat rooms and then “selling” their knowledge to others as “the way.” Equally problematic are the credentialled providers who use spiritual manipulation, bright siding, and spiritual bypassing to pressure people to abandon their own spiritual practices to adopt those of the provider. Here’s the thing though, the “guru” has a hidden agenda in that “spiritual practice” for them focuses on the “gods” of money and power. I also struggle with the people with advanced degrees who lack the intestinal fortitude to call out chicanery in other professionals and instead, are complicit in the grifting of vulnerable people. And vulnerable people are all of us at one point in our life or another.
You simply cannot expect someone with no formal training to competently, effectively, safely, or ethically treat complex issues involving mental health. Moreover, you cannot simply trust someone who shows you letters after their name but lacks critical thinking and ethical judgement in the relentless pursuit of profit over morals. We have all encountered those folks who simply by walking near us, create a feeling of unease. Those people want desperately to be seen as someone in high regard who operates with integrity. However, they lack even trace amounts of it because, for them, integrity depends on who is in the room and how much money is to be made. We feel discomfort, but often cannot define it until we have been drawn in. We are just like a fly caught in the pretty web of a spider.
It is possible to disentangle from the glittery web, but we need to know how to do that. We need to learn to trust ourselves. I want to reiterate that every single person I know, including myself, has at one point or another been lured by the spider. And because I have, I want to share some ways to not only disentangle but to avoid the web altogether.
Let’s talk about qualifications.
A qualified therapist, for example, MUST hold a master’s degree from an accredited university which, for social workers like me, means taking sixty highly rigorous academic credits over a two-year period.
We must complete two field practicum placements for typically 900–1,200 hours of field experience, which students usually complete over four semesters at two different agencies under the supervision of a clinically licensed therapist (LCSW-C or LCPC for example) WHILE you are completing course work with no grade lower than a B.
Once coursework and fieldwork are completed, we must pass a provisional licensing exam before we can practice or even call ourselves a social worker. Our licenses reflect where we are in this process: LMSW or LGPC are provisionally licensed designations that require practice under a contract with a clinically board-approved supervisor.
We must complete two years of supervised clinical work under an LCSW-C or LCPC-S, who is board-approved at the State level. These two years are required and scrutinized by the licensing board before one can take the clinical exam.
Sitting for the exam requires passing with an exceptionally high score. Because you know, you might need to know something about theories, perspectives, modalities, medication, diagnoses, etc. to practice competently.
All in? Four years of post-baccalaureate work to be “qualified” for clinical licensure.
To continue to practice, one must complete continuing education and requalification for licensure every one or two years depending on the state, and those credits also must meet minimum requirements approved by the licensing board.
One must also carry malpractice insurance to practice. That is to protect clients.
The practice of social work occurs inside a very regulated industry. Being a yoga instructor, for example, does not. All one must do to be a Yoga Alliance “registered” yoga teacher is pay enough money to have someone hand over a certification after six months of learning, mostly, postures. If one does something sketchy in yoga, no one comes and takes a certification. But if one does it with a license, that person can and will lose their license, as they should.
Shocker alert: Life coaching, happiness coaching, wellness coaching, leadership coach, cannabis coaching, reiki, meditation coaching, mindfulness coaching, yoga, beach body coaches, breathwork coaches, fitness coaches, personal trainers, nutritional coaches (I don’t mean licensed and certified dieticians, I mean the folks hocking Plexus) are self-regulated parts of the wellness industry. That means there is no oversight by any professional governing body. In addition, most of these practices can be “certified” in a Udemy course, which also has no oversight. The bottom line is that anyone can call themselves anything at any time which is what makes these practices and the charlatans masquerading as “gurus” so dangerous.
Don’t get me wrong. I love the practices of embodiment and all the other holistic offerings we provide. I find them hugely beneficial for me. It is important for me to pull within, to move my body, to follow my breath. But when I lost my mom to COVID-19 in 2021, I called a therapist to work through those complex feelings of grief, loss, and rage. Not a yoga therapist. Not a happiness coach. A licensed clinical mental health therapist. While these holistic practices have been beneficial to ME, I cannot and should not, however, tell you what is good for YOU. Having choices and being encouraged to make them are essential to any recovery process. Anyone who tells you to trust them over yourself is not here for your best interest. Anyone who dismisses your concerns and questions is not centering you. They are centering their ego.
How do you know the difference?
Watch them: Over time, they will reveal themselves. How many times in the last 5 years have they changed their focus, business name, or offerings? That’s a sign that they cannot make a sustained living because they have been found out to be charlatans. If one is clear about who they are, they do not need to continually change their public image to reach markets that do not know they are not credible.
Listen to them: Those aggressive folks on social media telling you to f**k your excuses, “I can see you’re not happy,” “I know you better than you know yourself,” “You can rest when you’re dead,” “quit your job and join a gym,” and “it happened to me so I can help you” are alarm bells. People who are about really helping others do not talk this way. They are not in it for the money, so they do not use these tropes.
Check them out: Discuss with trusted friends who may know these people in real life. Listen to their feedback. Watch your friend’s facial expressions and body language. Often, we cannot talk about folks who fleece other people because we have been traumatized by it. But our faces and bodies show what is real.
Price check: If someone without credentials is charging a higher price for a service than someone with professional licensure, that’s likely a charlatan. Think about the person offering you somatic healing for trauma recovery on the premise that they “healed themselves.” The prices will always be highly inflated because, within months, they will vanish because they have been exposed.
Notice patterns: Does this person’s offering sound incredibly similar to something someone with credentials is offering? Are they venturing into areas outside of their scope of practice by selling wellness services for “self-discovery,” “healing circles,” “group coaching,” or “teacher training” without the credentials or the creativity to not copy another provider’s work? That will be a recognizable pattern over time. If it sounds surprisingly familiar, that is because it is. If someone thinks someone else is more successful at the “wellness” gig, they will not challenge themselves to create new things to be equally successful. They will simply repurpose and repackage someone else’s intellectual property and pass it off as their own. The real ones out here are never going to copy others and will not even copy themselves because they strive for innovation.
ANYBODY telling you that they can counsel you to be more “happy,” “fit” “less sad,” “more compassionate,” or “mindful” or that your depression, anxiety, grief, or trauma exist because of your “victim mentality” is peddling junk. It is not even pseudoscience because that, at least, might have a grain of truth. It is literal junk. And to be totally transparent, any qualified mental health provider who leads you to believe that they are more of an expert on your life than you are, and can therefore counsel your spiritual development, or give you the key to success, is also peddling something that belongs on a dung heap. Any licensed provider telling you they “specialize” in something without at least four years of clinical experience post-graduate school is dishonest. One cannot “specialize” until one has done the literal time in grade as either a clinically licensed or independently licensed professional AND taken extensive additional training in the subject matter. It is not possible to skim a book written by someone else, boil it down to sound bites, and claim to be an expert on the subject. That is ego-driven, dangerous, and unethical. It is the grift with letters after a name. And it will cause harm.
Here’s the thing. The reason to write this is not to just call out other people on their practices. It is to be transparent on why The Holistic Hive practices the way we do. We have stopped offering services that are now suspect because of the level of mental, emotional, and physical harm caused by the unethical practices of others. We will not be complicit in that harm by continuing to offer those practices. We will not be complicit by pretending that abuse does not happen because we didn’t do it. It does happen. We are morally and ethically obligated to address that with direct communication and education to help people make informed decisions that promote their self-determination, dignity, right to choose, and right to exist without coercion.
And always, you are free to do what works for you long-term. Quick fixes are often quackery. And they are often very harmful. Sustainable growth takes time and perseverance. It also takes courage to look at the places that hurt and to lean into them. Anyone telling you leaning on them is more important than facing yourself with compassion and love is not in your corner. They cannot be. They are too busy advancing their self-interest.
I would be remiss and negligent if I did not offer this information as a cautionary perspective.
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