When Does Yoga Become Cult Culture?Power, Abuse, Coercion, and the Responsibility to Protect Students in Yoga Spaces

A group of followers sit in front of shadowy figures, surrounded by cash and ominous headlines, depicting the manipulation within a cult-like community.

When Yoga Stops Feeling Safe

Yoga is often practiced to help people come home to themselves. It is practiced in order to build awareness, honesty, discernment, and connection. At its best, yoga supports healing and helps people feel more grounded in their bodies and clearer in their minds. It should never ask someone to betray their instincts, silence their discomfort, or hand over their power to a teacher who claims to know better than they do. And yet, again and again, parts of the yoga world have shown us something much darker.

When people watched Bikram: Yogi, Guru, Predator, Breath of Fire, and Twisted Yoga, they were not watching stories about minor mistakes, messy personalities, or a few isolated ethical lapses.

They were watching stories about power and what happens when power goes unchecked. They were watching what happens when a teacher, guru, or spiritual leader is treated as untouchable, and when students are taught to ignore their own inner alarms in the name of devotion, healing, growth, surrender, or belonging. This is not just a problem in one lineage or one style of yoga. It is a community problem, and if we actually care about yoga, then we have to be willing to talk about it honestly.

The Allegations Were Serious

The allegations connected to Bikram Choudhury were deeply serious. Women accused him of sexual assault, rape, and sexual harassment. These were not vague rumors or whispered complaints. These were allegations from real people who said they were harmed by a man with enormous fame, money, influence, and control within his community.

The legacy of Yogi Bhajan is also marked by devastating accusations. Later investigations concluded it was more likely than not that he used his role as a spiritual leader to commit sexual abuse against women. That matters, and it needs to be said plainly. The abuse allegations were not limited to adults. They included girls.

Then there is Guru Jagat, whose story in Breath of Fire shows a different but very familiar type of harm. The issue was not only charisma. It was the entire environment built around her. Former insiders described manipulation, emotional abuse, exploitation, financial harm, control, and a culture where image and influence mattered more than truth. She defended a harmful lineage, benefited from it, and built her own power inside it.

In Twisted Yoga, the allegations are horrifying. Survivors described rape, trafficking, coercive sexual exploitation, psychological manipulation, and a system that used yoga and spirituality as an entry point into abuse. The language may have been spiritual, but the harm was real and the crimes were real.

Spiritual Language Can Hide Real Harm

A yoga teacher invades personal space, making a student visibly uncomfortable during a session.

This is why these conversations matter so much. Abuse in yoga spaces is still abuse. Sexual abuse does not become less serious because someone chants before class or quotes spiritual teachings. Emotional abuse does not become wisdom because the teacher speaks softly or uses the language of awakening. Financial exploitation does not become service because it is wrapped in words like devotion, community, karma, or lineage.

One of the most dangerous things about abuse in yoga communities is how easy it is for it to hide in plain sight. A teacher says they are helping you break your ego. A student is told that discomfort is part of growth. A community says critics are simply negative, unhealed, or not spiritually mature enough to understand. Slowly, the leader becomes too important to question, and the studio or organization begins protecting its image more than the people inside it.

How Control Gets Normalized

This is how harm gets normalized. It rarely begins with the most extreme behavior. More often, it begins with admiration, belonging, praise, special access, and the powerful feeling that you have finally found your people. Then the boundaries begin to shift. They move slowly enough that people doubt themselves while it is happening. Questioning becomes disrespect. Distance becomes betrayal. Loyalty becomes proof of spiritual depth.

Obedience becomes confused with trust. Before long, the teacher is being protected while the students are left to carry the confusion, shame, fear, and fallout.

People often ask why followers stay loyal even after allegations come out, even after documentaries are released, even after survivor testimony becomes public. But that question misses how coercive control works. People can become deeply attached to a teacher, a group, a practice, and an identity built around belonging. They may have spent years there. They may have given money, labor, trust, and intimate parts of themselves. They may fear losing not only a teacher, but their community, their purpose, their friendships, their livelihood, or their sense of who they are.

Some will hear the accusations and still defend the leader. Some will see the evidence and still stay. That is not proof that the harm was minor. It is proof that control can run deep and that people can be conditioned to protect the very person or system that hurt them.

Warning Signs Students Should Not Ignore

Warning signs in a yoga space: demands for loyalty, ignoring questions, and secrecy leading to exploitation.

Because of that, we need to be much clearer about warning signs. A teacher who cannot handle questions is a warning sign. A leader who demands loyalty is a warning sign. A community that treats criticism as betrayal is a warning sign. Blurred sexual boundaries, secrecy, private access framed as special teaching, students or staff being financially exploited, pressure to stay quiet, and a culture where the leader’s image matters more than the wellbeing of the people in the room are all warning signs.

If you constantly feel like your instincts are being slowly talked out of you, that matters. If a teacher makes you afraid to say no, that matters. If a leader always has a polished spiritual explanation for why accusations should be ignored, that matters.

Teachers Have Power Too

But this conversation cannot stop with abusive leaders in documentaries. Teachers in ordinary studios need to look at themselves too.

Not every harmful teacher is a world famous guru. Sometimes harm happens in small local communities, teacher trainings, retreats, or one on one relationships where boundaries were never made clear. A teacher does not have to be a monster to misuse power. Sometimes ego, favoritism, loneliness, poor judgment, lack of training, weak ethics, or an inflated sense of importance are enough to create real harm.

Teachers need to understand that the student teacher relationship is not equal. The teacher has more power, more authority, and more influence. That means the teacher is responsible for protecting the boundary, not testing it.

What Strong Teacher Boundaries Should Look Like

A yoga teacher gently offers a block to a smiling student, demonstrating mindful assistance and respect for personal space during a class.

Strong boundaries should be normal in every yoga space.

Teachers should not flirt with students they are actively teaching or create sexual tension as part of the dynamic.

They should not begin secretive private relationships with vulnerable students or use personal messaging to create emotional dependence.

They should not position themselves as therapist, guru, savior, parent, best friend, and spiritual authority all at once.

Students should never feel that access to the teacher depends on special emotional closeness, secrecy, or personal loyalty.

Teachers also need clear boundaries around touch, trauma, and emotional disclosure.

They should not pressure students to share deeply personal experiences, and they should never promise healing they are not qualified to provide.

They should not diagnose injuries, mental health struggles, or emotional wounds beyond their training and scope.

Touch should always be consensual, specific, and easy to decline. A student saying no to an adjustment should not be treated as resistance, disrespect, or evidence that they are closed off. It should simply be respected.

Financial boundaries matter too. Teachers and studios should be transparent about pricing, memberships, trainings, retreats, and expectations. Students should never be manipulated into spending more money in order to prove devotion, gain approval, or deepen their belonging.

Labor should not be extracted under the disguise of gratitude, karma yoga, or service if what is really happening is exploitation.

Emotional boundaries matter as well. Teachers are not entitled to students’ time, admiration, secrets, obedience, or personal availability. A student should be able to attend class without being pulled into the teacher’s private life. A student should be able to leave a studio without guilt, retaliation, social pressure, or subtle punishment.

Professional boundaries need to be visible, not assumed. Studios and teachers should have clear policies around touch, communication, private sessions, social media, payment, teacher training expectations, and how concerns can be raised. Students should know how to report problems and trust that concerns will be taken seriously.

There should be accountability beyond one charismatic person deciding what is acceptable. Trustworthiness is not built by image, branding, popularity, or spiritual language. It is built by restraint, transparency, humility, and a willingness to welcome questions instead of punishing them.

Why So Many Abusers Keep Their Power

A group of dedicated followers continue their meditation practice under the guidance of their leader, despite the shadow of controversy surrounding them.

One of the most painful parts of all of this is that so many of these people never faced consequences that matched the scale of the harm.

Yogi Bhajan died before any true public reckoning could catch up to him. He never faced serious legal consequences tied to the later findings about sexual abuse against women and female minors.

Guru Jagat died before public accountability could fully strip away her influence. She was still active, still seen as important, and still followed.

Bikram faced public disgrace and civil judgments, yet he fled and remains tied to a money making yoga empire.

The man at the center of Twisted Yoga is the clearest example here of someone actually facing active prosecution, but even that came after years of alleged harm.

That should disturb every single one of us, because it means public accusations do not automatically stop abuse. It means documentaries are not justice. It means scandal is not accountability. It means survivors can speak and still watch their abusers keep influence, money, followers, and protection.

What Kind of Community Are We Building?

That is why we have to do better. Teachers have an obligation to create safe spaces, not just perform safety or assume safety. They need to create environments where consent is real, boundaries are clear, power is acknowledged, and students know they can say no, leave, speak up, and be protected.

If you are a teacher, your role is not just to guide movement. Your role is to protect the people in your care and to take your own power seriously enough to place limits around it.

If you are a student, you are never wrong for noticing red flags. You are never weak for leaving. You are never disloyal for telling the truth.

A Call to Protect People, Not Power

A diverse group of individuals share a moment of connection and mindfulness at Maydwell Yoga, embodying a welcoming space for personal growth and learning.

If you see abuse happening, say something.

If you see grooming, coercion, retaliation, exploitation, or cult like behavior, do not minimize it. Document it.

Support the person being harmed. Report criminal behavior when needed. Leave when you need to leave. Warn others when it is safe to do so.

A real yoga community does not protect the powerful. It protects the vulnerable. That is the kind of yoga community I want to build, and it is the kind of yoga community we should all demand.