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I have never once in my life written a review for anything i've done, read, or taken part in. I usually find myself just sharing to others what i have experienced in person. I don't wish to take much time as i'm about to sit down and don't want to be typing forever.

I'm a successful person living an abundant life in many many ways that is knowledgable about the human mind, spirituality, mediation, sexuality, music, yoga, health through eating and exercise, etc...

I have never experienced such powerful change from anything i have ever done before. I used to go to music festivals and find a sense of community and growth there that i found unique and exhilarating in ways that brought me back time and time again. I found my self slowly swaying to one's over time that were less drug oriented and more spiritually based due to my attraction of the community workshops that would happen where i could find a sense of growth together with others.

I found that in the cleanest, most nuetral, powerful manner at Satvatove. It changed my life and continues to every day I use the tools I learned since the last course day.

I could type forever about the things within me that have shifted ever since reuturing from my first Satvatove course and i'd just like to point out that i did not notice or get any cult hare krishna feelings while attending the seminar. Just because hindu quotes are spoken of at some moments and the word Sattva stems from that part of the world does not mean any of that is pushed on anyone. It's all perception I guess, but I just attended what was the biggest foundational course they ever had and everyone there was in deep bliss and peace from the things they came to realize. I've never felt that close and comfortable with other's, something I didn't know i had been looking for for a long time. It's not about the course, it's about you and your growth, truly.

I deeply recommend looking into your heart and seeing if it's for you.

:)

Love and Peace

Namaste

Reason of review: Good customer service.

Location: Orlando, Florida

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Guest

I wasn't sure what Satvatove was going to be like. But I wasn't expecting a multi-day brainwashing session, which is what we were given.

Guest

Why do Satvatove seminars help some people and hurt others? The people who love the seminars refuse to admit that they could cause any damage at all.

And the people who are hurt by them just write them off as an evil cult. One should be able to see the value in "transformation", while also seeing its shortcomings.

Guest

If you don't know who you are, there will be plenty of cults like Satvatove out there to tell you who you are. Many of these people (dare I say especially many of the young women involved) are young, highly impressionable and looking for some sort of validation and sense of belonging. With all of this being said, never underestimate the power of social psychology, sales methodologies and other brainwashing techniques that play into this.

Guest

It's simple. Good things happen because of Satvatove.

Their philosophy is responsible and the seminar participant owes Satvatove. Bad things happen because of the seminar participant(s). The seminar participant caused the bad thing to happen, or the bad thing would have happened anyway and the seminar participant is to blame, because their thoughts, etc, were not right.

The seminar participant did not do it right, or did not put enough effort into it. Bad things are never the responsibility of Satvatove.

Guest

When reflecting on the Satvatove experience, it can be very helpful to know a bit about the history of Lifespring and of John Hanley. Satvatove is surprisingly similar to Lifespring. Here is the trailer for a podcast about Lifespring, about its history, its founder, and about two of its spinoffs: https://***/watch?v=VT1J6fw7Mok

Guest

A quote from L Ron Hubbard: "In the Sea Org coat of arms, the bird is used in a group of three. Thusly, it represents such concepts as the third dynamic, the cycle of action, and the Be-Do-Have cycle."

Guest

If you're not your "Satvatove image", who are you?

Guest

Be-Do-Have is crazy-making. At best, it's rajastic.

Guest

In some spiritual traditions, people do talk about a breakdown before a breakthrough, but this is about how things in certain areas of life aren't working as they once did. It doesn't necessarily have anything to do with a "nervous breakdown," although in Satvatove, that seems, (at least to me), to be their aim.

Again, I can't even begin to tell you all of the just plain crazy-making behavior that they engaged in. If you research "cluster b" personality types, you will find a great deal of what these people do. Plus, they add Lifespring techniques to make it even worse. The effects of cluster b types on the other people in their lives are well-documented, and it is ALWAYS injurious.

There is much literature about the injuries, and websites dedicated to recovery.

So here we have organizations like Satvatove that are well aware of this, and design their programs so as to produce these injuries and maximize their effect. They create trauma bonds, and call it "community." They give you PTSD, and call it "transformation." You numbly accept whatever is handed to you.

Guest

David Wolf takes risks (with people's mental health) that are not medically sound. He is not a doctor.

Guest
reply icon Replying to comment of Guest-2309206

Synanon's confrontational techniques influenced est and LifeSpring. And LifeSpring influences Satvatove.

Guest

But this is a seminar, not a church...right? Satvatove is actually a religion, but of course that wasnโ€™t obvious at first.

Which, in hindsight, was the first culty red flag: hiding the whole truth until youโ€™ve spent more time and money. Then it becomes harder to back away. You could think youโ€™re learning how to communicate more effectively and how to have great relationships. Turns out, youโ€™re entering a spiritual belief system.

And no, I'm not referring to Vaishnavism or Hare Krishna. I'm talking about Lifespring. The seemingly benign Satvatove seminar is almost a carbon-copy of the 1970s Lifespring seminar of John Hanley Sr. The promises were wonderful: community, compassion, emotional safety, freedom, respect, solving problems through peaceful honesty and collaboration.

Who wouldnโ€™t want that? Especially if youโ€™ve experienced the opposite in your childhood home. At the time I encountered Satvatove, I was in a tumultuous stage of finally leaving my ISKCON indoctrination and exiting the exclusive community that had been an important part of my life. It was a terrifying and exhilarating phase.

You might relate to it, if youโ€™ve also found youโ€™re no longer able to continue in a particular faith or philosophy thatโ€™s been the foundation of your life. Living without the ISKCON organization's culty taboos was initially scary. So, for a while, the Satvatove framework helped me cope with the terror of losing ISKCON's distorted interpretation of Srila Prabhupada's teachings. For a while, David and Marie's Satvatove teachings filled an aching gape of meaning and hope.

However, I was a little uncomfortable with the social dynamics between people in Satvatove, but Iโ€™d invested time and money. I tried to be open minded. Maybe I could still make it work. One day, my conscience gently asked, โ€œdo you think it might be replacing one religion with another?โ€ I didnโ€™t appreciate that.

But I thought about it. And at a certain point, I stopped trying to do Satvatove communication stuff out loud with people. But by now it was in my head. It was going to take a while before I could articulate to myself that this Satvatove โ€˜consciousnessโ€™ wasnโ€™t healthy for me or my relationships.

This was an ideology. There was a certain way to think. A process for reframing your feelings. The stage of trying to make Satvatove work, despite the red flags, reminds me of when I was slowly leaving the ISKCON cult.

Satvatove was just another version of ISKCON cult dynamics: overpowering other peopleโ€™s internal integrity and boundaries by using spiritual language. Just another religion and dogma. Itโ€™s dressed in robes of communication, community, healing and higher consciousness. I also started to realise that I wasnโ€™t really free to be my true self with Satvatove people.

Inside, I was questioning whether the intense emotional sharing was probably creating a kind of trauma bond for me. I noticed how much I was editing myself, trying to make myself sound a certain way. I realised how often I didnโ€™t feel safe to say what I did or didnโ€™t want to hear or share. Rachael Bernstein says in a few podcasts, โ€˜no is a complete sentenceโ€™.

My measure of safety in a transformational seminar is whether Iโ€™m able to say no whenever a process doesnโ€™t feel right, without being too worried about hurting the other personโ€™s feelings or being seen as an unkind or broken person. Thatโ€™s the kind of safe boundary-setting that I want to be able to exercise. So thatโ€™s how I know itโ€™s healthy for me. If a seminar is healthy, it will survive in time, on equal and honest footing.

Chasing deep emotional connection can be addictive and makes us vulnerable to coercion by a particular group or individual. So-called authorities or facilitators of communication, spirituality or healing can only draw us in with their mesmerising words and โ€˜compassionate presenceโ€™ for as long as we keep trying to make it work.

As part of my healing and growth, Iโ€™ve started to research the history of cultic behaviours and undue influence. And thatโ€™s also led me to look more deeply into John Hanley (of Lifespring), the man behind the Satvatove myth.

Guest

As we find the courage to let go of Satvatove habits and of the limiting dogmas and beliefs that we learned from Satvatove, we free ourselves from the rajastic state of consciousness, which was promoted to us and induced in us, by Satvatove. With clear consciousness, we are free to pursue a sattvic state of mind and a sattvic life. Haribol!

Guest

The most hypomanic part of the Satvatove dopamine-high lasts a few days, so some people rush out and get friends or family to sign up for a Satvatove course. That's how itโ€™s done.

They take advantage of people caring about each other and trusting each other. So before the new recruit even steps into the seminar space, they've been abused in that their relationships have been exploited to meet Marie and David's agenda.

Guest

After being brainwashed by Satvatove you will repeat prototype pro-Satvatove talking points, over and over like a zombie. You will not criticize anything about Satvatove.

You will be indoctrinated that it is a "grungie" to critcize Satvatove and you will always feel an urge to invite any person you meet to Satvatove. That's how they will have brainwashed you and you won't even realize it.

Guest

The Satvatove proponent wanders perfectly at ease among truths and falsehoods, with the freedom of the artist who delights in his creations without the least concern for the effects they may have on the real world, or even needing to understand them in any intellectually relevant way.

Guest

There are many uses for empathy. To point out that the people who join Satvatove are damaged and hurt is not to minimize the hurt and damage they themselves are doing.

On the contrary: the pain is the point. Stripped down to its essentials, Satvatove is an ethical vacuum calcified in a carapace of pain. Hurt people hurt people.

Thatโ€™s nothing new. These hurt people are hurting other people deliberately, in order to up-cycle their uncomfortable emotions, reselling the pain they canโ€™t bear to look at as communication training, self-development and coaching.

Guest

With trauma, people become disassociated from their feelings. They lose the ability to feel what's in their body or their emotions.

In the process of healing from that, people have techniques for reconnecting with feelings and emotions.

They are re-sensitizing themselves to their feeling. I intuit that Kerth Barker's "Fabian Therapy" might be helpful to some people who are processing the trauma of the Satvatove experience, or trauma related to other Lifespring-clone programs.

Guest

The purpose of Satvatove is to get you to close your heart to God and to other people. Once you have successfully done this, you are better able to use the Satvatove/Lifespring dogmas to manipulate others emotionally, to get what you want from them.

Guest

Hard pill to swallow: Satvatove does not care about your feelings and will manipulate you without hesitation to get what they want.

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