Complaint Review: Satvatove

Satvatove is an intensively emotionally abusive and coercive workshop, primarily merging the discredited LifeSpring work with Hare Krishna/ISKCON cult teachings.  I attended their Fundamentals workshop in May of 2014; and although I am contractually/legally barred from sharing their specific processes, I can freely state that during the workshop I experienced an extreme level of coercion, pressure and abuse;  I can also share that I perceived both my physical and emotional safety very directly threatened at various points in the workshop.

The primary instructor is David Wolf, a long-term Hare Krishna/ISKCON operative who allegedly handed out $500-$2000 checks to victims of sexual abuse of the ISKCON/Hare Krishna cult, in exchange for the victims waiving the right to sue the cult (csahome.com/articles/authoritarian-culture-and-child-abuse-in-iskcon).  Although David Wolf denies this, he was the Director of the Office of Child Protection for ISKCON/Hare Krishna cult, which has a truly extraordinary and well-documented history of murder, kidnapping, torture, and raping of children.

LifeSpring (wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifespring), the organization which is the foundation for the work advanced by Satvatove, went out of business after at least thirty lawsuits claiming that participants in their workshops committed suicide or suffered serious emotional/mental damage.  The company paid to settle some of the suits before trial and in other cases lost jury decisions.  The fundamentals of Satvatove processes appear to come directly from the discredited LifeSpring work, and are mixed with the teachings of the Hare Krishna cult.

During the workshop, David Wolf specifically demanded that participants do not use the restroom except during breaks, the timing of which was not clear.  We were required to attend every portion of the workshop without any exception, and were handed work to be done during breaks that did happen.  We were required to be in our seats after each break when the music, which David Wolf and his assistant blasted at full volume to call us back into the room, stopped playing.  Anyone not in their seats by the time the music stopped playing was publicly shamed.  Free time during the course was non-existent, and I was explicitly removed from the workshop after making a phone call to a friend who was having an emergency in her workplace.  No refund was offered to me until I made clear that I would be filing complaints with authorities and taking legal action.

Participation in Satvatove requires agreement to keep their grossly abusive and coercive processes confidential, and thus I am unable to share the details of the full nature of what I experienced without putting myself at risk of being sued by Satvatove.  Before making this posting I extensively discussed my concerns with David Wolf, who refused to remove the process confidentiality requirement, thus resulting in my making this post.  It is my opinion that participants in Satvatove workshops should have the right to freely and fully discuss their experience in Satvatove without fear of legal action for breaching contract.

The ironic bottom line with Satvatove is that many of their participants are willing to accept an extraordinary level of abuse and coercion in exchange for information and skills that are actually freely available elsewhere, since the "communication skills" that Satvatove teaches are actually available without the abuse through other sources, such as Non-Violent Communication (NVC) and other schools.  It is also blatantly obvious that numerous other participants of Satvatove have had extremely negative experiences  (breaking-free.info/2012/11/11/about-you/) and are likely afraid to speak out against Satvatove for fear of being sued for breaching the confidentiality agreement.

Unless you desire to become part of the ISKCON/Hare Krishna Cult and to subject yourself to truly extraordinary abuse and coercion, I advise you to stay away from Satvatove.  Whatever useful skills they teach are freely available from other sources, without all the negative aspects of the cult.