The race to capitalize on the world’s wellness needs in a post-pandemic society—well, at “post” as we can pretend to be—was unavoidable. Derek reflects on the continually unrealistic marketing promises being offered by wellness influencers, discussing how we’d benefit from more honest ad copy than the hyperbole attempting to be passed off as destiny.
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Hello, Matthew here from the Conspirituality Podcast Team.
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The first email came through last week pitching an advanced energy healer.
The title proves my point.
You can no longer just be an energy healer in this market.
You have to be above the fray, which is why advanced is being used as an adjective.
The pitch is for someone who I've never heard of and has a very small social media presence, which I'm guessing is being framed in such a way to suggest that their advancement has been done in private and they are now sharing their goods.
And to be honest, that's possible.
Many years ago, I took a meditation workshop with Sally Kempton, which I enjoyed very much and still affects my views on meditation to this day.
Sally had emerged from the ashram she lived in for nearly 30 years to take her teaching public, although to be fair, she had been teaching while at the ashram.
Point being, sometimes people cultivate their practice for years or even decades before affixing the label ADVANCED to themselves.
Though I also believe that truly advanced teachers would never call themselves that.
When Sally keeps it simple, she teaches meditation.
But that won't cut it in the digital space, where you have to offer a variety of practices that are seemingly building upon themselves whether or not their coherence actually makes sense.
So, while this budding influencer's main pitch is Kundalini activation process and psychedelics, there's also Reiki, channeled oracle readings, yoni steamings, health coaching, and more.
According to the publicist, this influencer, quote, specializes in advanced ancient energy techniques that produce out-of-body experiences through non-dual consciousness and kundalini energy transmissions.
Yes, the same method you probably saw on that infamous Goop Labs episode.
I'm pretty sure this rep doesn't know what infamous actually means, but that doesn't surprise me at this point.
The goal of this work is to create, quote, collective energetic liberation, end quote.
Not really sure what that means either, though an interesting quote in the pitch about KAP, where this influencer says it continues to offer me enlightenment, release, and expansion.
Historically, enlightenment was an event that changed the course of your life.
This didn't imply that everything suddenly changed because you always had work to do.
For example, the 40 or so years after Buddha's enlightenment weren't clear sailing, but it does offer perspective.
If you keep getting enlightened, are you ever really enlightened?
And this is what I meant in the beginning.
The spiritual game never ends.
There's always a deeper layer to access, always other ways to expand.
I've experienced this often with my friends who regularly participate in ayahuasca ceremonies.
There's always more.
When you attempt to integrate any holistic practice into a capitalist society, more is demanded.
But is it necessary?
Whatever happened to, you are enough?
Enough is never enough if you're trying to sell products and services.
Spirituality is not exempt.
Humans are tethered to their environment, and when your environment promotes downlines, pseudoscience, and aspiration at every turn, you can be sure influencers are lining up to exploit their customers.
Interestingly, this influencer in question has a psychedelic activated KAP, Kundalini Activation Process, workshop coming up in August.
Now, I'm not one to talk about the validity of using illegal substances, Psychedelics have been an important component of my life for nearly three decades, and their illegality is problematic from the very start.
But I also know better than to publicly advertise them.
Beyond that, the pitch tells me that this influencer has an area of expertise in psychedelic prep plus integration, though lists no formal training as with the MAPS protocol.
Let's be honest, my first guides didn't have formal training.
But they also didn't promise me healing from trauma, serendipitous alignments, or manifestations at a rapid rate, all of which were included in this email.
We're about to experience a whole lot of psychedelics hucksterism, and these are not substances that should be taken lightly.
I've been in ceremonies with actual trained facilitators and watched things go very south for some of the participants, one who ended up in the emergency room.
As psychedelics reach mainstream appeal, there's going to be real problems when inexperienced and untrained guides attempt to play shaman.
So keep an eye out for that because that's coming.
