Hello everyone and welcome to the Sex, Love, and SuperPowers Podcast show. I’m your host Tatiana Berindei and today we have a little bit of a different kind of an episode. This is our first time having two guests on, who I will be interviewing together. Our topic today is kind of a heavy one, but it feels really important and especially timely right now. Our topic today is psychic manipulation and sexual abuse. I’m going to be speaking with Mangala Holland and Nancy Ellen Miller specifically about their experiences at the Agama Yoga School in Thailand. Before we jump into this conversation, I want to tell you a little bit about these amazingly brilliant women who have so graciously agreed to come on the show and talk about this today.
Let me tell you first about Mangala. She’s the founder of Sacred School of Shakti and is an international facilitator of women’s groups, tantric rituals, retreats, and workshops and she also offers private mentoring. She teaches worldwide, primarily in Australia, the U.K., Bali, Thailand, the U.S., India and Mexico. She places a strong emphasis on self love, embodiment, and empowerment, bringing the sacred into all elements of her life and teachings. She gives people the tools to empower themselves sexually and spiritually and teaches in a no nonsense accessible style.
Nancy Ellen Miller is our other guest. Nancy is an artist, coach, editor, and writer. Nancy’s academic and creative work crosses disciplines and explores new territory, both creatively and critically. She aspires to serve others to find their own artistic voices and create their own rituals to support their wellbeing. In her coaching practice, Nancy uses evidence based mindfulness to teach people to value in trusting their own intention, honoring their inner wisdom, and believing in their inherent creativity. She bases her coaching practice in neuroscience.
I am just so delighted and honored to have both of you on the show today. Welcome and thank you so much for joining me. We always start this show off asking people about their superpowers and even though we’re diving into a really deep topic today and the focus is not so much on your individual work but really how we can bring this really dark and deep experience into more of a light that can be of service to others. I still want to ask because you’re both such brilliant women in and of your own right. I really want to provide an opportunity for you to share what your superpowers are with our guests.
Nancy, would you be willing to respond first to this question in what are your superpowers? Make sure you unmute yourself.
Hi. Can you hear me?
Yes.
The first thing that comes up and I sort of ask my intuition, “What in this moment is my superpower?” My first one is bravery. I also find that by curiosity, my imagination, my patience and love and resilience, these all are superpowers that I have. They come from the work that you mentioned in the introduction. I’m very interested in exploring my ancestry, the power of my maternal line of ancient representations of motherhood and feminine wisdom. I think that I try to tap into that long history of wisdom in the work I’m doing now. Yeah. That’s where I’ll leave off.
Beautiful. Beautiful. I love it. Thank you so much. Mangala, what would you say your superpowers are?
I have a strong passion in helping women really tap into the sacredness that exists within their own bodies and to help them access that.
I think one of my main superpowers is really giving people tools to empower themselves, particularly women, empowering themselves in their pleasure and their sexuality as well as their spirituality. I have a strong passion in helping women really tap into the sacredness that exists within their own bodies and to help them access that. So it’s really giving them tools to empower themselves so that it’s coming from deep within. They’ve got sexual sovereignty. I’m also a transformational deep diver. I’m constantly in the transformational space myself. I’m really passionate about holding really safe spaces for people to explore their transformation.
My kind of lady. That’s wonderful. Thank you so much both of you for that. Before we go to our break, I want to give our listeners just a little taste of what Agama is and what we’re going to be talking about more. Again, our topic today is psychic manipulation and sexual abuse. I wanted to give Mangala in particular an opportunity to maybe just give you all a little bit of an overview of what Agama is or was or has been. As a former operations manager, I think she is really well equipped to speak to what Agama is. Yeah. I’m just going to give you the floor right now to give us a little synopsis for our listeners who have no clue what that means.
Sure. Agama Yoga was a very large yoga school based in Koh Phangan, an island in Thailand. It’s existed therefore, I think it’s over 10 years now. It started as a very small operation from one yoga hall. Over time, it’s grown and grown and grown. They have a focus on what they call tantric yoga and that meant that we would hold postures for a long time and it was deeply meditative and we were focusing on chakras and energy. But the way they have the system setup there is that you go and you can drop in and do a day or two days, whatever, but they have a first month intense course, which is three classes a day. So it’s very intense. After that, they have levels, monthly levels. Basically to finish the whole 24 level curriculum can take years. Then after that, there’s additional studies. There’s advanced classes, et cetera.
It’s a very interesting framework the way it’s set up, but you would always be looking to see what was in the next level, what’s coming next, and there was a lot of people stay in that environment for a very long time or they come back year after year after year.
They have the yoga side and then they also have the tantra side, sexual tantra, which they call traditional tantra. Having left the environment a few years, I didn’t realize that it’s actually not traditional tantra at all. It’s a complete mix of all kinds of techniques. They run regular workshops and retreats and this kind of stuff. It’s headed by a guy called Swami Vivekananda and his real name is Narcis who’s Romanian. On paper, that all sounds great and lovely and it’s fun in the sun and it was a beautiful experience to be there in many ways. But there’s a really dark seedy underbelly of, as you quite rightly say, psychic manipulation and sexual abuse, which has all eventually come out now in the press in the last few months, but this has been going on for years and years and years. It’s a very patriarchal setup. There’s a lot of manipulation and brainwashing.
I’ve seen many others damaged when we finally had the courage to leave and live our lives and stuff again.
Essentially, it is a cult. I have no doubts whatsoever that it is a cult. I’ve seen many others damaged when we finally had the courage to leave and live our lives and stuff again. They have bunches all over the world as well. Some more successful than others, but they have branches all over.
Do those branches all go under the name of Agama or do they have-
Yeah. Most of them do, but some of them, for example, there was Trika Yoga in India, which I believe has changed its name to Agama. There were several offshoots. I know there’s one in London that has a different name. Some people have gone off and changed the name. There’s thousands and thousands, tens of thousands of people who’ve been through this school from all over the world. Thousands of people who have been trained in yoga and many people trained, so called trained, in tantra. That means that there’s people all over the world teaching this stuff without much discernment, without having gone through much of an inquiry process into what was safe and what wasn’t. I think a lot of the ex community now are in a state of shock and working out what’s clean, what’s not, what they should drop and what they should keep.
Yeah. There’s so much to that and we’re going to dive into that when we get back from the break because I think that’s … I mean that’s one of the things that happens with psychic manipulation and with cults in general is they’re all founded … There’s a kernel of truth in there, but your head gets so messed up when you get out of it and you’re like, “Wait a minute. What’s true and what’s not? What’s real, what’s not? What can I trust? What can I not trust?” There’s so much in there.
Also, I know that you both do your own work outside of that now and you have deep wisdom that you’ve gained and gleaned through this experience and through many other experiences that you had. Before we go to the break, I would just love to have both of you share your websites, where people can go to find out more about you and your work. Maybe starting with you, Nancy, if you could just give us your website so people can find you and your work and know more about you.
Sure. My website is simply my name, that’s NancyEllenMiller.com. I offer individual coaching services and workshops and I also have a blog, so people can find me there. Everything’s there.
Beautiful. Mangala, can you tell us your information, where people can find more about you?
Sure. My website is MangalaHolland.com. Again, just my name.
Great. We are going to be really dissecting this topic when we get back. You don’t want to miss this. Please stay tuned.
To listen to the entire show click on the player above or go to the SuperPower Up! podcast on iTunes.
Music Credit: All instruments played by Amanda Turk. Engineered and produced by Tatiana Berindei and Daniel Plane reelcello.com
Podcast: Play in new window
