Soul Talk and Psychic Advice

Walking Away from Spiritual Gurus: The Rise of Embodied Healing

• Dr. Donna • Season 1 • Episode 11

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The shine of the stage doesn’t heal a nervous system. We’ve watched the guru era promise certainty, sell quick fixes, and reward performance while ignoring the messy truths of trauma, grief, and family pain. In this conversation, I trace how the savior model took root—through secrecy, cultural pressure to “be fine,” and a hunger for relief—and why it’s finally losing its grip as more of us name our experiences in plain language.

I share what I saw behind the curtain at seminars: kindness onstage and coldness offstage, pressure to keep smiling through loss, and coaching that demanded bypass over feeling. We dig into how trauma literacy changes everything: understanding fight, flight, freeze, and fawn; spotting trauma bonds and projection; and recognizing when “alignment” is code for avoiding discomfort. The takeaway is simple but not easy: healing is an inside job supported by tools, therapy, somatic practices, and communities that tell the truth. No one is coming to save us—and that’s freeing when we have what we need to save ourselves.

We also map the shift to a new kind of guide: humble, trauma‑informed, embodied, and willing to say “I don’t know.” Instead of pedestals, we value boundaries. Instead of perfection, we trust repair. Embodiment becomes the new enlightenment—how we treat people when no one’s watching, how we handle triggers, and how we return to ourselves without shame. If you’ve felt burned by polished promises, this is a space to reclaim sovereignty, gather practical tools, and find support that lasts.

If this resonates, follow the show, share it with a friend who’s questioning the old model, and leave a review to help more people find grounded guidance. Your story matters—what are you choosing to walk toward next?

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SPEAKER_00:

Hello, it's Dr. Donna, and welcome to another episode of my podcast, Soul Talk and Psychic Advice. Today I'm going to talk about a topic that you know it's there, it's present, right? But we we don't discuss it in the same way, and it's why people are walking away from gurus. Now, gurus aren't just people who's wearing like um some spiritual clothing and meditate all day and have shaved their head and live in a monastery. Gurus come in all forms, and in the spiritual community, there are a lot of people who are popular, who are well known, they've been doing this work for years, even before the internet, and they have quite the following, and some of them are like gurus to people, especially if they have a track record of really writing good books and great seminars and have said great things and help people, right? And then the word of mouth spreads, and then the internet comes, and then they really spread and they're well known. And there is a lot of that in the spiritual community. There are and a lot of them call themselves coaches, and you you know, some will say I'm a spiritual teacher, and you know, they talk about how they've been to Sedona and India and all these great places, and they're walking in a light in enlightenment, and that's how they sell themselves as a guru. They will say that they're not a guru, but they're acting like one. And I can tell you that we are starting to wake up that you don't necessarily follow a person, you follow a philosophy, but people are starting to realize you can't follow a person because all of us are imperfect, right? Nobody's perfect, nobody has all the answers. We're all still learning, we're all figuring this out. You know, we all don't have our shit together. I don't think you, you know, nobody has it all together. I don't care how they look on the outside, and some people package themselves well. If I could tell you from doing this work and talking to many people and people in high and low places and known people and unknown people, we're all the same trying to figure this out. But we live in a world that's just now becoming comfortable with discussing trauma and child abuse and narcissism and family issues and all the awful things that we were told to keep secret. And I always tell the story that when I first started working on King doing readings, a lot of people were calling Trunk and because it was during the holidays, and I didn't remember that. I used to work Miss Cleal's line. I know people think it's all a fraud, but I've told the story many times that no, a lot of us were real psychics on Miss Cleo's line. So but they didn't pay well. They charged five dollars a minute, we got like ten dollars an hour, so total scam in that way. So when I started working on Keen and could control my income, I had a lot of people calling drunk. It was, you know, right after Thanksgiving, and they're like, you know, I just went home for the holidays, and I have to go back, and I don't want to go as uncomfortable, and you know, the family wants to put on the role like everything's fine when everything isn't, and I'm sitting across the table from either a parent who abused me, and sometimes it's sexual abuse, right? You'd be surprised how many biological parents have sexually abused their child, and they are they're sitting next to the perverted uncle or just some type of drama, right? So they would tell me, but you know, the internet was just coming about, and there was an etiquette on the internet. Either you were part of the etiquette side or the very dark world, right? It was either or there's no in-between. So people still weren't talking about their pain in a public way. So these gurus, these spiritual people had a great niche, right? And they were able to fill that gap by saying, I can take your pain away, I can make you feel better, you know. Just follow me, follow what I say, do. And the gurus packaged themselves well enough to be trusted, and people in pain sought them out. And this is what I learned when I was in chiropractic school. I graduated December 2001, but I met a lot of people in a spiritual community, and it was weird because some of the peers who were in a spiritual community, some were nice and some were awful. They were just rude, they're awful. And one of them, her father, is a well-known author of a very popular book. If I said it, you would know it. And she was just like the worst person, she's mean, and everybody said, Oh, she's got problems, right? So I had a mixed understanding of spirituality, none of it made sense to me. I had a bio biology degree, I did a minor psychology, but I didn't understand this world until I got injured when I got bit on the face, the corner left corner of my mouth by a dog, that really took me into spirituality, and it helped me to really understand what I know now, and this whole dynamic. So, this is gonna be long-winded, but it's very important. You need to understand the truth of what a guru is. A lot of them are grifters, and that is so true. They're they learned how to make money, and they know that you can make money off of a person's vulnerability, and people who are seeking, and a lot of times the guru is either a narcissist or they're a very wounded person who skipped their healing, but they developed this program, and they're like, Well, it kind of helped me, and I could sell this, and I could say, look at me, and I'm doing great, and if you follow what I'm doing, you'll be happy too. And they end up having like this whole salesy spiritual combo. But I noticed that when I would try to like speak to these people once they got off stage, because I went to a lot of spiritual seminars, you know. I was spending my money because I have my own healing I needed to do, and I thought there was some miracle out there that was gonna save me. I have done some therapy in the past by this time, but I wasn't having all the breakthroughs. But I noticed I tried to talk to them off stage, and they didn't want to talk, they didn't want to be bothered, they were rude even sometimes, and I get sometimes you could be overwhelmed, big crowds, everybody wanted to talk to you, but their approach let me know that they weren't authentic people, but I kept going to seminars because I was hoping to find an authentic person. So a guru is often someone who learned something and they learned how to sell it, and they're great at presenting it, they they know how, and that's not all of them. There are some great people that I follow who seem to be legitimate out there, but you know, some of them you gotta really question. Just look at their behavior, and you can see what I mean. So you have this perfect storm of this guru who's tapped into how to make money off of people's weakness, and they're unhealed, and then you have us people seeking healing, so you've got a trauma bond going on, and we're looking, you know, us seeking healing, we're looking up at the guru like, you're gonna give me the answers, and this pain is gonna go away, and I'm gonna be fine. And it didn't happen that way, and it was interesting because when I first really I didn't have money in school, so I couldn't go to anything, but it's after school when I started having a little bit of money, and seminars weren't too expensive yet. The first one I went to was best. Now that's how I learned a technique that helped me when my son passed, and I noticed that I couldn't stand to sit with other people, and I thought, I don't know why. Now I know why, because I was an empath and I was picking up on all their trauma and pain. But what was interesting is that I grew up poor, black teen, mom, parents died young, went in foster home, had all the things happen right before I went to you know chiropractor school, and this is before I lost my son, and I see all these people who look like what society says has it all together. A lot of them were up for class, a lot of them were white, a lot of them just they came from two parent homes. My parents were separated because my dad was sick and he had to go live with his mom and left my mom poor and and it was just rough, right? And so I've realized that we really have this facade in society, and it still exists some. We're starting to crack it, but it does exist, and I seen a lot of people who I thought wouldn't be hurting so much hurting, and they wanted that quick fix. We all wanted that, you know, answer. You know, just the way people look at quotes or read a self-help book, they're hoping that it's gonna solve their problem and the healing is done, but now we know you have to feel it to heal it, and you have to go through it. You have to sometimes relive certain things in order to heal. So if you see society now, it's everything's fine, everything's much better, and we're much more open about our discussions and our trauma and what happened, and people will post their true story, and now we realize that how much of life is a facade. And I know I felt like growing up, people who had two parent homes and a nice house and everything, that they were blessed, they had life easy. But as I got into this work, I learned that wasn't true, especially when I had a lot of people who came from get families, you know, drunk because they didn't want to go home for the holidays, they'd rather be alone. But society says you've got to get together as a family, right? That was a rule back then, 20, 21 years ago, not too long ago, is still kind of there. We still get sold out with commercials and don't you want to see family, but they're your family. So I'm learning that a lot of people didn't have the good childhood, didn't have the great life, and so finding someone who's in a spiritual authority made it easy for them to follow a guru. And so it was you you know, a lot of us have stories, right? And a lot of people have been sexually abused. I believe almost every woman has experienced some form of sexual harassment, sexual abuse, and some men too, definitely. Um, maybe a lot of men, but we have been taught to hide this. I know I was taught to bury a lot of things and just push through. Be strong, be tough. And so a guru was a savior. It was a great, you know, grift. They were gonna make money, they were gonna show us how to heal and even show us how to make money. And, you know, that was kind of how I got into the spiritual business, but I realized that I was struggling because some things didn't resonate that they were doing, and it didn't seem ethical, so I started walking away. I remember like and best, you know, the founder was great, but other people who learned to teach it weren't, you know, it it just they weren't healthy, and now we know how important it is to only follow people who are doing their work, but we didn't know this now, and we're just now giving ourselves permission to break away. So, you know, a lot of these people who you know, especially me too, who went to all these spiritual seminars and read all these books, we were unhealed. We were attention starved. We needed validation that we were okay, you know, and the gurus are unhealed, right? A lot of them, a lot of them haven't gone to therapy, and I've I can recount several seminars where I just thought, this person's awful because we're running this seminar, and at one point I just couldn't stomach going to any anymore. I started doing them online because between the wounded people who didn't want to feel anything and numb out, and the so-called spiritual teacher being awful, I just said, This is not for me. I I spent enough money and I've spent tens of thousands of dollars. I could have bought a home, and I had done that even a little bit after my son died because I was really trying to heal from that too, and I realized I was just being taught to bypass, I wasn't being supported. I even had my coach at the time say, You gotta go to work. And this is after the planning my son's funeral. The next day I had clients on the books because my son died. Then we went home the next day and we just started planning his funeral because it was never gonna be a good time to do it. And we knew if we didn't do it, then we were never gonna do it. And then the next day I I had clients and I put on a nice dress and I put on that smile, and none of them knew what was going on. And I realized the facade that we play in this world in this belief that when we're suffering, nobody else is, but just about everybody else is hiding something, hiding pain. So, you you know, these gurus are very charming, they're charismatic, they can be gentle, they know how to play the role, they're very performative, they smile like an enlightened saint, they just know to say all the right things. And I remember when I first started coaching, I had coaches say, You gotta tell parts of your story so that you could connect with the audience. And that's why you see a lot of you know coaches have artificial stories because they don't want to tell their whole story because they're still trying to look perfect, because that used to be the thing that you had to look perfect for people to buy from you because you want to show them that hey, if you follow me, you could be perfect too. But as time went on, we're realizing, hey, that's not relatable. And so, you know, we went from okay, put on a perfect image to you gotta have a little story. You know, there's even trainers who teach you how to tell your story so that people can connect to you. And I know just by the things happening to me that made me, you know, identify with people. And I had clients say, I stayed with you because I knew you went through something hellish, and I felt like you got me now. You understand me. And although I have went through losing my parents and false care, they didn't know me back then. And but they knew me. My clients, I had to tell them when my son died because I needed a timeout and I needed to move slower, all of a sudden they felt this connection, and that's really what all this is about, is that we're trying to connect to ourselves and to other people and to have people say that they see us and you know to feel validated because a lot of us just feel small in the world. They say at any time 85% of the population is battling low self-esteem, low self-worth because they we don't feel seen or heard, and that's why gurus were able to do what they did. So on stage they put on the great show, they're compassionate, gentle, everything, but off stage they were rude, dismissive, short-tempered, cold. I found this a lot. I didn't want to be anywhere near them, and sometimes downright mean to people who were going up to them because you know you just listen to this guru speak and you pay to go to the seminar, hotel flight, you know, the ticket for the seminar, everything, right? All the expenses, and you go, Oh wow, I really identify with you, and then this guru is like pushing you to the side because they're done performing, and so they've done what they're you know, done doing, they don't even care. So, hey, if a person's only kind when they're being watched, they're not healed. And most gurus are good performers, not good humans, they're wounded humans who are bypassing their own pain, and then we're going there looking for a quick fix, so we we're wanting to bypass, and it's a perfect storm, right? And people will spend their money for their healing. That's why the healing profession is big business and always will be. That is one thing that people will spend money on for sure, because they want to feel good about themselves, and so this made spirituality dangerous for me, you know, and for a lot of people, and it made me almost want to leave the profession. I really felt like an outsider. And even in the psychic community, a lot of psychics are mean, and they a lot of them haven't gone to therapy, and they think because they're psychic, they don't have to go to therapy, they have an edge because they have this gift, and so there's a lot of wounded people in the spiritual world, and now they're starting to wake up that I can't grow, I can't, you know, do this anymore. They're drained, they're burned out because they're not coming from an authentic healed place. And are we ever fully healed? No, we're always healing, but we can do a lot of work on ourselves and you know, get right on the path. And so why people are walking away, fast-forwarding to today is because everything is shifting. We're having more open conversations online, and that's freeing people to not feel isolated or embarrassed. You know, I I read a lot of different posts and comments online, and people are telling about the difficult parents and the you know, the abuse, whether it's physical, sexual, mental, how they've decided to cut off parents and not go home, and they're not gonna do the whole family facade anymore. And there's a time I had to walk away from my family, so I'm like, whoa, we're all in a different place. And people are realizing that healing is an inside job, and nobody can give you a cheat code to heal. You're gonna have to sit and do that work. You know, we can make it a little bit more gentle, but you still have to go through it, right? You have to really feel it to heal it, and now we're coming up with all this different stuff: somatic work, trauma, informed, all kinds of work to help people to a to be able to cope. So, you know, the guru is being um removed because of the knowledge of the internet and the options that are out there, and you don't have to spend tens of thousands of dollars anymore to get healing. That old method is old now, is gone away. And yes, there are still some cool people to follow, but I think people are doing it differently. They're not looking at them like you're gonna heal me, you're gonna save me. They're looking at it like I like this message about you, and they're learning to separate people instead of treating like a coach or a spiritual teacher as a whole package, and so now it's I don't need a guru, I don't need to follow someone and they have all the answers for me. I need tools, I need techniques, you know, to heal, I need support, I need a therapist, I need community, I need self-connection and connection with other people who want to heal. So the old paradigm of the savior, rescuer, rescuer, the pedestal doesn't work anymore. So collectively, we've been through too much, too much grief, trauma, loss, the pandemic, economic collapse, and people don't want performance. We're sick of that. And you know, we can see through the BS and we realize it's okay to question it. Because when you have abusive family members, you know, and especially abusive parents, you're kind of taught, don't question authority, don't question anything, because you probably heard your parents say, I'm the adult, you're the child. And you know, no, don't question me. So we used to not question, and now we do. And so now we want authenticity and embodiment. You gotta walk the talk and you gotta be nice off stage, not just on. And so people are learning about trauma in the nervous system, and they're learning the fight, flight, freeze, fun, trauma bonding, projection, narcissism, go, and this is all helping gurus to lose their power because we're really doing true self-help now, and people are tired of giving their power away. So the new generation wants sovereignty, not spiritual dependency. So spirituality is evolving, and it is a lot better now than what it's been, and you know, I've always tried to speak out, and you know, I remember I wrote a book, A spirituality trap, and a lot of people didn't like it at the time because I was questioning things, and I even wrote it kind of light, and people didn't like what I was saying, but I think now they get it. I get better reviews now on that book than what I got when I wrote it. I wrote it back in 2013, 12 years ago. People weren't ready to hear that because nobody wants to think that they were duped or they were misled. You know, I always have clients say, I don't want to be the fool. Nobody wants to be played for a fool. And when people are seeking healing, they want to believe that there was somebody out there to save them, but now we know no one's coming to save us. We have to save ourselves. So, you know, social media has exposed people, right? And I noticed that a lot of people who were grifting prior to the internet aren't as successful online because they kind of have been exposed and they're not able to make it that online. There's a few that are are still hanging around, but very few of them are able to make the transition and be successful online because they've been exposed. And intuition is rising, people are reconnecting with their own inner knowing, they don't need an all-knowing teacher anymore, and nobody knows it all anyway, and you can't even BS that anymore. And so the new spiritual leader is different. Here's the truth: people aren't walking away from spirituality, they're walking away from the hierarchy of spirituality that you have to look up from someone, look up to someone. The new spiritual teacher is trauma-informed, embodied, humbled, human, self-responsible, willing to say I don't know everything. Because that used to be a thing the spiritual teachers didn't say, and they didn't want people to be smarter than them. I remember I went to one seminar and they just didn't want me to tell who I was because then it would look like I was smarter because I have more education, and they shut a lot of us down who have more experience because they couldn't control us, and all of that's gone now. Spirituality used to be almost cult-like, and so now people you know the guru can't expect to be worshipped, they can't create dependency, people aren't gonna go for it. People want teachers who help them come back to themselves, not teachers who want to be the center of their universe, and so that's the difference. My role is in this shift, right? As someone who has been in this world for decades, I'm gonna be 55 in December and through a lot of different trauma, okay, since I was a little girl, and grief and awakening and psychic development and somatic healing, I've seen it all, and I've been to a lot of seminars with a lot of well-known people, and I've seen a lot of stuff, and I talked to people in the audiences, and you know, I just been so educated through talking to other people, and there's always more to learn, right? But I could say this confidently embodiment is the new enlightenment. People trust me because I'm a mess sometimes. I have tyfles, I have all sorts of things going on, but I found some peace and happiness through grief and trauma, and they like that part of me. You know, I'm quirky, I don't always look good on video, I look better in person, I'm not good at the videos, you know. I don't always look right. Um, I've lived through grief and trauma and had to do a lot of healing work, so that makes me identifiable, and a lot of my peers, you know, they're talking about their divorces, they're talking about being abused, they're talking about you know, just all the awful things to say. I'm not perfect. And so the new person who does this work is not a guru, it's an imperfect person who is proud to be imperfect, and you know, I'm I'm awkward, yeah, you know, sometimes socially awkward because my head's in the clouds, or I'm in my own world thinking, and so I always struggled in this profession. Like I knew what I could say to get a lot of followers and to make millions, but I wouldn't do it because it was wrong. And my spirit guides always said, Don't you ever take advantage of someone you will be so sorry, your life will become hell on earth, and I never wanted to, but I have spirit guides that keep my ass in line. Um, so I don't pretend to be above anyone because I'm not. I walk with people, and that's what all of us new coaches are doing. We're showing you who we are and our imperfections. So, yes, people are walking away from the gurus, and in that space, becoming more, you know, be we're becoming more powerful on our own and emerging and free to speak our pain and and not need to be perfect. So everything now is about community. We don't need more gurus, we need humans who have done their work. And you know, I'm always doing some type of therapy. I spend a lot on personal therapy all the time. There's always layers, you know. But I want to say something. Even as you do a lot of healing, whether it's therapy, somatic work, yoga, meditate, whatever, you still get triggered. I still get triggered. There was a guy doing donuts in my neighborhood the other day, and he almost hit me, and I just went nuts on him. And but I was able to calm down certainly after, and I didn't get stuck in fight or flight. So we still get triggered by certain things, and if my safety's threatened, I do get triggered. But it's when you do the healing work, you can bounce back, and it doesn't take you to dark places, so it didn't take me back to you know prior years of being unsafe. I felt more in the moment I handled it, you know. He was kind of like concerned because I was very mad. But I told him, You're not gonna do this in our neighborhood. I live in a new built community and I'm not gonna let it be run down, but I bounced back. I didn't dwell on it. I just, you know, I left it at that. Yeah, you know, when my neighbor set part of my house on fire, you know, I was mad for the moment, but if she came to me, I'm here for her. If she needed something for me, I would give it to her. So healing means you'll still be triggered, but you'll be able to bounce back and you won't hold anger, resentment, the pain of the past is no longer ruling you. So I want to make that clear. There's nothing that says I'm perfectly healed, there's nothing out there, right? Because everything that we've had happen is within us, it lives within our DNA, and it's in our subconscious, and you know, you can't get away from that, but you can react differently to it. And the past can get left in the past, you can remember it without it being so traumatic. You can have moments where you're triggered, right? Especially if you've been sexually abused or something, but you will bounce back, and that's really what healing is about. And so never be afraid to do the work because you save yourself, you make life easier. And you know, this was kind of long-winded, but this type of work, spiritual stuff, conversations are not black and white. I try to have a format, but it's really about explaining everything that was going on. And really with this topic, I could talk for 10, 20 hours nonstop. A lot went on throughout the 25 years that I've been in the spiritual community. And now we know we talk about spiritual bypassing. We talk about, you know, don't run from who you are, and and it's okay what you've gone through, you could bounce back and you can be okay still. We talk about that, and people are sharing themselves. So, really, what I would say is you heal to become your true authentic self who's worthy of giving and receiving love and kindness and being able to navigate the world. So, before I get any more long winded, I want to thank you for listening and have a wonderful day.