E8 First Person Charlottesville - Yogaville Survivor

Charles: Before we get started, a quick content warning. The following story contains mentions of sexual abuse and suicide and could be difficult to listen to. 

Maxicelia: Welcome to First Person Cville, the podcast. I’m your host, Maxicelia Robinson. I’m also a co-host of ‘In My Humble Opinion’ from 101 Jamz. Back in 2015, Brianna Patten was struggling with an undiagnosed Bipolar 2 disorder.  Brianna: So most people think of bipolar as rapid mood shifting, but bipolar two is you're depressed most of the time, and then kind of randomly maybe like once or twice a year, like a mania or psychosis would happen. and I was a sophomore in college. I wasn't really enjoying myself. I had switched my major like five times at that point, and attempted suicide. And at the end of that semester, I said I need to take a break from school because it's stressful, I don't know really what I'm doing here. So I worked at Yellowstone National Park for that summer. And while I was there, someone said, there's this place in Virginia, it's kind of weird, but I think you'd like it, it's called Yogaville. And I was like, “oh, I'll look into it.”  Maxicelia: Yogaville is a spiritual community located in Buckingham County. It opened in the 1980s and was the brainchild of Swami Satchidananda — a guru who created a practice called “Integral Yoga.” (He was also famous for giving the opening address at Woodstock.)  At Yogaville, practitioners can take workshops — or join weekend-long retreats — or be trained as Integral Yoga instructors — or even live and work in residence there.  Brianna: And they had a program on their website that was $500 for a month. You learn about yoga philosophy and live a yogic lifestyle and live in the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia. And I said, I can do that for a month. And that's how I ended up there.  Maxicelia: As your story goes, it was great you thought maybe you had found the answer to your mental health needs and maybe a new kind of lease on life so to speak. Brianna: Yeah, that first month was really amazing. I think the routine every day of structured, you wake up in the morning, you meditate, then you do a yoga class, you eat a healthy breakfast, maybe do some service, which could be cleaning or working in the kitchen or working on the farm that they had there. A lot of really smart, people and very friendly. So I was really enjoying myself and was feeling my mood improve. I was not really familiar with Hinduism at all. I had taken a lot of yoga classes and enjoyed the physical aspects, but at Yogaville I had learned a lot about the more complete version, and yoga classes is only one small aspect. And they say that doing the physical postures is to stretch you out so that you can prepare for meditation and kind of seek enlightenment is that. So I was really intrigued by that and had this whole new world opened up to me and was learning a lot.  Maxicelia: Okay at any point during that one month time period, did things seem a little weird to you? Brianna: It felt very kind of old, like the carpet was still from the 70s. Swami Satchidananda actually died in 2002. So I never met Swami Satchitananda personally, but most of elders there knew him while he was there and talk about him like he's alive, his pictures everywhere, they have a wax figure of his body in his tomb there. So I was a little bit weirded out. But I had already paid so I figured, you know, it's just a month, I can do it. And I ended up liking it after only a few days there. I really enjoyed it. Maxicelia: When the month-long program was over, Brianna took a job in Death Valley, California. But it was…just way too hot. So she quit and moved back to Yogaville to start a more intense version of their training.  Brianna says her parents were wary about her living at Yogaville, at first. Especially her mom — because Brianna shaved her head to make holding some yoga postures easier. Brianna: Yeah, she was really sad about that, And my dad was like, oh, I like your hair like that. And, but then after I came back and I was enjoying it more, and they saw that I was happy and enjoying myself, they obviously knew about my suicide attempt, and they were like, you know, if you're happy, and you seem like you're really healthy here and you have a lot of good connections, I think this is good for you.  Maxicelia: So you get back, and shortly thereafter, it sounds like things change for the worst.  Brianna: Yeah, I started hearing more about the negative aspects about Yogaville, how these, I guess more like the ashram politics of different swamis who were, I Guess, almost competing for authority. And it's just a tight-knit community. So everybody kind of knows each other and hearing about drama in that regard, but t