Galactic transmissions from tantra bros, pu$$y priestesses, red-pilled starseeds, and ayahuasca girls: Decoding the pedagogies of conspiritual life coaching
Sandro R. Barros, Jennifer A. Sandlin
The Review of Education Pedagogy & Cultural Studies August 9, 2024 DOI: 10.1080/10714413.2024.2388371 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Qualitative study Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Population | Online presence of prominent conspiritual life coaches (Aubrey Marcus, JP Sears, Teal Swan, Kaia Ra, and others) |
| Duration | Nearly a year |
| Topics | Ayahuasca |
| Keywords | Tantra Coaching Decoding methods Psychotherapist Literature Anthropology Telecommunications |
| Key findings | Conspiritual life coaches use five pedagogical strategies—bodily purity, gender binary reinforcement, trauma exploitation, Indigenous appropriation, and spiritual commercialization—to promote disinformation and establish authority through a curriculum of spiritual bypassing. |
Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic spurred the growth of online wellness influencers who promote products and treatments to address spiritual distress by incorporating conspiracy theories into their messaging. In this article we investigate the rise of the “conspiritual life coach,” a subset of wellness influencers that emerged during the pandemic. We analyze their pedagogical approaches, illustrating how they exploit the ambiguity of life coaching as a therapeutic or organizational tool to promote disinformation and establish authority. Drawing on almost a year of netnographic research into the online presence of prominent coaches (Aubrey Marcus, JP Sears, Teal Swan, Kaia Ra, and others), we identify five pedagogical strategies that characterize their messaging. These coaches (1) focus on bodily purity and body fascism, (2) reinforce gender binaries, (3) exploit client trauma, (4) appropriate Indigeneity and perpetuate coloniality, and (5) commercialize spirituality through "enlightened" goods and services. We argue that these strategies work together to enact a curriculum of spiritual bypassing that serves as the main driving force of conspiritual life coaching, which we discuss in the final section of this article.