The House Viewing
We saw the red front door and pulled up along the street. No estate agent today, just the person who currently lives in the house showing us round. She greeted us joyfully: have you come from far? Shall we have a look around? Yes this fireplace is original.
We made our way upstairs. One large bedroom. The winter sun set in between the trees down the valley and shone golden light on the walls. I could imagine myself living here. It wasn’t perfect but this view was beautiful and I’d seen so many houses at this point.
‘And then this back room – you could use it a spare room, or an office. I use it as my yoga room at the moment.’
The walls here weren’t golden but orange. She had hung fabric with Sanskrit words printed on, tacked up from the ceiling. There was a shelf filled with yoga books. There were 5 copies of Asana Pranayma Mudra and Bandha printed by the The Yoga Publications Trust, in Mungar, Bihar, India.
She mistook my ‘Oh’, for excitement.
‘Yeh. I do have quite a few yoga books. Too many really! I always have a few of this one in stock to sell to students.’
I looked at the picture in a small frame of Swami Satyananda.
On pages 30-31 of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse’s Report of Case Study No. 21 a summary reads that Bhakti Manning gave evidence she started visiting the Mangrove Mountain ashram community in 1974, age 14; that she was sexually abused by Akhandananda in 1975, three times, at age 15. In 1976 Ms Manning went to live at the Bihar School of Yoga in Mungar, India. Bhakti Manning gave evidence that, from the age of 17 she worked with Satyananda on a daily basis, for 7 years. And that, until 1982, she regularly had sex with him, that this was often aggressive, violent, often, with another female Swami in the room at the same time.
Ms Manning described the impact of the abuse: I don’t feel I have a self. I have a body that has been used. I have a body that’s no longer used by any body but it now experiences constant trauma reactions. I don’t have a sense of where my life’s going or whether it’s worth living.
In 2013 one of my former yoga teachers, who had been dedicated to the Satyananda tradition, released a statement when news of the abuse came to light via the Royal Commission. So she knew; the community in the UK knew about it.
I continued to stare at the bookshelf.
Perhaps they knew each other, this woman, showing me round her house, and my former yoga teacher. I mentioned her name and of course, they did. She became excited and said if I did move to the area I must come to one of her yoga classes. She whipped out a flyer as if from nowhere. And it said – trauma – informed – Satyananda – Yoga.
I read the title out loud, slowly. And then looked her in the eye, ‘trauma informed?’
She replied, ‘yes, I’ve done the extra training but I didn’t really need to. The practice is so conducive to the nervous system. You must have found that yourself.’
I looked at her again, searched for something in her face, behind her eyes. Did she not know? Did she choose not to know? Or was this wilful ignorance?
I thought of the others who gave evidence as part of the Royal Commission, of Alecia Buchanan, Jyoti, and of those only known by their initials. I thought of APH, who moved to the Ashram when she was 7 and her parents were sent away to a different ashram. She was left, unaccompanied for 8 years. And of APR, who lived in the ashram from age 3. Both gave evidence of sexual abuse from multiple members of the Satyananda Mangrove Mountain ashram community.
As we left the house, I placed the flyer on the table next to the front door.
I do not live there.
