manguru

Berlin / 10min read

I am buying myself back today. Not sure I ever had me but thankfully, when you have money, there are plenty of ways now to purchase yourself. This afternoon I am going for a kundalini workshop. Breathwork, hypnosis and dance to transform trauma and reach my full potential! 

The meet and greet with my higher self is offered at 50 Euro. A steal! There will be gift bags and the opportunity to purchase plant-based supplements at a reduced price. Credit card payment accepted. 

The workshop is run by Soho House and lead by a manguru called Nem. There’s a photo of him on the event page. He has long hair which looks greasy and shiny or maybe it’s just wet. He seems young. He wears a bunch of silver necklaces and his chest is tattooed. His shirt is unbuttoned and looks like it’s made of silk but not real silk. The kind of silk that’s actually polyester and that sends an electric shock through your body when you come into contact with it, like bzzzz, now you’re electrified! That curse will be passed on to every person you touch, so naturally you will stop touching people but maybe sometimes you will forget because you like people. You like touching them.

Manguru’s Instagram shows him sitting cross-legged on beaches or on polished floorboards of urban yoga shalas. Also photos and videos of him on dance floors moving in ways that communicate embodied! ecstatic! free! I know which clubs he goes to and the kind of drugs he takes just by browsing his feed. His bio reads kundalini activator, graphic designer, healer, DJ - Melbourne/Berlin. I must have signed up anyway because here I am, front row on a yoga mat ready to be led to salvation by a boy.

French doors, floor-to-ceiling windows, chandeliers. Heavy velvet curtains in mint. Grand wooden bar to the left, Berlin’s TV tower to the right. I have been in this room before, I performed here. I was a Burlesque dancer once upon a time and booked for a Swedish plastic surgeon’s birthday party, which happened right here in this room. I did my signature act, which climaxes with a pillow fight of sorts. I stand half-naked on a chair, balancing in Louboutin heels and flinging a ripped pillow over my head, like a lasso, sending feathers flying everywhere. Feathers in the air, feathers on people, feathers on the ground. Somebody later has to clean up this mess, and it’s never me, and I know I should stop, enough now, but I can’t. I just fling and fling and fling until there are no feathers left in my pillow and I discard the empty case and collapse to the ground. That last part, I don’t really like. It’s a bit cringe. Too dramatic. Tacky. I wish my performance ended in the feathers. I wish I would just disappear in them, like poof, gone!

After the gig, I googled the Swedish plastic surgeon and browsed before and after pics of boob jobs he had done. Apparently, he was famous for them and indeed I loved all of his boobs! They were beautiful and natural looking and I spent the rest of the day shortlisting my favorite pair. For a day or two I wanted to email him to see if he had any availability to make some new boobs for me but then I got distracted and after all, I didn’t actually need them. Like, new boobs would be nice but also I didn’t really care.

Now I am back in that room, chilling in child’s pose on a yoga mat this time. I am wearing my favorite blue hoodie that I got at a motel in the Hamptons once and soft figure-hugging sweatpants, an ensemble I hoped communicates I take self-care seriously but also I have a cute butt.

I struggle to enter a room without feeling into everyone in it. Without assessing myself, like, how do I compare? How else are you supposed to measure the weight of your worth if not against another. If we are all special is anyone really? Maybe not and maybe that’s ok.

The woman to my right smiles at me. A smile that yells Hello fellow woman who is ready to become the best version of herself and let go of things that no longer serve her!!! I am so happy to be here!!! So grateful and ready to work!!! I am also terrified and mildly freaking out and I wish I wasn’t wearing tight leggings and why is the guy so young and I kind of want to run but I’m not a quitter!!! Maybe I’m just nervous!!! Are you nervous?!?! 

I smile back at her, like, hi, no not really but if it makes you feel better I will be nervous too. I will be nervous with you. 

I look around. So many women. All of them eager to become better versions, upgraded ones. They want to feel less or feel more and be more. They definitely don’t want to be less.

If it’s true what they say, that I am enough, then how come I can pay them money to make me be more? Being enougher is expensive.

Manguru lights a stick of palo santo and walks through the sea of women most of whom sit upright in anticipation of what’s about to come. You can tell the level of a person’s ambition to become a better version of themself by the way they sit on a yoga mat. I sit cross-legged to express my eagerness to please and to get everything right but also use the opportunity to show off my flexibility and overall embodiedness by pushing my chest forward and toward the ground, like the dancer I want to be recognized as. An elaborate show to stretch hip flexors that aren’t actually tight because actually, I haven’t danced much lately.

The first round of exercises consists of rhythmic and intense breathing to specific movements and poses. I like it. It feels great to be made to work hard and I’m not slacking. I’m breathing the shit out of this exercise! It’s not a competition, I know, they always say that at yoga and like, yeah, maybe it isn’t but also is anything not? Anyway, if there was a cute, definitely not competitive, badge to be won, for best breather or whatever, I’d totally get it.

After the breathing, we are invited to randomly walk around while yelling at people. Manguru doesn’t call it that though. He asks us to channel our anger and pain into gibberish sounds that he wants us to direct at our fellow group members in passing. I give this one a miss. I generally don’t enjoy taking on people’s shit and I specifically don’t see the point in taking on the shit of strangers. I like my aura cute and clean and shit free. Like a bathed baby's bottom. 

I hang out in the back of the room with a few fellow misfits who also opted out of being yelled at, much to manguru’s contempt. Trust your intuition, ladies, if something doesn’t resonate with you don’t do it, he generously offered just a moment ago. Now he seems upset that “doesn’t resonate” may actually be a thing for some. Would the people in the back please join the exercise! he requests in between his scary chants that he seems to take a particular kind of pride in. He performs his sounds loud and aggressively, with wide-eyed sullen rigor. Like Roarrrrrrr, everyone, this is my darkness!!! Deal with it, roarrrrrr!!!

We don’t, and he’s clearly not happy about the disobedience but before things turn sour the soundtrack fades out and marks the end of the first part of the workshop, thank god.

We are breaking for tea and Manguru presents his latest creation, Healchemy, an Ayurvedic plant medicine wheel meant to alleviate any type of discomfort from cardiovascular disease to erectile dysfunction. I have not seen a traditional doctor in 10 years! he boasts. Love and plants is all you need!

We are invited to sample the powdered supplements and I go for the yellow one which aligns with anxiety but only if you turn the wheel clockwise. If you turn it anti-clockwise it aligns with erectile dysfunction and I missed the part in which he explained how to read the wheel correctly because I spaced out after the love and plants is all you need bit. I eat the powder anyway. 

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Manguru tells us to imagine the inner child. Not our inner child though, he wants us to visualize our parent's inner child. Doesn’t matter if it’s your mother’s inner child or your father’s inner child, he says. Just pick one and imagine them. His clarification isn’t helpful. I have more than one mother and father, so there’s a whole bunch of inner children running around inside of me now. I have turned into a kindergarten.

Can you visualize the child?! Look at him, he’s beauuutiful!!! manguru shouts with the kind of exclamation mark in his voice that doesn’t allow disagreement.

I try hard to pick one kid to visualize. I want to be a good student but it’s tricky because there are so many. Also, I don’t trust Manguru to actually know what he’s doing. I have a creeping suspicion he might be full of shit and so I don’t do the thing and decide to hang out with my own inner child instead, who’s been standing in the corner all the while, quietly shrugging at the sight of this mess. I like her. We’ve been hanging out more lately. 

All the pain your parents have inflicted on you, Manguru instructs, I don’t want you to forgive. No - I want you to forget!!! I check with my inner child and her eyes widen like what the fuck and I tell her, yeah girl, I hear you, don’t worry, I got you.

The woman next to me sobs uncontrollably. I want to jump up and yell EVERYBODY RUN!

I don’t do that of course. Instead, I talk to her after the workshop and ask her if she is okay. She says she isn’t sure. She didn’t expect what just happened. She doesn’t know what to make of it. I offer her a hug, do the thing. I tell her to talk to a friend maybe or do some journaling. Just be really kind to yourself I hear myself say but don’t actually know what I mean by that. Some say bubble baths and scented candles are nice. Maybe eating well? Some meditation folks recommend eating root vegetables after intense emotional experiences in order to connect with, I don’t know, root chakra energy I guess. I don’t mind carrots and their earthy cousins but I have never found vegetables to be particularly healing. Maybe I’m basic. My being really kind to myself looks more like eating hot-wings and binging Below Deck.

Manguru packs up his singing bowls and hands out an email list for people to sign up for if they’d like to be informed about future events, which, to my surprise, quite a few do. He says he will do another workshop here soon. I wonder if I should tell the event programmers about how I liked this one. They always ask for feedback but of course, they may not actually want it. What would my feedback even look like? I don’t think a DJ should save my life? 

I guess I could just suggest they invite a trained professional next time, instead of a self-proclaimed healer, but maybe I’m being boring. Like, aren’t professionals overrated? What does it mean to be an expert anyway? Isn’t the cool thing about now that anyone can do anything and in any way they want, like, yay disruption?! 

And who am I to judge. Some of my clients have trauma and I use intuition and empathy to do what I think is right and may be good for them. I don’t have a psychology degree or coaching certificate either. For all I know I too could be full of shit.

However, I don’t promise existential transformation. I promise pleasure and joy, a good time. People hopefully feel happier because of (meeting) me. I’m pretty certain they do. That I can offer. Ordinary but not insignificant change. 

I pack up my things and I don’t give feedback. I don’t tell the organizers that I think manguru sucks. That his practices felt problematic at best and harmful at worst. I don’t seek out a conversation with him either. Instead, I say bye and thank you and I smile. Because that’s what you do. You don’t make a fuss and you don’t make people feel bad by pointing out their flaws. You try not to harm. 

“Thanks for coming, do you want to sign up for future events?” manguru asks on my way out and I say “No.” without explaining myself. The No feels unfamiliar, raw. Uncomfortable in an exciting way. Like pulling a rubber band further and further and further expecting it to snap when it just doesn’t. Maybe I did become a better version after all.