Well, well, wellness

There’s wellness, and then there’s wellness. In the former category, I’d put my flu shot and Fitbit. In the latter category, while I don’t have anything to personally contribute, I guess that’s where I’d put OneTaste, where wellness, well, “just got interesting.”

OneTaste is a global lifestyle brand focused on increasing health, happiness and connection through scientifically-proven methods combining mindfulness and sexuality.

Some of my favorite words in the whole wide world are in that mission statement: lifestyle, brand, scientifically-proven, mindfulness, and – I guess, or used to know something about, or whatever  – sexuality.

OneTaste. Now there’s a name that at once sounds both like a product you’d find on the grocery store shelf (like Taster’s Choice) and like something that just doesn’t make sense. What can OneTaste possibly mean? Don’t we all believe in eye of the beholder, chacun à son goût?

OneTaste’s main offering is something called Orgasmic Meditation, and I’ll mostly leave it at that. To go into the details, I’d have to use an eight-letter word that begins with a “c” and ends with an “s”. A word that Pink Slip, in its first decade-plus in existence, has never had reason to use. Not that I have any problem with this “c” word. After all, women come equipped with one. Anyway, this particular “c word” really doesn’t seem to apply even tangentially to business, which is the nominal reason for Pink Slip’s being.

As for the company’s Orgasmic Meditation:

OneTaste has said the practice, which its members call “OM,” helps women connect differently with their bodies and with their intuition, while teaching men to be more sensitive to a woman’s needs. The company was founded in San Francisco in 2004 and made money by selling classes, coaching programs and retreats about the practice and the spiritual teachings associated with OM. (Source: Bloomberg)

Alas, for those interested in “spiritual teachings associated with OM”, OneTaste, which had three centers in the US – San Francisco, LA, and NYC – is shuttering those outlets.

A fourth in London no longer offers classes and is holding discussions about whether to shut down, a spokeswoman for the company said…Its “focus for the future,” according to a statement, is “to bring the world of Orgasmic Meditation (OM) online for a global audience.”

I realize that a lot of training is going online, but in reading about OM, it sure sounds a lot more physical than virtual. Maybe it’ll all be “how to” videos. (Well, not that spiritual, orgasmic teaching is at all porn-y, not at all, but porn was a major driver in the development of the Internet.)

OneTaste may well be shutting down their physical operations so they can scale and expand their reach, something online does well. But there seems to have been a tiny bit of trouble in OM paradise:

Former OneTaste members and employees told Bloomberg Businessweek that for years, the company pushed them to ignore their financial, emotional and physical boundaries. Some said they went deep into debt at the encouragement of OneTaste staff, who suggested they take out additional credit cards to pay for expensive courses. They also said OneTaste staff told them to OM with or have sex with each other and with customers, sometimes to help with class sales and sometimes for spiritual growth. In 2015, OneTaste paid an out-of-court settlement to a former worker, who claimed she faced sexual assault, sexual harassment and labor violations at work.

All this was exposed in a June Bloomberg article that reported that, at least for one member:

OneTaste was much more than a series of workshops. It was a company that had, in less than a year, gained sway over every aspect of her life.

After taking a class, this woman joined the OneTaste sales team and began:

…living in a communal house in Brooklyn with her co-workers. Seven days a week, they gathered for multiple rounds of orgasmic meditation, or OM. (They pronounce it “ohm.”) They spent hours calling and texting people who’d come to a OneTaste event, trying to sell seats for the next, more expensive classes.

Not to mention being pressured to pay for more classes for herself. She and her husband ended up flying the OneTaste coop having “spent more than $150,000”. Ohm my…

This woman wasn’t a one-off:

In some members’ experiences, the company used flirtation and sex to lure emotionally vulnerable targets. It taught employees to work for free or cheap to show devotion. And managers frequently ordered staffers to have sex or OM with each other or with customers.

At the time of the Bloomberg article, OneTaste (surprise!) denied all.

But here they are, a few months later, closing their wellness centers and changing their strategic focus.

What a business. Sounds like a sexed up version of Scientology, no? Beware of any business that’s cult-like and talks about mindfulness and sexuality.

But what do I know? I’m just a little Catholic girl who believes that if your meditation is going to involve orgasm, it should probably take place in your bedroom. Or in a hotel room. Or out in the woods. Just not on the floor of a wellness center in the midst of a whole bunch of other adherents. And you shouldn’t have to go $150K in debt for it. Ohm well, at least if it’s online, you’re doing it in private. Where it belongs.