Guru-Free: Laura Tucker on Safety for Seekers

A Little Bit Culty

Sarah Edmondson & Anthony “Nippy” Ames

True Crime, Society & Culture, Education

4.6 • 2.7K Ratings

🗓️ 29 November 2021

⏱️ 77 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

A Little Bit Culty – In 2009, Laura Tucker attended a Sedona spiritual retreat and sweat lodge hosted by charismatic spiritual teacher James Arthur Ray. It all went tragically wrong, resulting in the deaths of fellow attendees Liz Neuman, Kirby Brown and James Shore. On this episode, Laura chats with Sarah and Nippy about her experience, what it means to practice safe spiritual seeking, and the dark side of self help. More about today’s guest: Laura Tucker is the host of the Free Your Inner Guru® Podcast, a photographer, writer, and a self-described ‘recovering coach.’ A creative at heart, Laura likes to explore, figure things out, create stunning visuals, and nuanced conversations. As an insight provoking leader and speaker, Laura has helped hundreds of entrepreneurs and business leaders become more self aware so they can lead more intuitively. She is a former high school teacher, trainer, sales professional, multi entrepreneur, consultant and leadership coach. She survived the 2009 fatal “sweat lodge” at a self help retreat in Sedona. You may recognize her from Enlighten Us, a CNN Films/Netflix documentary about the self help industry and the Wondery Podcast Guru: The Dark Side of Enlightenment. She has also appeared on CNN Newsroom with Brooke Baldwin and William Shatner’s The UnXplained. Laura shares personal writing and nature inspired photography at lauratucker.com. Free Your Inner Guru® podcast episodes are released bi-weekly at freeyourinnerguru.com. ~ The views and opinions expressed on A Little Bit Culty do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the podcast. Any content provided by our guests, bloggers, sponsors or authors are of their opinion and are not intended to malign any religion, group, club, organization, business individual, anyone or anything. ~ A Little Bit Culty is proud to support the #IGOTOUT project, which empowers survivors of cultic abuse to share their stories online as a catalyst for education, prevention, and healing. Learn more at igotout.org ~ For more information on A Little Bit Culty and co-hosts Sarah Edmondson and Nippy “Anthony” Ames, visit our official website at alittlebitculty.com. Follow us on Instagram & Twitter @alittlebitculty ~ CREDITS: Executive Producers: Sarah Edmondson & Anthony Ames Production Partner: Citizens of Sound Producer: Will Retherford Associate Producer: Jess Tardy Theme Song: “Cultivated” by Jon Bryant co-written with Nygel Asselin Additional Music Score by Will Retherford Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	The views and opinions expressed by a little bit culty are those of the hosts
0:04.1	and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the podcast.
0:08.1	Any content provided by our guests, bloggers, sponsors or authors
0:12.1	are of their opinion and are not intended to malign any religion,
0:15.8	group, club, organization, business individual, anyone or anything.
0:19.8	Hey everyone, I'm Sarah Edminson.
0:31.5	Hi, I'm Anthony Aims Sarah's husband, aka Nippy.
0:34.4	And we're here to talk about things that are just a little bit culty.
0:38.6	We were in a cult and we woke up and it was all captured in a
0:42.4	docu-series called the Bow on HBO, also in my memoir, Scarred.
0:46.4	And then we made this podcast. I guess you could say we're technically a cult show now.
0:50.8	But not your typical cult show. We're not so much about the grizzly details.
0:54.4	We are about kicking the doors down on the shame and the secrets that make these
0:58.8	culty things so destructive. We're here to have frank conversations about how cool things can
1:03.6	cross over into the cultiverse. How does spot trouble when you see it?
1:07.1	And what happens when it comes to recovering from something culty if that happens to you?
1:11.0	Each week we'll call on experts, advocates, fellow survivors and whistleblowers to help us
1:16.2	unpack what's going on in the cultiverse. We're here to share what we know
1:19.6	on everything from red flags to resiliency and to have a few laughs along the way.
1:23.8	Because sometimes you gotta laugh. Thank God.
1:26.8	Now we have a lot to cover, so let's get this show rolling, shall we?
1:29.9	A little bit culty season two drops new episodes every Monday on the Acast app,
	...

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