All language subtitles for Orgasm Inc.The Story Of OneTaste 2022

The only thing that ever heals,
the only thing that ever awakens

is connection.

I do think we have a pleasure deficit
disorder in this country.

It's getting faster and faster, our world
is getting really hyper-connected,

but human connection
is beginning to dissolve.

I do think, though, that there is a cure,

and that cure is

female orgasm.

Hi. My name is Nicole Daedone,

and I'm the founder
of OneTaste Urban Retreat Center.

She really was a celebrity to me.
Like, I'd seen her TED Talk 30 times.

I have this vision

that someday you'll see
yoga and meditation and orgasm

all on the same bill.

Welcome to the Orgasm Is pop-up shop.

Is. Orgasm Is.

Yeah.

Hi!

People began
to flood into our doors,

person after person after person.

That's one reason
why I love living in Silicon Valley.

Every single option
you could imagine available in this city.

It was all about exploring orgasm,
exploring pleasure.

To feel that open and that safe
with another human being,

every single woman
should know she can feel that.

I'm a lot more conscious
just of my own power in my sex.

The next thing we knew, we were
invited into all of these tech circles.

She wants
to have this elite group

of turned-on, hip men and women.

I was a lonely, nerdy guy.

OneTaste opened up a world
I didn't even dream was possible.

That feeling that had driven me
my whole life,

seeking or trying to connect
in relationship or sex

or any of those things, it was like...

"This is it."

It went from, like, utopia to a hellhole.

She would just become fascinated
with what she could get people to do.

That was kind of, like, her secret thrill.

People were getting hurt.

People were getting hurt badly.

She thought she was

saving the world by taking people's money
and messing up people's emotions.

Welcome to hell.

When you look at orgasm,

what I found is it has the same
fundamental goal as the internet,

and that's human-to-human connection.

OneTaste was
a fast-growing startup

in the health and wellness,
and sexuality space.

It was started by Nicole Daedone.

Having spent a lot of time
thinking about Nicole,

I think of her
as a very skilled craftsman.

She seems to know
what people will gravitate toward.

People wanted to hear from a woman.

People wanted to see a woman like her
at the top of a company like this.

This was really women-led,

and I think that was important
based on what OneTaste were teaching.

Orgasmic meditation is a way to connect
to yourself, connect to your partner,

to feel more in your body.

I'm a lot more physically close to people
and less afraid of more affection,

and it's teaching me
to really ask for what I want

and say the vulnerable thing
that might be scary to say.

At the fundamental level,
we all want the same things.

We want to love, be loved, see, be seen,

know our purpose and feel connection.

Nicole is very compelling.

She's someone who put others at ease
when she was around them...

We love you all. Happy birthday!

...and whose special gift was setting
a vision that people were excited about

and were willing to do a lot of things
in order to help advance.

Go ahead and take a moment
to really feel where you are

and the people that came here tonight,

maybe noticing,
"Oh, I want to talk to that person later."

Making contact.

Maybe you're avoiding contact.

Noticing

the patterns.

Women and relationships
were always a mystery to me.

And I didn't understand
how to, like, find a girlfriend.

But I wanted to get laid,

and that was, like...

this, like, fly in the ointment, you know?

I'd heard about OneTaste,

and then finally,
a friend of mine at the time was like,

"Oh, we're gonna go
to an in-group at OneTaste."

"Do you wanna come with us?"

The building was at 1074 Folsom.

We walk in,
and it's like this big, open space.

Everybody's hanging around, talking, like,

kind of like a cocktail party, almost.

It's just, like, a warm, friendly vibe,

which, to me at the time,
is, like, odd, almost suspect.

I was used to all the cocktail parties
in the whole tech scene,

where, you know, everybody's aloof.

But this was totally different.

Warm, open, friendly,
and the person I'm sitting next to,

there's this kind of presence
that you feel,

and then I look at her and I go, "Oh."

'Cause on the website was the picture
of the woman that founded OneTaste,

Nicole Daedone,

and I'm like, "Oh, you're Nicole."

And then we just
immediately started talking

about the idea of integrating
sexuality and spirituality.

I don't think that there's anything...

of a higher order
than having my body feel so good

that I emanate a good feeling...

...and that that good feeling
can catch on to you,

and that we can begin
to pass it on to each other.

And when we feel good,
strangely enough, we act well.

So, there's this way that, it seems to me,
all there really is to do is to be happy,

so happy that it overflows
and I have enough for you,

and I want to share it
in any way I possibly can with you.

What happens in the face
of really intense sensations

is that the mind wants to go
either toward really good or really bad.

And that's what we tend to do
with sexuality.

It's either beautiful and beloved,

or it's this nasty, evil thing.

But we don't know how to move

in the dynamic reality
that occurs in between those poles.

Hi.

We are redefining what orgasm is.

Everything you see on the wall
is written by somebody who just came in

to write what orgasm is for them.

OneTaste would have
really low-key events,

and the people who were working
radiated this happiness or attractiveness.

They invite you to do yoga with them,

they invite you
to help them run another event,

and you get sort of swept up in it.

Orgasm is awesome, orgasm is amazing,
orgasm changed my life.

Not only were all these happy,
friendly people I was hanging out with

part of this organization,
they all lived together.

Whoo! OneTaste rocks!

Welcome to OneTaste San Francisco.

I'm gonna take you all on a little tour
inside the building. Come on in.

This is Alicia,
and she does orgasmic haircuts.

Hi, guys. Hi.

My, how she uses her hands.

There's some yoga going on.

Maybe we could take
a quick little peek inside.

- You can't film that.
- This is the front of our warehouse.

A little messy right now.

Who left their laundry here?

And this is our center during the day.

I started reading online.
There was, like, an online forum

where people would post
their comings and goings,

like threesomes, foursomes, n-somes.

So-and-so having a make-out
with so-and-so,

and so-and-so watching someone making out.

I was like, "What is going on?
Like, this can't be real."

"This has gotta be all made up.
I'm sure this isn't actually happening,

and if it's happening,
there's no way they're gonna let me in."

But then, sure enough,
no, it was the real deal.

One night I was
living on a boat by myself,

and the next night I was living
in a warehouse with, like, 40 people

and sharing a bed
with my "research partner."

I was, like, this nerdy
techie guy by day, you know,

fixing people's computer problems,

and then I'd go home at night

and, you know,
be in the middle of this craziness.

Welcome to OneTaste.

Tell us, how do you do it, Alicia?
How do you stay so sexy?

I use my Amorepacific
Treatment Cleansing Foam.

Is that your secret?
I thought it was orgasmic meditation.

I OM...

I OM every day and I use Amorepacific.

I OM and I don't eat any sugar.

And I always tell the truth.

What does it mean to say that
I'm a practitioner of orgasmic meditation?

For purposes of simplicity, I'm going
to describe it as a man and a woman,

just so that I can say "he" and "she,"

but it can be
all different, crazy configurations.

Nicole is certainly a genius.

Brilliant idea to name it
an OMing session.

An orgasmic meditation.

Because there's so many seekers,
so many spiritual seekers in the Bay Area

and around the world.

You've turned this sex practice
into a spiritual practice.

She will lie down.

There'll be a pillow underneath her head,

a pillow underneath each leg.

She'll butterfly open her legs.

And then he will get his finger onto her
upper left-hand quadrant of her clitoris.

The upper left-hand quadrant is a location
that they have found, scientifically,

to have a bundle of nerve endings.

Some say 8,000,
some say 800,000, I don't know.

But they cannot find any reason
for this bundle of nerve endings

other than pleasure.

The thing that will prevent you
from knowing you hit the spot

is hoping you're hitting the spot,
not sure you hit the spot.

"What's the spot? I'm never gonna
find the spot. It's impossible."

That will be the thing that will stop you

from the natural human intuition
of feeling this little, slightly electric...

You'll also know because she'll go...

...and she will not, in any way, at all,

move her hips.

She won't be doing weird moans.

She'll just be what we call "nailed."

So, then you will just stroke up, down,

up, down, up, down, up, down,
up, down, up, down.

- What am I gonna say next?
- "Up, down."

There you go. For 15 minutes.

It's so simple.

The man, if he's a good doer,
he'll start to say,

"The lips of your pussy
are starting to fill with fluid,

and the shades of pink
and coral and ruby."

"And starting to build tumescence,"
is a word that they used a lot,

which was to build the turn-on,
to build the energy.

Lighter, faster strokes
will bring somebody up,

and then slower, firmer strokes
will bring somebody down.

So, you bring them up,
and then you plateau them,

then you bring 'em up,
and then plateau 'em.

This is how you hit

the other dimension
that you sense, in your body,

is possible when you're having sex,

and maybe that you glimpse,

or that moment that you glimpse
in orgasm, where there's just nothing...

This is how you get to exist
in that place sustainably.

The stroking practice was phenomenal.

And for me as a human being, you know,

putting that much attention on just
that one tiny spot on your index finger,

touching the woman's clitoris,
just stroking...

And from that one point,
it opens up all these channels as a man

that I just never even knew
were accessible to me.

The idea that her toe would wiggle

and I could feel
a little tingle in my finger,

that was, like, connected.

And it was like, "What?
Like, how is that even possible?"

So, these are things
that unfolded in the practice.

Of course, when I started,
I had no idea what I was doing,

and I was lucky
if I could even get on the clitoris.

The guys here said,

"All I want is to have more sex."

"Please, please."

They didn't realize they're immersed
on an island of women who want sex.

And so they were having,
like, 20 OMs a day.

Their little fingers were in braces,

and they were, like,
locking themselves behind the door.

"Nicole, get me out of here.
Please, no more sex!"

I was like a lot of guys I knew
in the tech world in San Francisco,

starved for just basic physical affection.

And OneTaste opened up this world
of intimacy and connection and sex.

What she was selling was an
innovation in relating to your sexuality.

The Bay Area is a place where
people are gonna be attracted to

and open to that kind of idea,

and where they, frankly, might have
a little extra money to buy courses.

He said to me, "I'm gonna describe your
pussy now. Is that all right with you?"

I remember thinking
I've never had somebody do that before.

It felt like somebody touched

the deepest part
that existed inside of me.

I felt so exposed and so vulnerable,

and I remember thinking, "Oh my God,

I don't think I've ever been that intimate

with another human being before
in my life."

I've talked to many people who said
orgasmic meditation changed their life,

that it helped them
experience sexual pleasure

that they thought
was unreachable for them.

And especially women who said,
"I've never had an orgasm before,

and this helped me redefine
what sexual pleasure could mean for me."

"You know, I had felt like
there was something wrong with me,

and now there was this alternative
that was presented to me

that allowed me to embrace my body
rather than feel ashamed."

My first introduction
to orgasmic meditation

was when I saw a demo of OM.

And I remember that night, it was like...

It was like...

Like, the finger found the spot.

And I was just like, "Oh, I feel like
my whole body, just, like, opened up."

That's beautiful.

- Thank you.
- Yeah.

Describe your sex to me.

Timid and shy,

which is frustrating at times,
but I feel like I'm in the right place.

Over the course of my four years
living and working at OneTaste,

I became more relaxed and social in a way,
and I think people could see it.

I became okay
with men giving me attention at work,

I became friendlier towards them,
and my career took off.

I guess I owe that to learning a lot
about men at OneTaste, you know.

They were really, like,
encouraging us to see

the soft, sensitive,
emotional sides of men.

So this is the building that was
what we called the center, 1074.

That's where we would hang out
most of the time during the day,

and then upstairs was the yoga studio,
but also the main classroom space

where we would hold practice
every morning.

And then this is 1060.

This was the warehouse.

I always loved that there was
that behind-the-red-door quality.

Yeah, so now it's a BDSM dungeon
and a play space.

I remember the first bed I had
was on this side, in the corner there,

and then later on I had one here.

I was sleeping
in one right here at one point.

I was up in the loft.

Ten, 12, 13, 15...

I mean, at least 15 beds.

And I remember the first night I moved in,

and it was nuts.

Like, there was so much energy in my body.

All the... Yeah, that buzzy,
lively energy of... Of people...

...you know, exploring sex.

You know, my mom died
when I was 13 years old,

and there's nothing that a 13-year-old kid
can possibly be prepared for in any way

to have that experience
or lose someone that close to them.

So, I think on some level,
I was learning how to connect with women

so that I could be able
to let people come and go in my life

and not feel the grippy attachment.

I was
a software engineer in Silicon Valley.

I was pretty successful,
except in my personal life.

I was just kind of a walking encyclopedia

of all the ways
you can be bad with the opposite sex.

I had a few different nicknames
at OneTaste.

One of them was Yoda, and I think
it's partly because of my stature.

I'm 5'0".

I'm five feet tall.

And so, in a way that was good because

I was a counterexample to all of the men
who thought they had to be a certain thing

in order to actually have
good relationships with women.

We're in this place now
where women are actually self-sufficient.

They don't need men
to protect them anymore,

or to care for them anymore,
or to, like, provide for them anymore.

So, what can men do, right?

What women want is someone who's actually
there meeting them as an equal

and ready to play.

I think OneTaste was a place where

really what we were doing was
increasing human connection,

and researching human connection.

Like, what happens
when you are vulnerable with someone?

What happens when you are more truthful
than you've ever been with someone?

And what happens when
you expose your clitoris to someone?

All of this stuff that people avoid
because it's so scary

is precisely where people need to go

in order to have true,
nourishing human connection.

The best thing you have to lose
is that sense of hopelessness

that you will ever...
be reached deep inside.

I probably re-watched
that TED Talk, like, 20 or 30 times.

I really felt like something
she was saying in that talk touched me.

Like, something about
it was more than sexuality,

it's about real connection and realness.

You get to have
this most profound and deep experience

with another human being.

There's a certain magic that comes
from putting attention on other people,

instead of always focusing on your needs
and your wants and your goals, which...

In OneTaste, through OMing,

we learned how to really put our attention
on other people's feelings,

which is basically what empathy is.

But not just, like,
"I can feel when you're happy or sad."

But like, I can feel the moment
that you think I'm lying,

or I can feel the moment
that, like, you pull back.

Precision with empathy.

It felt so good to feel like
you're helping them help people.

Whoo!

It's like our lives
are such a good TV show.

Just to watch it, like,
in real, like, real time.

Hmm.

And I'm so grateful that,
like, life is just so interesting.

Mm-hm.

In high school, my anxiety was,
like, almost debilitating.

In my early twenties,
I learned how to put a mask over it.

I still had anxiety

and I still felt terrible
most of the time.

So, to be, you know, in a space
where I could really be real,

it was like incredible medicine for me.

We're gonna do this exercise three times.

My first class, the first half
of the day was Nicole speaking to people,

giving impromptu coaching.
Giving them "strokes" was the term.

That was life-changing,

because she could cold-read people
with such accuracy

that, if you're open to it,

it could maybe change your life,
give you a new perspective.

She'd say, like, "What are you here for?"

For some people she'd just say
"Thank you'" and move on.

And when it got to me, I was starting
to say something mundane like,

"Oh, sex is interesting,
so I signed up for this class,"

and I could see she was
already turning away from me,

like that wasn't a good answer.
So she was gonna shift,

and then I just blurted out,
"I want to connect with people for real."

And she turns back to me,
and it felt, you know...

It felt really good to get her attention.

Ultimately, what we're aiming for
is to create a permanent meeting space.

So, no matter how whackadoodle she gets
when she's stuck up here in her ego,

she knows that I can get in there.

And she read me and she said, "I know
why you don't connect with people."

"It's like you're trying to stay
in this tonal range."

"It's a nice range, but you're denying
people the whole spectrum."

"You trying to act
like a super cute frat boy,

who says everything's cool all the time,

when really you're a dark, dangerous man."

And no one had ever
spoken to me like that before.

I don't know if she was
reading something in me for real

or reading something
that I wanted to be true,

but it felt like the most resonant thing
anyone had said to me.

I did feel like
I put up a facade with people to be liked,

but inside I was angry, I was frustrated,
you know, I felt dark inside.

It was life-changing,
just that beginning before I ever OMed.

I got over a fear of being seen,

a fear of vulnerability
that I had my entire life.

Hey, would you like to have an OM?

Sure.

Okay. I've only done it
once or twice though.

That's okay.

- When's a good time?
- Uh, now if you're not busy.

All right, let's go.

OneTaste, the idea was to get
this thing out into the world, right?

Well, it became evident
pretty quickly that I could, like,

shoot video and tell a little story,

and, like, boom,
we've got, you know, some media.

So this is what you need to know to truly
learn how to handle a woman's pussy.

That's right. We just said,
"Learn to handle a woman's pussy."

Nicole, she wanted to
leverage that, you know, right away.

And so that sort of became
my raison d'être...

and eventually became
my real raison d'etre.

Like, I quit my job so that
I could be the video guy for OneTaste.

"Your sex is not a problem."

"We've been living
in a paradigm of wrong for too long."

And what if you could learn
how to become a master of the vagina?

Today, we're going to discuss
why everyone is going to be happier

when you learn how to give a woman
a 15-minute orgasm.

If you all don't know,
Nicole's first book was released

on May 25th, Slow Sex: The Art and Craft of the Female Orgasm.

And it's come out to some
really great reviews and publicity.

Just this weekend, Nicole was at TEDxSF
giving a lecture to 750 people...

This was a practice that intrigued
reporters whenever they heard about it.

It was like,
"Orgasmic meditation? Like, what is that?"

Fifteen minutes?

Fifteen minutes.

That's a lot of orgasm.

That's a lot of orgasm. Yeah.

The OneTaste Urban Retreat,
not your average yoga studio.

The pants come off the women, and soon,
the studio erupts in female ecstasy.

Nicole knew
that it couldn't be so kooky,

you know, and it had to become
more about wellness,

more about women feeling empowered.

A visual testimony

on how orgasmic meditation is practiced.

They started having offices
in Los Angeles, New York, London.

They started expanding internationally...

The statistics are terrible.

Thirty percent of women self-report that
they don't reach orgasm when they want to.

In 2013 and 2014,
they held these conferences,

weekend-long conferences
with thousands of attendees.

Thank you for coming to OMX!

They just started collecting
more and more money from sales of courses.

At one point, OneTaste started selling
a thing called membership

that was, like, $50,000-plus,

which allowed whoever the customer was
to take any class for the whole year.

By the time 2017 came around,

the company had about
$12 million in revenue.

That was the year that they were on a list
of fast-growing startups by Inc. magazine.

And it was a reflection of Nicole's desire
to make OneTaste mainstream.

I'm Gwyneth Paltrow,

and you're listening to the Goop Podcast.

Today's guest is the very magnetic
Nicole Daedone. She's a...

OneTaste caught the eye
of really influential people,

in particular, Gwyneth Paltrow,

who was not only someone
who's very influential in Hollywood,

but also someone
who's this, like, wellness god.

Nicole is also
the author of Slow Sex,

which is a book I often recommend to women

who are looking for more desire
in their relationships.

I really wonder if she was
trying to do an L. Ron Hubbard.

"Let's get some famous people in."

That was one of the many brilliant things
the founder of Scientology came up with,

was the power of celebrity.

"If we can get movie stars, music stars,

and people like that
in our ranks as our public face,

boy, that makes us really attractive
to your average Joe or Jill out there."

And he was absolutely right.

And so, I could see her
kind of following that lead as well.

In late 2017,

I was contacted by a woman
who works in communications,

and she said,
"Hey, can we talk on the phone?"

"I have a story I think
might be interesting to you."

"It's about a fast-growing company
run by women in the wellness space,

and it's called OneTaste."

And this was in 2017, and the #MeToo
movement was just getting going.

And I remember the way she pitched it was,

"You know, this is a company
that's gonna help people

connect with each other in a way
that is gonna help mitigate

some pain we've seen
come up with the #MeToo movement,

because it helps people be
more sensitive to each other's needs."

And I mentioned to a friend of mine that
I was considering writing about OneTaste.

And my friend told me,
"I know somebody you should talk to."

"They used to be
a customer of this company

and they had a pretty bad experience."

So, I ended up having a long conversation
with this person for several hours,

hearing their story.

And at the end of that,
I thought to myself,

"Wow, this is really different

from any of the reporting that's out there
about OneTaste currently,

and this might be a big story."

When you are looking at Nicole,

you're looking at Nicole
and she's looking back,

and she locks into your eyes,

it is like you are being completely seen,
like, down to your soul,

including everything,
yuck and all, especially yuck.

And while you're being,
like, embraced in this gaze,

also being, you know, picked apart
like you're under a microscope.

And so she starts playing this game
with me, which is pulling desires.

And so she says, "What do you want?"

So, you know, she's fish...
She's pulling them out, so I say,

"I want to have more sex,
I to have want more orgasm."

"I want to have more fun,
I want more community."

So, she's going, "Come on, what else?"
This is how this goes.

And so, finally, I get down in my belly,
in my womb, to like,

"Wow." And I had never
spoken it out loud, and I said,

"I want to have a baby."

And I was like...

And she's like, "Not so fast. What else?"

I was like, "That's it."

"What else?"

And so finally I say,
"Okay, I wanna have a demo."

A demo is a demonstration
of a woman in orgasm for an hour.

And Nicole goes... And she looks around.

"Did you hear that? We hit bottom."

"That was it. That's the bottom desire."

And so, here I have said,
in front of all these people,

that I wanna have a demo,

knowing full well that
that was not at the bottom.

That was Nicole's desire.

So, I was just
fully giving over to Nicole.

The type of personal reflection
that they encouraged us to do

was all about finding your deeper desire.

Yet, they would do
this complicated psychological thing

of inserting their desire into you
and telling you that it's yours.

What's
your real big desire?

What's your real big, deep desire?
What turns on your pussy?

- I want to coach and teach for OneTaste.
- Fuck, that's awesome.

"This is how
Nicole manipulated people."

"She agreed that something was true
if it matched what she wanted to hear."

"If you said something she didn't like,
she called it a lie,

or, 'That's not the end of your desire.'"

"If you had any doubt,
she knew how to increase that doubt

until what she told you was true
became what you believed."

So, Bill and I pay Nicole $15,000,

which, according to Nicole,
at the time was a very good deal,

and my course begins.

A lot of people described to me
going to some event

where they were first exposed to OneTaste,

and maybe there was an explicit pitch
for the company or taking a class.

I'm gonna have one of our sales associates
Lindsay come up and talk to you

about a special offer
for all of you for attending tonight,

and also for being on the web.

And then the pitch
just gets bigger and bigger.

"Why don't you take
this week-long, intensive class?"

"Come and learn from Nicole,
or come help us teach a class."

"Why don't you come help us with sales?"

We need an initiation ceremony
or something edgier.

We need something that they are locked in,

they are in for the full weekend,
for the full ride.

Rachel would be pitching
the $15,000 coaching program.

And at the time, I was just barely
making ends meet as a freelance writer,

but somehow, it felt so good
to meet with her for a sales call anyway.

I told her in the beginning, "I don't
have money, I can't buy anything,"

and she just made it feel good to come
hang out with her and talk about my life.

And similar to my experience with Nicole,

I felt so good and so seen afterwards.

So when she asked, "Do you want
to take the coaching program?"

"We can put you on our payment plan,"

I found myself giving her my credit card
before I even realized.

So I gave her, you know, this card.

It was $1,000 a month,
which put me into debt immediately.

But then afterwards, I had to justify
my purchase, and that put me in deeper.

I've had people describe to me
this sales tactic of,

we play some sort of communication game
like hot seat.

Someone's sitting in the middle,
being asked a bunch of questions.

And in the back,
OneTaste staff are taking notes.

They're writing down, you know,
"This person's recently divorced."

"This man feels unsure
how to approach women."

And then they strategize
about who's the best OneTaste staffer

to be sent over to that customer
to try to win them over.

Imagine you come to me and you say, like,
"Well, yeah, I'm interested in OneTaste

because, you know, I've had trouble
keeping a long-term relationship,"

and I'd ask you something like,

"Can you imagine if that were true
for the rest of your life?"

You make the pain bigger,

so that what you offer as a solution
sounds more appealing.

Nicole's very brilliant
at seeing wounding.

And so that's what she hooks into,

and then becomes
the salve of that wounding.

So then, you're not feeling the wound
when you're in her presence,

but you're reliant upon her to guide you.

And then, on top of that, there was
this very strong connection between

how well you were doing spiritually
in the OneTaste teachings

and your ability to sell courses.

They really saw that as connected,
they thought that

a more turned-on woman
would sell courses better

because they would be projecting
their turn-on to the customers,

where it was almost like
channeling this divine force

that would help you in
such an earthly pursuit as closing a sale.

"I'm a turned-on pussy,

feeling and savoring
every stroke going through me,

sent back out
with power and love to shine."

Yeah!

We were supposed to talk about cock,

like, talk about, like, crass,
nitty-gritty sexual stuff,

'cause that's hot, that's what
we're trying to do at OneTaste.

You know, it turns people on

when they get
that flutter in their stomach

when you just said,
like, "cock" or "pussy,"

which actually probably,
like, embarrasses people.

I don't know if that's turn-on
or discomfort.

At one point Nicole is, like,

"We're gonna teach this thing
called 'orgasmic rebalancing.'"

And she did a demo
of what orgasmic rebalancing was.

You know,
you can kind of see from the footage,

the closest thing would be like reiki,
where you're moving energy in the body.

I'm sure the footage...
I haven't looked at it in a while,

but I'm sure it looks crazy.

I was
immediately taken by Nicole.

I thought she was just very charismatic,

but at the same time,
I could see that she was a hustler.

Tell me a bit about that.
Is Nicole Daedone a con artist?

Yeah.

You got to dissect that word though.

It means "confidence."

It's like, yeah, she can say things
in such an enthusiastic way

and have so much knowledge around it
that she is a fantastic salesman.

I am interested
in letting my body be used

in the transmission of the experiences
that have been given to me.

There is an experience of beauty

that one feels
when something is in harmony.

This was that kind of beauty.

Today, I am immersed in it.

I feel here that there is something
inside of me connected to everything.

There's an intimacy that I feel
with my partner, the bed, the plants.

The world becomes
one giant network of neurons,

and this entity that I call Nicole
is part of this.

If you're looking at
that footage from the Stinson demo,

what you're seeing is...

batshit nuts. Come on.

Someone's up there, completely naked,
getting her pussy stroked,

there's someone with snakes there and...

Right? Like, all this stuff...
Like, what is going on?

And to me...

...all that stuff was just there
to create a certain kind of aura

for the people in the room,
like investors.

I wonder if the New York Times
reporter was there.

The Stinson Beach demo,

it's very intense. It seems like...

Sometimes she's laughing,
sometimes she's crying.

There's a lot of moaning.

You hear people in the audience
expressing their sensations.

You know, "It's like a warmth in my belly,
or like a tingling in my face."

Rachel Cherwitz shepherds
some of the audience members up

to, like, touch Nicole's thigh
while the demo is going on.

They describe it like
it's meant to be like

you can feel the energy
of this experience.

You realize, "Holy shit,
I'm actually experiencing things

in tandem with this woman
who's getting stroked in front of me."

"Like, I'm actually
feeling stuff in my body too."

And even though I think most people
would watch that and think, like, this is

bananas... Um...

it looks like the people in the room
feel like something really is happening.

I hope you really got a sense tonight

of what it's like to have a woman,
a fully-trained woman, get off.

And see the places that she can go.

It's just unmatched.

I mean, there's nobody else that...
who I stroke,

that can do what she does,

and I want all of you
to be able to do what she does.

I'm in agreement.

- Please.
- Me too.

When I took the course,

by that point,
we had both female and male OMing,

and my partner was very skittish
about doing a male.

So, Nicole stepped in personally,

and I had a meltdown.

I started shivering, crying.

Tears were rolling down my cheeks.

Then she sort of moved me to her breasts
and started stroking my head.

And the part of me
that wasn't having a meltdown,

the rational little control center there,

was thinking, "Oh yes, Nicole,
I know what you're up to."

"You're making yourself my mommy."

"You're holding me
gently, tenderly in your lap

next to your breasts, and stroking my head
and looking lovingly at me."

"You're trying to imprint me as mom."

It didn't work.

I guess if I didn't have that
little skeptical bit in my consciousness,

maybe I would've really bonded with her.
Maybe I would've gone all in for OneTaste

and been one of her really fervent
members and defenders.

But I didn't.

You're all welcome to come get stroked,

and we have darshan from 11:00 to 1:00,
Monday through Friday.

and it would be my honor
to stroke anybody in this room

and have you have...

If you look at Zen Buddhism
or any of these things,

there's levels of being ready
for the next piece of truth.

Whenever it became public that
there was also a male stroking practice,

all the men were like,
"I want that, I need that."

Like, "I empathize with what these women
experience about starving."

"I'm starving too,
I wanna get stroked as well."

And it would become a quagmire.

So, we kept it private.

As soon as that was on the table,
it changed everything.

So we just had it not be,
"It is not on the table."

"It is not on the table
that there is a male stroking practice."

Someone joked around,
"Oh, it's like a spiritual hand job."

And right, so that's the problem, is,

it can devolve into a hand job,

and we wanted it to be
something very different than that.

Like, a woman stroking a man's penis
brings up a whole bunch of cultural things

that the reverse simply does not.

What it means for a woman
to be a sexual service provider

and for a man to be
in the position of being

on the receiving end
of sexual service providing.

So, like, you couldn't just have them
reverse and say, "Now this is OM."

It ends up not being an OM.

We have a female identity
in our culture, right?

The female is the victim.

And if I, in any way, don't buy into that,

then there's only two options with victim.

There's villain.

Your practice session
where women are being OMed,

orgasmic meditation,
by men who are not present,

don't know who they are,
aren't clear in their sense of purpose.

A woman cannot
open her legs to a man at that level,

and I think it's really important for you
or someone who's highly trained

to be here in these practice sessions.

When the man impresses his shape
into her, her whole body feels that,

her whole consciousness is ignited,

but I think that you need to
tighten up the practice sessions.

What you say, for me,

feels like, uh, protection of women

in such a way that it continues
an idea that we need to be protected.

And that idea keeps me
not taking responsibility for my sex.

So, I have a story, and I am no victim.

The problem with the victim story,

it takes away your power.

If you wanna know
the real way to deflect rape,

it's to turn on 100%.

Because then there's nothing to rape.

Nicole had some very barbaric messages

when she talks about
the darkness that she has

or the darkness that she came from.

Trauma is just stuff that's
stuck in the body that needs discharge.

I think what you do...

I mean, this is gonna be my suggestion
every time, is you OM a lot.

As you OM,
whatever is in there begins to come out.

It just progressively
and gently opens you and releases,

and then you can just
face and be rid of, face and be rid of.

And then pretty soon what you just notice
is your capacity to sit in pain decreases,

and you just gotta get that shit out fast,
and then you're clear again.

You know, my dad was a child molester,

and he had experiences with young girls
and used me as bait.

And so that exact behavior...

Whoa, of me colluding
with somebody who would cause harm.

And I got that seed out.

I got free.

I could forgive everybody
in the whole experience

'cause I got free of that.

I think I told the story in here
when I was a stripper

and they put a knife up to my throat.

Nicole's biography is
kind of a matter of mystery.

You're never really sure
what's actually true.

I think her biography
went through a lot of revisions

as the company became
more and more prominent.

But she did talk about
having worked as a stripper.

Well, I have great cred.
I come from darkness.

She was a very highly paid call girl.

She would tell stories about, you know,

getting $700 for a trick,
I think is the term.

Then she had a thing where she would
play around socially with people,

like, mess with their heads.

Guys, especially.

Friend of mine was like,
"Oh, she's a monster."

"She's a monster."
Like, "Stay away from her," and stuff.

And that was very intriguing.

We had done some LSD earlier one day,
and she proposed to me.

Having your wife be
a sex cult leader was like...

It was pretty interesting for me.

It's like, I was totally ready
to go buy a Harley and ride up the coast

and be in a sex cult, are you kidding?

And take LSD.
I totally wanted to do all that stuff.

Our mission plan,
our business plan was this:

800,000 people trying to practice
orgasmic meditation,

10,000 people at the level of mastery,
or teachers,

and a center in the major cities,
all the major cities of the world.

Rob Kandell was
Nicole's first business partner.

He was a guy who used to work
kind of in a tech-finance job,

and met Nicole, and they decided
to start OneTaste together.

When I first met Rob,
he was married to Carol.

They were part of Nicole's
little cadre of followers.

Nicole wanted Rob
for his unending devotion,

and also his bank account.

You know, he was kind of like
a nebbish-y guy, looking for approval,

and Nicole had
a really good sense of style,

and so she would groom him,
so he became hot.

I was stroking a hot young thing
on a warm Tuesday morning.

She would
borrow things from Scientology

or, like, these different cults,

even going back
to stuff like Lifespring and est.

The shamans say that a medicine man begins
by falling into the power of demons.

Now, in Kabbalah,
it's called chesed and gevurah.

In the darshan...

There's a thing called Satguru...

The desire sutras...

It's sacred...

In the more esoteric practices.

I want to go see Amma.

Zalman Schachter-Shalomi.

Kalimah said... Wilke said...

Think about the Buddha.

Malcolm Gladwell.

Rumi. BKS Iyengar. Krishnamurthy.

The Tibetan Buddhist...

Sort of like Mother Teresa.

A universal sanctuary light-bearer.

Shabbat. The love of Jesus.

That is religion, and the dukh has it.

All of this fucking crazy shit
about sacred and spiritual and woman.

Usually, if you touch the absolute,
you have this realization.

The realization is, "I am God."

One taste, which is a Buddhist concept.

The Buddha said, "Just as the ocean
has one taste, the taste of salt,

so also this teaching and discipline
has one taste, the taste of liberation."

My religion really is orgasm.

By "orgasm," what I mean is, like,

this underlying something
that seems to move through the world.

When you walked into OneTaste,

most people have one definition of orgasm,
the common definition,

a sexual climactic experience, right?
That's orgasm.

And then you go into an OM class,
and orgasm kind of changes a little bit.

Like, it's not just the event of climax.

It's like climax is
one of the eight stages of orgasm.

And then orgasm starts to mean
something more like qi,

energy that flows through the universe
and flows through you.

If you follow it, you'll be more in tune
with nature, and that was also orgasm.

Most people don't realize
their definition of orgasm

is changing week to week
or month to month.

And at a certain point,
by the time I was leaving,

God became synonymous with orgasm,

and orgasm was Nicole.

I looked at her and I said,
"You're starting a religion, aren't you?"

And she goes, "Yeah, I want
to start a religion, but the thing is,

you can't sell God
because you can get God on Amazon."

"What I'm selling is sex,
because you still can't get that."

So, it wasn't a long leap from there
that the priest ceremonies began.

I get a call
from Nicole saying,

"Mike, OneTaste is
going to be doing something

we call the Magic School,
and I would like your help with it."

"We'd like you to help out
with some rituals we wanna do."

"Help design them, help stage them,

and we want to initiate

some Priests of OM."

The cynical part of me says,

"Okay, well, if she got it successfully
incorporated as a religious body,

well, you know, no taxes."

She said, "We want to have myself

and the other main women
who were involved with this

sort of being the initiators,
being the Goddess figures,

taking the men into the whole thing
and saying, 'You are now a priest.'"

When someone becomes a priest,

they're agreeing they're stepping into
kind of a different level of life,

and really it was a way for us
to just feel super bonded and connected

and, like, part of something
that we were super committed to.

I volunteered so I could get
into the room and see what it was like.

Otherwise, it would have cost,
I think, at least 15 grand,

maybe 30 grand.

I said, "What you guys
should be wearing is

black face coverings, wraparound."

"But below that, nothing."

What this is communicating is
you are the Goddess, this female force

that's faceless, that's egoless,
that's now saying to these guys,

"I welcome you to be my servants."

And I remember watching
and just feeling this power.

I said, "I hope this is working on other
people, 'cause it's working on me."

"I'm feeling this Goddess energy,
I'm feeling this, you know,

that sacred female sexuality."

These Priests of Orgasm

would do the OM practice
in this ritualistic fashion,

where they kept,
like, moving from woman to woman.

Nicole was a showman, you know?

She's got a little bit
of P.T. Barnum in her.

I sort of joked
to myself and I said,

"Well, she's trying to put together
the sexy Illuminati here."

And it was interesting being around
200 young, beautiful, very turned-on folks

that were attending it.

They were paying a pretty penny for it.

I could easily imagine
the gross take for the five days

being about a million dollars.

But they were getting
their money's worth, I think.

"God, in His wisdom,
selected this group of men and women

to be purveyors of His goodness."

"He went not to the proud,
the mighty, the famous, or the brilliant."

"He went instead to the humble,
to the sick, to the unfortunate..."

Rachel was head of sales

and she was this powerful figure
within the company.

I'm Rachel and I teach Dark Arts.

Yeah!

I would say... I would say that is
the fourth-dimensional class that I teach.

The third-dimensional class
that I teach is sales.

Very close to Nicole.
She was like Nicole's right-hand woman.

Watch this. Come on.

See, you do that and she comes closer.

And she inspired
a lot of admiration because

she really projected this sense
of being a woman who was really,

like, in charge of her sexuality.

- All right, so, Rachele...
- Your time has come, my dear.

I didn't write anything.

Oh, see what I mean?

She didn't write anything either.
We have another pussy channeler.

Yeah!

Oh, pussy.

Pussy!

She's so...

I can touch her, right?

You guys really are my family.

And I've been thinking
all week how to say it,

like, how to just say
how good it feels to be here.

And to be ignited...

...and turned on, and have that
be from a very authentic place.

So, I think that's just what I wanted
to say.

Rachel was willing to do anything
Nicole wanted her to do in terms of, um,

advancing OneTaste
and protecting OneTaste.

When I was 25, I was told
by a therapist that I was anorgasmic,

meaning, like, I couldn't climax.

As a woman, if I have to go through life
not enjoying sex, what's the point?

So, in my first OM,
I felt this one moment of electricity,

and I thought,
"Oh, that's what it means to be a woman."

She was also
kind of Nicole's enforcer.

That was important because
as Nicole rose and rose in stature,

a guru has to kind of stay above the fray.

You're gonna do it quick, like...
Where's Raphael?

- Quick like a bunny.
- Quick like a bunny.

Good?

Good!

We're excited?

Yeah!

We're gonna stay...

Sane!

OneTaste employed
a lot of people who

hadn't really gone into their careers yet.

People were jumping at the chance
to be working at a startup about sex.

People were waking up at 7:30,
going to OMs,

going to a staff meeting right after that.

There was no boundary
between work and the other things we did.

When I was hired, I was told I would get

20% of the revenue
that the New York branch made,

which was a lot of money at the time.

It seemed like
an obscene amount to be getting paid.

OneTaste New York was bringing in
ten to $20,000 a day sometimes.

So yeah, that was a huge amount of money.

Later I found out, "No, it's actually
20% split up amongst five people."

Later it was, "Oh, 20%,
but only if you help with a certain sale."

Like, it kept changing, and every time
I asked what our compensation was,

I got a different answer,
and sometimes it'd flip back on me,

like I was being a jerk for asking
about money or being money-focused.

I was told to OM with people
when we would have arguments.

It was this very, like,
deep part of the philosophy that

if you're not getting along with someone

or if someone constantly
rubs you the wrong way,

then you're supposed to fuck them.

Did you have to do that?

I felt like if I didn't,

I wouldn't be important,
and I wouldn't get attention.

And I was very much wanting to be

higher, like,
management level at OneTaste.

So, there was that period of time
where I did things that were suggested.

It was operating
in a sphere of such unusual

interpersonal dynamics, right?

So, usually the relationship
between you and your manager

is not one where your manager
is going to tell you who to have sex with.

Yeah, there's an adage at OneTaste.

"When the sensation is high,
you can either fuck or fight."

And one time I had this tension
with one of my co-workers,

and Rachel said something like,
"Right, this, no, we're not doing this."

"You guys go have sex, don't come back
to work till you've done it."

She and I, like, walked out.

We were both looking at each other like,
"Is this... Like, this is really strange."

"Is this okay?"

"Like, our employer
who is telling us to have sex."

It was also part of OneTaste culture
that you were encouraged to do

emotionally challenging things
or uncomfortable things for your growth.

So, this was like...

Yeah, we had
this very awkward sexual experience

and then went back to work,
and that was that.

Whenever there was a course,
there were always women from OneTaste,

because the courses
were always male-heavy.

So, you had to get the women,
you know, to partner with the men

and have their pussy stroked
so that all the men could have partners.

There were, you know, ten men
and two other women who had signed up.

By the way,
often the women didn't have to pay,

or had to pay very little
to be in courses,

but we had the guys pay full amount.

They were paying for it,
so if there's only two women,

we need eight more women
to pair up with these other guys.

Where are they gonna come from?

So, that'd be us.

For the women in the community,

they were willing, and yet,

it's not like we had a choice.

When I talked to many ex-members,

they would describe something that
an outsider might look at and think,

"Oh, you were being told
to have sex with a customer

in the hopes that that customer
would pay money to the company."

And I get the impression
that within OneTaste,

it didn't seem so obviously bad.

There were other explanations.
It was like,

"You should have sex
with this person because

your orgasm is kind of
blocked up these days

and you need to blow your lines clean
by having sex with a lot of people."

And this is advice coming
from someone above you in the group

who seems like they really have
their sexuality figured out.

So, maybe you wanna take this advice,
maybe you want to do it

because you're like,
"Well, maybe it'll help."

We would get shamed
for being a victim.

She used this semantic trick of reframing

to make really scary reframes.

For instance, no value judgment to rape,

no value judgment towards predatorial men.

So, you know how we have
the t-shirts, like, "Powered by Orgasm"?

This could be our new shirt:

"I got raped
and all I got was a victim story."

Or it could be like, "I raped someone
and all I got was a perpetrator story."

When people later try to make sense
of what happened to them in this group,

they think, "Well, it was all my fault,
because I could never be a victim."

I question my experience
there all the time,

trying to figure out
what actually happened.

Describe your sex.

Sort of craving more
and, um, reluctantly coming out.

So, it felt like,
for me as a queer woman,

that there was all of this pressure
to be either feminine or masculine.

So a lot of the things that I thought
were wrong with me and I needed to fix

had to do with
not being feminine enough for OneTaste,

not behaving like the other women.

You know, I'm a woman who works backstage.
Like, I wear a tool belt.

I do things
that are considered pretty masculine.

So, I was sort of teased a lot.

Preference is an unconscious,
habituated response.

So the only thing that you're ever held
bondage by is your own set of beliefs.

On the other side
of every single one is freedom.

That's what we're looking for.

And we're not looking for it
by only going to places we like.

The places you hate are your practice.

They're the places where you...
They're actually your biggest gift.

They're the places you get free.

This was me
teaching a class of BDSM.

I loved teaching it. It was really fun.

So these are kind of two of my passions,

Disneyland and BDSM.

You look at these things and you think,

"How could anybody possibly enjoy
being beaten with a flogger?"

But if you can separate from
the judgment of good, bad, right, wrong,

and just feel the sensation of it,

then you can actually just enjoy it.

Like, we all have primal urges, you know?

We all have the desire
to just ravage someone

or to be ravaged by someone.

I felt that pull, I felt that desire.

I had a lot of conditioning and coding
telling me that that desire was wrong,

and OneTaste allowed me
to overcome that, in a way.

Uh, that's after a scene
with Nicole, I think.

And that's where the initials came from.

These two floggers
and the single-tail were Nicole's.

You are always going to be
a desperate slave to women.

Thank you.

You blink your eyes a lot because

you're unwilling to put your attention
on anybody but yourself.

Thank you.

You're inept in the cafe.

Thank you.

You'll never make it out of the bounds
of your tight personality.

- Thank you.
- You're fat.

Thank you.

They did a thing called "killing,"

getting under people's skin

and saying the things that are gonna
dismantle them emotionally.

And I remember we had a team meeting where

this particular woman was being groomed
to be, like, the next Rachel.

Like, she was very articulate,
very attractive.

And because she was struggling
with really surrendering to OneTaste,

she was getting hammered by Rachel
and the other staff members.

'Cause we knew each other's secrets, like,

we knew our vulnerable parts,
we knew where people were insecure.

They were just saying all these things
to her that were so biting

that it was
beyond the point of tears for her.

When she finally looked up from crying,
she was, like, dead.

That's why it was called killing.
She was blank.

Like, 'cause her ego was gone.
And that was abusive.

And one of the things I really regret was
not backing her up in that moment,

because I actually felt
shitty in that moment.

It wasn't like
I look back on it and felt bad.

Like, I felt bad in that moment,

but I convinced myself
it was for her own good,

so I didn't say anything.

Somebody was saying to me

that the people here don't have
very skillful scalpels, you know?

And we don't,
but we all agree to slash each other...

...for a higher purpose.

There was a woman
who was wanting to leave.

So Nicole sent Bill and I down
to go and kind of work her over

and get her to stay.

And she was really upset,

and she was just telling us
that she didn't trust Nicole,

and that she felt like
this was not the right place for her.

Bill told her that he thought...

"You know, Nicole's all about honesty,

and so you should go
and tell Nicole that you don't trust her."

She starts telling Nicole
she doesn't trust her.

Nicole starts breaking down crying.

"I can't believe you're gonna leave me."

"I can't believe you're just gonna abandon
me like that. I can't believe it."

Nicole's, like, sobbing.

This woman's like, "No, no, no. No.
Nicole, I would never leave you."

"Okay, I'm gonna stay."

She leaves the room.

Instantaneously, the tears dry.

Nicole looks at us and goes,

"That didn't go the way
you thought it was gonna go, did it?"

Love and affection and energy
are given and withdrawn strategically

in order to create dependence.

And, you know, it's like if you leave,

you'll never have access
to those things again.

I do know with one individual,
basically, while he was tripping,

they had him have a personal experience

and then tried
to get more money out of him,

convincing him to give them
another quarter million or something.

People were getting hurt.

People were getting hurt badly.

I saw her starting to take
more and more license.

And what it is
is that she would just become fascinated

with what she could get people to do.

You know, that was her entertainment.

That was kind of, like, her secret thrill,
is, like, having control over people.

She did some things
with some of her staff people.

She would make them watch lions, like,
hunting in a pride, ripping things apart,

and she'd go like, "We're like that."

"We're the lions,
we aren't doing anything wrong."

"That's how we eat."

The "beast," this violence,
this rage that gets normalized.

People were encouraged to be
psychologically brutal with each other.

The first time that they do
something vicious towards someone else,

people get encouraged.

"Yeah, you really showed your beast."

There's the knowledge
that you've done something awful,

but now you've completely rewired
what good means and what evil means.

I had a regular, and he had this thing
where he wanted to strangle me.

His beast was locked in there
and it hadn't had a place for expression,

and I just happen to love beasts.

I had to surrender so deep
that I could absorb him all the way in.

And invariably, all of a sudden, it'd hit
this point, and he'd just start bawling,

and that was all...

And he paid me a lot of money to just
come strangle me and cry. That was it.

We think they're so tough,
they're just little love bugs crying.

They're just our little companions
that wanna love us.

They're just tough
because they're met with fear.

You know, my dad died in prison
for 52 counts of child molestation,

and I never took on the idea
that he was a bad person.

I took on the idea that he was just
so expansive and fourth-dimensional

that he couldn't confine himself into
the arbitrary laws of the third dimension.

That was his only crime in my mind.

Now, other people
may have different ideas. Uhhh...

Describe your sex.

There's a lot
of anger in my sex.

Um... And there's also a lot of sweetness.

And I'm hoping to bring
even more anger in.

OneTaste was encouraging women

to appreciate the predatorial nature
of male sexuality.

And that's supposed to be
some very evolved practice.

Help!

There was a term often used
called "skillful violation."

You're not really violating
what she wants,

you're violating what she says she wants.

Stop!

The idea of letting out your beast
was basically

the equivalent of, like, being a savage
or just, like, being totally expressed,

which is a pretty common idea
in personal development.

I think it was healing for guys

who maybe, like,
had so-called Nice Guy Syndrome.

In many ways it was healing.

Obviously, everything in OneTaste
was taken a little too far at times.

My name is Autymn Blanck,

and I am here
to tell the story of my sister,

that she was in a cult,

and her experience of going through that.

So, my sister and myself,

we were both raised
in a very traumatic childhood.

Some things happened to us, sexually,

and I know my sister struggled
with having sex, having connection,

and having just that community and love,

because we didn't
really have that as children.

And so, when she talked to Rachel,
someone older than her

who went through
the same exact experience,

and she said, "OM has cured it all,"

of course, that's the path
that my sister went down.

"Why not try it?" I suppose.

This is my sister
before all of it happened.

You can tell that she's very happy

and there's a lot of light
in her eyes, still.

When I had gone to visit her,

like, the light had disappeared
from her eyes.

And that's when I really knew
something was wrong.

These people would tell her that
she needed to go sleep with all these men,

or she needed to OM
four to five times a day

to release herself
from the trauma of her childhood.

My sister started sending me journals
when she got out of OneTaste.

It was part of her therapy.

"I woke up today, filled with rage.
Rage at my boyfriend."

"He punched me in the face
and split my lip

and bruised my eye."

"At first, I was shocked.
We had fought many times before,

but I had never thought
he would go that far."

"I found little sympathy."

"This, I was told, was my fault."

"I had forced him to do it."

"His beast was only fulfilling
what my body had asked him to do."

"Since I was a survivor
of childhood domestic violence,

this was my pattern
and what my body was asking for."

"He was only doing as my body asked,

and now I was shaming and blaming him
for doing what I had asked for."

"I looked around the room.
All eyes were downcast."

"Nobody was willing to stand for me."

"I never spoke again about the other times
he hit me or dragged me around."

"Looking back now,
I can't believe I stuck through it."

"I so wanted to believe he would change."

"I was told that sometimes our soulmates
must do violent things to help us grow."

"It was only a way to condone violence."

"They did not want me
to, one, go to the authorities,

two, have my boyfriend leave
and take his money with him."

"This evening,
this community member let his beast out."

"He picked me up,
my arms pinned to my sides,

and began to shake me
in front of everyone."

"Nobody did anything

as he screamed at me how he would like
to rape me, beat me, use me,

that he knew where I slept
and he would find me in the night."

"I was reprimanded afterwards for
showing fear in the face of his beast."

"A true turned-on woman

would have taken his beast's cry for help
with grace and love."

"I look back on it now
and I'm not surprised

I was unable to sleep anymore,

that I left my body to survive."

After my story came out in 2018,

general readers,
many of whom had never heard of OneTaste,

a lot of them were pretty shocked.

It's kind of a wild story, and I think
it tugs at people's heart strings

to see people who are
looking for answers in their life

ended up more jumbled

and more confused
and more hurt than before.

And then separately, the response
from the community was very strong.

You know, I heard from dozens of people
after the story came out,

and they were really moved to see
that a national magazine had captured

this very dark, sometimes shameful
experience that they'd gone through

that they'd sometimes
struggled to explain to their friends.

There were impacts at the company
right away.

The CEO, Joanna Van Vleck, stepped down.

She remained at the company,
but she stepped down from her role as CEO.

They stopped doing the coaching program,
which was their flagship course.

They stopped holding in-person classes,
and they started going virtual.

Press "How to OM,"

then you'll find
the OM 101 online free class.

And then a few months later, you know,
I got a call from a source saying,

"Yesterday I got a knock on the door,
and it was two FBI agents,

and they wanted to talk to me
about what happened at OneTaste."

I think it's fascinating
to think about people who think that

if only women ran the world,
then everything would be perfect.

But this group, which had
almost, like, a matriarchal spirit

from the very first day
that it was started,

still fell into these patterns
of alleged abuse of power.

I'm back in Tucson,
where I grew up.

I'm about to have a phone call

with an FBI agent
who's based out of New York.

He contacted me about two months ago.

They were really pushing this idea that

it's inherently natural
for men to be predatory,

and that we should, like,

be welcoming
of the predatory nature of men,

that we should find it hot, attractive.

And so when that thing about them

finding some strangers
to rape her happened,

totally made sense to me
as far as what the conversations I heard

and the behavior that I witnessed.

At one point, my sister called me.

She had been forced upon multiple people,

and that her boyfriend had beat her,

and she was
at the bottom of the stairs, vomiting.

And I remember just sitting there being,
"What are you doing?"

And this was right before she got out,

and I think this was
one of the last things.

And I remember just crying on the phone,

"Why? Why are you doing this?" Like...

"I never wanted to OM with other people."

"I never wanted to have my body touched."

"It all was forced, and my body feels
filled with shame and disgust."

"I remember being told
not to go to the hospital,

that all the shaking,

the vomiting, the weightlessness,
the sickness was just an orgasm."

"It was me alchemizing
trauma and pain from when I was younger,

that if I just stuck with it,

I would ascend to my next level
of awakening and freedom."

This is your sister's body
reacting to

the sexual assault and the beatings.

Yes. Yes. Yep. Yep.

And the sexual assaults and the beatings,

and I think the manipulation

of trying to convince someone
that that is right.

What prompted you
to tell her story when she couldn't?

I want other people to see.

I want to potentially stop...

I wanted to... speak out for someone
who couldn't speak for herself.

I wanted to tell the story of someone
that was, I guess, silenced in all of it

and pushed under the rug,

and I had the availability to do so,

and I only hope
that other people don't fall into it,

and that other people see this

and understand that it's just... it's,
it's not worth it and it's dangerous.

"When I decided to leave,
I went and talked to Nicole."

"When I arrived at her apartment,

it was like the rose-colored glasses
had finally fallen off."

"When I told her how the organization
had hurt me and continued to hurt others,

when I told her it was a cult
and she needed to fix it,

she acted innocent and confused,
shocked even."

"She insisted she had no idea."

"Either she is an idiot and
so completely lost in her lack of reality

she doesn't allow herself to see it,

or she's deeply twisted and very sick

and finds it perfectly okay to use, abuse,
traumatize, and destroy others' lives

for her own personal gain."

I was having a hard time,
having left OneTaste and living on my own,

and I was questioning
a lot of their practices.

It was all very rattling to me,
because as soon as I left,

I kept hearing things.

I think as a result of, like,
having this lingo and these secret words...

when I left that,

I could almost not understand
the way that other people spoke.

So, I'd just hear, like, a word out of
nowhere when there was no one around.

For basically two years
after I left OneTaste,

I kind of accepted
that maybe I had ruined my life.

I couldn't really think straight.

It was hard
to relate to normies, you know.

So all I could really do and feel sane was
blue-collar work, working with my hands.

And yeah, I kind of entered this space

where I accepted
maybe I had fried my brain.

I mean, I think it just took time.

When the Bloomberg article came out

it made a lot more noise than I expected.

Obviously, my parents freaked out

'cause they read about
me being in a sex cult.

A private investigator left
a bunch of voicemails late at night.

He was kind of insinuating
I was gonna be in a lawsuit.

Would your sister be here
today telling her story if she could?

She would, yes.

My sister always wants better
and always pushes forward,

and right now, she is getting her PhD

and living the best life that she can,
in spite of everything that happened.

Not because,
but in spite of.

People who used to be in OneTaste

are always curious about what exactly
is going on with the company now.

There's still OneTaste staff members
who live at The Land,

which is their farm in Mendocino County.

So, I've heard that
Nicole is living up on The Land,

she's back in the United States
and that she's at The Land right now.

I'm surprised that she came back,

given that there's
an active FBI investigation.

The times that I've gone back,

it's like I know that I was in a cult

because I automatically feel...
like I'm back home

and I wanna stay there forever.

And they're not actually...
Like, they never cared about me.

I basically took a swan dive
into this project

without really... um... thinking of

how people will feel when they see it.

Yeah.

And how
do you think people will feel?

I have no idea. Like, that's something
that's really hard to gauge

with OneTaste and Nicole.

You know, we have that precept of,
"Stay connected no matter what."

"I'm so tired of hearing it,

that 'you are such a smart girl.
How could that happen to you?'"

"'How could you let that happen?'"

"They start off with love.
Experts call it 'love bombing, '

bringing you into the fold,
making you feel special and seen,

cared for and valued."

"Then they pull it away,

push you down to the very bottom,

expel you from the community, take away
your access to purpose and meaning,

and even at times,
take away your connection to God."

"We cling to this idea
that we have control,

that people who are abused and manipulated
are somehow dumb or lesser,

that they should have seen it coming."

"What I see now is
those people who believe

that this would never happen to them

are only grasping for control,

clinging to this idea

that they would never
allow this to happen."

I want the people who are capable
of understanding what OneTaste was...

...to know this thing existed,

this thing that had somehow

called each of us
out of the lives that we'd been living.

I can't even say
what that thing was exactly.

It was sex, it was orgasm,
it was exploration, it was growth,

it was fear,

it was trauma.

It was all of these things,
like, woven and wrapped together.

And while we were in it, it lit us up

in a way that we had scarcely even
dared to imagine that we could be lit up.

I think it's important
for us to understand,

what is it about a group like OneTaste
that people are drawn to?

The things that all people want.

Love, connection, belonging.

Who wouldn't want those things?

And at the same time,

if you have a leader
and a culture that goes too far,

things can become dangerous.