7.20.20 Second Response Letter to David Elliott from Past Students

July 20th, 2020

Hello David, 

Thank you for receiving our letter and for understanding how serious and essential these conversations and growth steps are. We also know we aren’t the only ones who have written you with concerns over the years. There are no quick fixes and our concerns are very deeply rooted in the foundation of your teachings, so it is good to hear that you are committed for the long haul. 

We recognize that there wasn’t an invitation in your response to continue further dialogue, however, we do have some additional thoughts and concerns that we will share below, including our next steps. 

Thank you also for sharing more about your relationship to some people within Native communities. It is clarifying to hear about your relationships. However, we are still left with some concerns. We still feel uneasy about the ways that so much of your teaching around altars and ceremony is rooted in Native traditions. In a culture where Native traditions are commodified and stolen, you are profiting off of teaching these traditions that are not your own through ancestry. Additionally, while on paper it sounds like you are deeply committed, it is also a bit confusing to learn all of this because a number of the signers have experienced you minimizing and dismissing land acknowledgments as well as discussions around colonization and appropriation within trainings. To learn more, please read the additional attachment written regarding Cultural Appropriation that Molly wrote. 

Thank you for clarifying that the roots of the practice are pranayama. A number of us had been teaching that this breath pattern isn’t pranayama because that’s what we were told in our trainings and it now feels frustrating to have to reconsider that. We wish there had been more naming and transparency from the start. Pranayama is a general term and each particular breath within the tradition does have its own name. What is this breath’s name? We would like to go to the original source of the breath; please let us know where we can find it. The practice you’ve offered also seems to have a lot of similarities to Holotropic: the mouth breathing, the music, and invitation to engage in creative practice are mirrored in Holotropic. 

Many people we work with want to know more about the roots and the story you have offered of you being taught it by a man named Tim who told you that you taught it to him in a past life has made it quite difficult to explain the origins and roots to people. To be in alignment in our individual work, it’s important for us to honor the traditions from which it comes. 

Our concern with your teaching team: while they have great skills to offer in this transition, we believe it is imperative to source out education from outside your community regarding their trauma-informed work, anti-oppression work, and anti-racist work. Many of your teachers have been working with you for many years and yet, so much is lacking in the Healer trainings. While we know that Danielle is a licensed and trained therapist and may have some trauma-informed training, we do not believe she would be qualified to lead anti-racist, anti- oppression and the necessary trauma informed work that would be required to hold safe spaces for all people. To be clear, individualized trauma work as a therapist is very different from practicing trauma-informed healing work with the education and approach of knowing impacts of intergenerational and historical trauma, systemic oppression, microaggressions, and the racism that marginalized people endure. 

With respect to being trauma-informed, in both trainings Jennifer has been in with you, David, when she’s brought up concerns around the way you teach not being trauma-informed (not informing clients about what could possibly be experienced during sessions, not speaking to oppression, racism, trauma in an informed way), she was dismissed. We have heard this from many more of your students. Again, your teachers have also been in the room for these conversations and yet nothing was said to support the students speaking up. To be trauma-informed and centered must include anti-oppression and anti-racist work. They shape and inform each other. 

After much discussion, we also feel it would be of value to share our correspondence with you more broadly so that students and teachers within this lineage can have awareness of what conversations are happening and can choose to hold you accountable. We are doing this because we believe in transparency of dialogue as well as modeling openness and commitment to growing and changing which is a powerful offering for students to see from their teacher. 

We don’t have plans to continue to engage in or check-in on your and the other teachers’ process. Moving forward, we won’t be attending your trainings or community events and will continue to invest in spaces and practitioners that have centered anti-oppression and trauma-informed work in their practices. 

In the words of the late John Lewis “Never, ever be afraid to make some noise and get in good trouble, necessary trouble.” 

With great hope for radical and foundational change,

Susan Ateh

Chauna Bryant

Amy Kuretsky

Molly Rose Hilgenberg

Jennifer Patterson

Maryam Ajayi