Sex abuse, drugs and predatory ‘gurus’: The dark side of a booming wellness trend

A new-age breathworker and self-described body psychotherapist sexually abused a woman under the guise of “healing” her trauma from a previous sexual assault in one of several horrific stories of criminal or unethical behaviour connected to the latest thriving wellness trend.

Experts and clients warn the industry’s rapid growth has led to unqualified practitioners with poor mental health training running retreats involving psychedelics and intense group therapy that can prove re-traumatising.

A Herald and Age investigation can reveal that in the most extreme cases, some practitioners used spiritual talk to manipulate vulnerable clients, with four women sharing stories of sexual touching or harassment.

One woman was groomed and non-consensually touched by a breathworker who worked at a retreat a week after he was convicted of sexual touching, despite one staff member knowing about his crime.

Another woman recalled being pressured into taking off her underwear, a third woman said she was touched on her breasts, and a fourth endured sessions conducted from the bed of a breathworker.

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Rooted in ancient traditions, breathwork combines conscious breathing with mindfulness to promote emotional and physical wellbeing.

After resurfacing in the 1960s, it gained mainstream popularity with the multitrillion-dollar global wellness boom. It is not a regulated profession, and practitioners can be registered or unregistered.

However, troubling behaviour has bubbled under the surface of the sector’s wholesome exterior.

When Deborah Sarah discovered the popular company Breathless – which claims to have trained more than 20,000 breathworkers – she had hit rock bottom.

Deborah Sarah was sexually touched by Will Solis and has spoken out in the hope of protecting more women.Credit: Louise Kennerley

Struggling with PTSD after a sexual assault, a back injury from a 2014 crash and severe premenstrual dysphoric disorder, she met charismatic Breathless founder Johannes Egberts at a charity event in late 2022.

Though already trained in clinical breathwork as a speech pathologist, Sarah was drawn to Egberts’ spiritual approach and enrolled in a training program worth several thousand dollars.

The program included a retreat at Lake Crackenback. Surrounded by the scenic Snowy Mountains, Sarah said she cleared out anxiety and stress on this first retreat by “getting high on your own supply” of breath.

Lake Crackenback Resort, where Breathless holds its retreats.Credit: Booking.com

But she felt she did not learn enough about instructing, so she booked in for the “master instructor” retreat.

This time, her experience was far darker.

Court documents state Sarah was given a drug called psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms, on the retreat.

The Therapeutic Goods Administration permits the use of psilocybin only within authorised medical settings and under specialist supervision.

Sitting in the sun for several hours during the psilocybin ceremony, Sarah felt the effects of heat exhaustion. The combination of the heat, drug effects and heavy breathwork over several days took Sarah’s body to her childhood trauma, triggered further by others sharing their traumas in an unsafe way.

Then came the suicidal thoughts.

“It was terrifying,” she said, adding she should have been taken to hospital.

Following the four-day retreat, Sarah confided in William Solis, who had worked at the retreat and would later be convicted of sexually abusing Sarah.

William Solis when he was a member of the Breathless teamCredit: Instagram

Solis comforted her, and the pair became friends.

Solis was previously listed on the Breathless website as a “body psychotherapist”, and social media photos showed him wearing a Breathless T-shirt while touching people’s diaphragms.

What is breathwork?

• Breathwork combines conscious breathing with mindfulness and intention to encourage emotional regulation and physical health.

• Both registered and non-registered practitioners use it to support physical, emotional and mental wellbeing.

• Breath-centred practices and meditations were found in many ancient cultures and religions, and they re-emerged in the 1960s.

• The global boom of the $6 trillion wellness sector brought it to the mainstream and, in 2021, it was named one of the most influential global wellness trends.

• Breathwork is unregulated, although the Health Care Complaints Commission has powers to restrict services, depending on the type of practitioner.

Soon enough, Solis suggested private healing sessions with Sarah in an effort to “activate” her out of her “freeze” responses and “heal” from her childhood sexual trauma.

“It felt odd at the time. Looking back, it feels dark and wrong,” Sarah said. “He weaponised healing and psychological talk.”

The agreed statement of facts tendered to the court says Sarah and Solis met at a Breathless Expeditions retreat, where Sarah was given psilocybin and became suicidal.

Solis has been removed from Breathless but has continued to work outside the business.Credit: Instagram

With Solis claiming to help women who had experienced sexual assault, he and Sarah organised a healing session at her house in March. There, Solis asked Sarah to straddle him and hit him with boxing gloves as he thrust upwards. Sarah felt uncomfortable and moved away.

At a second ceremony in July, Solis gave Sarah mushrooms and placed his hands beneath her bottom despite being told not to, and got on top of her.

Sarah pushed Solis off and said, “Don’t come near me. I will kill you if you touch me.”

But Solis continued to rub and stroke inside her leg while talking about her previous sexual assault and “shoved” his hand on her genitals despite repeated requests to move it.

The 35-year-old pleaded guilty to sexually touching Sarah without consent and supplying more than the indictable quantity of psilocybin. He was sentenced in October to a two-year community correction order and fined $1000.

Sarah was given psilocybin, a drug that is the active ingredient in magic mushrooms.Credit: Bloomberg

Sarah described setting clear boundaries before the sessions, which were not sexual in nature, and said there was never any sexual element to their relationship.

“It was never about me,” she said. “It has never been about my healing. He gaslit me and made me believe he’s ‘activating’ me … It always felt wrong. It never helped me.”

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This masthead has seen disturbing messages that show Solis did not deny touching Sarah without consent when confronted. He then used convoluted and obscure spiritual language to suggest that “conscious sex” would heal her by “getting her out of the loop” of negativity.

Sarah expressed discomfort at being touched without consent and said she did not understand how more touching would heal her, since it only seemed beneficial for Solis because she did not want to have sex with him.

Solis said he was not telling her to have sex with him.

When she said she was angry, Solis said “be angry … no more victim talk”, to which Sarah suggested he was asking her to take responsibility for his crime.

Solis responded: “No, I’m asking you to connect to why you were assaulted in the first place and that you perpetuate that throughout your life.”

The pair ceased contact after this WhatsApp conversation. Solis was last month bound by the court not to contact, assault, threaten, stalk, harass or intimidate Sarah.

Sarah was “disgusted and furious” that Solis’ criminal conviction did not prevent him from working in the wellness industry.

“It felt like a failure,” she said. “He got this conviction, and yet he can now still do everything he wants.”

Worried about Solis being around more vulnerable people, Sarah confided in one Breathless facilitator about his sentence.

But that person did not tell Egberts as they wanted to give Solis the chance to tell him himself, meaning Solis was at a Breathless retreat the following weekend.

Johannes Egberts is the founder of Breathless. He is not accused of any wrongdoing.

The Herald and Age obtained an email to the Breathless community which revealed Egberts quickly distancing the company from Solis upon learning of his actions.

He said an unnamed member was removed from the team “effective immediately” due to an issue that conflicted with the company’s values.

Social media posts show Solis has continued breathwork since leaving Breathless, including running a wellness workshop on the day of his conviction.

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Three other women have come forward to this masthead to share their uncomfortable breathwork experiences, including alleged sexual touching or harassment. None of these relate to Breathless.

Psychosomatic therapist Dee Shelton said she was pressured to cross her explicitly stated boundaries during a session with a breathwork coach.

Despite telling the practitioner she was uncomfortable undressing, Shelton said he persistently tried to remove her underwear, claiming it would help her “surrender and relax more”.

“Breathwork can trigger the release of chemicals in the brain,” she said.

“It can be like being on cocaine. So you’re in that space where you’re not fully with it, and he was pushing, pushing, even after I kept saying no.”

“It felt like a failure”: Deborah Sarah and her dog, Mango.Credit: Louise Kennerley

Shelton said many women, especially those without her 20 years of experience in the wellness industry, may not have the knowledge or confidence to resist such pressure.

She noted that the practitioner disguised his coercion as respect for her boundaries but would subtly manipulate her into crossing them.

Shelton stressed the need for enthusiastic and written consent regarding clients’ boundaries, particularly regarding touch.

She said documented boundaries could make it easier for clients to file complaints if they were crossed and urged more people to speak out about inappropriate behaviour, as reputations in the industry often rely on word of mouth.

Another woman, who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to ongoing investigations, described a practitioner unexpectedly touching her breasts during a breathwork session.

She said he told her the “conscious touch” helped with relaxation and emotional blocks.

“So his hand is there, and he asks me to take my top off so he can get closer to the point of tension,” she said.

“I reluctantly said yes because I thought maybe this was part of the treatment. It was only afterwards that it really sunk in that me lying in my bra with his hand on my breasts is not at all appropriate.”

Psychosomatic therapist Dee Shelton said many women may not have the knowledge or confidence to resist inappropriate advances.

A fourth woman, who asked to remain anonymous due to continuing work within the sector, said she had an uncomfortable experience with a breathwork company that ran healing ceremonies from the founder’s bed.

She said she was given magic mushrooms on a retreat with no qualified mental health supervisors while sitting on ant-infested rocks and was provided with no aftercare when she was re-traumatised and became extremely emotional.

“Ignorance, lack of training, over-enthusiasm and just not understanding psychological and physical safety needs are the biggest problems I’ve seen in the industry,” she said.

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NSW Health Care Complaints Commissioner John Tansey said breathwork practitioners may provide health services, and non-registered practitioners must adhere to a code of conduct.

Violations can result in restrictions, fines and public warnings.

He said practitioners must stay within their qualifications, not mislead clients and be prepared for emergencies, adding illegal activity may result in criminal charges.

Tansey noted concerns over unregulated psychedelic use by unqualified practitioners and advised those considering alternative therapies to research thoroughly beforehand.

All sexual abuse victims were urged to report the incident to the police.

Australian Breathwork Association president John Stamoulos.

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The Australian Breathwork Association is the professional body for conscious connected breathing and provides training as well as ethical guidelines.

Its president, John Stamoulos, said breathwork used in isolation is for wellbeing, not mental health treatment.

He acknowledged many incidents may go unreported but said the association had not received formal complaints of sexual misconduct from registered practitioners since he joined the committee several years ago.

“Since it moved from fringe to mainstream, everyone’s jumped on the bandwagon,” he said, adding he did not want “a few cowboys” undermining the industry’s many benefits.

For Sarah, the difficult decision to go public with her story was cemented after hearing other people’s experiences of sexual abuse.

“I could no longer be afraid of my own story because too many people came to me that I got to a point where I could not stay silent any more,” she said.

Sarah expressed concern more victims were being exploited by “breathworkers” using “therapy talk” to manipulate them into thinking they were spiritual gurus with answers to their suffering.

She called for mandatory qualifications, particularly in trauma treatment, and strict policies in breathwork companies for handling sexual abuse complaints.

“Breathwork goes so deep it can cause you to relive traumas, and that can be amazing because it can be a way of not going back into the story of the head,” she said.

“But put in the hands of the wrong people, it makes you very vulnerable”.

Solis and Egberts declined to respond to questions.

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