START HERE: A Cheat Sheet of Who’s Who and What We’re Doing Here

Our origins: One of our fearless leaders, u/AliceinWonder, created this subreddit to critically examine the world of scammy coaches, especially “Ashae Sundara” (Carly Morgan Gross) and a few others. Our goal is to expose this pyramid scheme of scammers and provide a supportive space for people to speak out about their experiences with them. If you get confused or see a name being discussed that you’re not familiar with, you can check the list below for a nutshell summary.

We pride ourselves on helping survivors gain whatever they need in recovering from their experiences, whether that’s support, community, info on how to demand refunds, a space to tell their stories, and/or strength to walk away from the culty landscape of girlboss hell. And while it’s rare, we love to see when high-level scammers can admit they've been wrong and make proper amends.

Our snark: We are a snark page, which means that we are poking fun as a way to educate and maintain our sanity. We’ve noticed over the years that unfortunately, new-age coaches prime their victims to view snark as “unspiritual” or even something that could introduce “bad karma” into their lives (anything to keep their potential clients from reading the critical feedback people have about them.) As expected, the coaches discussed here typically assert that this sub is just “full of haters”, because that’s an easy way to dismiss criticism and get their audience not to look into it. 

This idea that snark and critique are “unspiritual” is a part of the cult mindset that we’re here to help people deprogram from; we believe that survivors get to be as snarky as they need to be in recovering from and educating others about these culty environments.. For us, snark is a liberatory tool, but if you prefer to be more informational than snarky, that’s ok too. 

Re: Safety: The anonymity of this platform helps survivors share their stories safely, since many of these coaches and their associates are known for coming after their detractors with harassment and legal threats. Also, many of these coaches have their clients sign NDAs, so anonymity allows people to speak out and keep others from experiencing the same scams they did. Have your wits about you as you interact here--we sometimes get infiltrators who DM folks try to scare them away with threats of exposing their IP addresses, or alleging to know their identities, etc. So far, it’s all bluffs. Sometimes infiltrators pretend to be fellow survivors to try to get you to disclose your identity, which we highly discourage unless you can be sure that person is who they say they are.

Frequently Discussed Names:

• Ashae Sundara aka Carly Morgan Gross, is a scammy girlboss coach living in Austin, TX (formerly Boulder, CO and originally from a very wealthy family in Florida.) She used to be a big deal in the new-age coaching scene due to getting in the door early and relying on her family's money, but has become much less successful in recent years due to people speaking out about being scammed by her.
• Melanie Ann Layer, aka MAL, aka Alpha Femme, is a top dog scammer in the new-age coaching world and a primary mentor of Carly’s. She’s a former MLM hun who claims to have made over $80 million through her coaching business, but she’s also someone who has told very different versions of her origin stories at different times. MAL has set an industry standard of scammy coaching practices.
• Allan McGrath Isbell aka “Al”. Carly’s current boyfriend, small-time boyboss coach. Founder of a “divine masculine” group called Thirteen Pines. Ex husband of girlboss coach Luna Battalia.
• John Wineland aka “JW”: geriatric boyboss and one of the main founders of the new-age “polarity” movement, which is a prescribed system of “feminine-masculine” dynamics. He’s a major mentor to Carly and her boyfriend Allan, who have taken his teacher training. Multiple young women have spoken out saying that they’ve been sexually assaulted by John. (Fun fact, he’s also the father of the late Claire Wineland, who would have been about the same age as many of his girlfriends--yikes)
• Madelyn Moon - relatively well-known polarity coach, current (on-again-off-again) girlfriend of John Wineland. Close friends with Allan’s ex Luna.
• Rebecca Ives aka "The Content Queen" relatively small-time girlboss marketing coach, former friend of Ashae, former student of Melanie Ann Layer, sugar mama to her husband Brandon who tried and failed to identify and doxx members of this subreddit.
• Brandon: Rebecca’s husband, failed boyboss coach. Doesn’t have a job so has a lot of time on his hands to try to infiltrate this subreddit, primarily motivated by attention (don’t give him any)
• Luna Battalia aka Luna Love aka Whitney: Ex-wife of Allan McGrath Isbell (Ashae’s boo), friends with Madelyn Moon, Jolie Dawn, Leola, Sophia Le Page, Karen Prosen. 
• Aimee Batuski and Ellie Montgomerie run a girlboss coaching biz called “Desire on Fire” and a summit called “The Feminine Revolution” - Carly got real close with these ladies when she was feeling the heat from all the refund requests coming through after her exposé. They all had many dinners together and a vacation to Portugal, but then something seemed to happen and they haven’t really been as cozy since…There’s some speculation on here that Allan and Aimee got a little too friendly.
• Maya Night aka Meg Jamison, who we have affectionately nicknamed “Messy Meg” (because she literally licks dirt as a “practice” and brags about not having proper credentials): another small-time-ish girlboss coach
• Molly Moonrise: former bestie of Ashae and frequent guest teacher in Ashae’s courses, where she’d frequently take substances or be high on camera
• Jenna and Sabrina: Ashae’s current and former assistants, respectively, who sometimes pop into our inbox with tantrums
• Other assorted Austin influencers who pop up here and there include Sophia Le Page, Leola (aka “Talk Tantra to me” aka “The Pleasure Priestess”), Jolie Dawn
• Other influencers of note outside of Austin: Victoria Washington (former mentee of MAL’s), Christina Louise McBoyle aka “Solar Feminine Arts” (connected to Luna Battalia, Victoria Washington), Karen Prosen (former business partner with Luna Battalia, friend of Denell, known hater of this sub, and ex cult-leader allegedly at “Angel Status” within Kaia Ra’s Sophia Code), Denell Barbara Randall aka Cervical Wellness (connected to Luna, Karen, Christina, and others)
• Ethics for Coaching aka EFC: a group of coaches and influencers who originally posed as critics of the coaching industry but eventually turned out to be trying to launch their own grift of coaching coaches to coach “ethically” (spoiler: there was nothing ethical about it.)The people involved in this included Margarit Davtian aka Sattva aka Seekwithser, Eva Collins aka whydontyousaysomething, Ash Riley aka ashrising and former(?) MLM hun Melissa Lapides. Since being exposed for its own griftiness, EFC never really got off the ground and seems to have fizzled out due to lack of buy-in from its target audience. The girlies behind it are trying to rebrand individually

This subreddit really blew up around the time that members of EFC (see above bullet point) publicly critiqued Ashae. We originally promoted the work of some of the EFC members until we realized that they were participating in their own coaching-coaches-to-coach grift as opposed to prioritizing survivors.

If you want to discuss your experiences with a coach or new-age influencer not listed above, feel free to do so.

Recommended listening: You’ll notice we have a “Katya was here first” flair because we are big fangirls of the podcast Love & Light Confessionals, which is an insider exposé on the new-age, coaching, and wellness world’s most bizarre antics. Katya has been exposing this stuff for quite some time (especially when 2020 hit and these scamfluencers got extra wet and wild). Our fav episodes - and most relevant ones to what we discuss here- include: 

• The Hippie Love Affair with Alt-Right Conspiracy Theory
• Boss Babe Culture & the Divine Feminine
• Life in Spiritual Girlboss Hell Ft: Teal Swan and the Sophia Code
• Guru Culture & the Divine Masculine
• Is Cancel Culture Unspiritual? 
• Bonus EP: NXVIM & New Age Predation 
• The Polarity Trend
• Polarity Part 2: Mars & Venus Edition
• Sisterhood of the Sacred No Homo
• How the Grift is Grifted
• The Fall of the Coaching Industry

We hope this helps you navigate the sub a bit easier and gives you some foundational resources (particularly if you're a survivor of these spaces) to start healing and deprogramming. We’re glad you're here and we love to hear from you. Please respect our community guidelines and if you get confused, please feel free to send a DM or drop a comment saying so--we know it can get niche.

with love,

Spoons (+ Alice)