Forbes Magazine just weighed in on Dahn Yoga, which we’ve covered here before, with a feature in its issue dated August 3.

Forbes leads with the recent Arizona lawsuit alleging fraud and sexual assault, among other things, noting that the “explosive charges” from former Dahn members “threaten what appears to be a highly lucrative enterprise.”

The magazine pins the organization’s global annual revenue at $133 million, and says it could bring in $34 million this year from its US operations.

Dahn’s New Mexico operations appear to duplicate efforts at other branches, judging by the Forbes article. Patterns seem to include obtaining dubious endorsements from public officials and staging “brain education” programs in public schools. The Forbes article concludes thus:

A spokesperson for the New York City Board of Education confirmed that brain education has been implemented in some fashion in 44 New York City public schools in the past year, all at the initiative of individual schools. The board was unaware of the allegations in the Arizona suit.

Update: Dahn Yoga’s press rep, Mike Paul of MGP & Associates PR, didn’t like that I didn’t contact him before posting on the Forbes article. After he emailed, I asked him for a response to the Forbes piece, and here’s what he sent:

“Calling Dahn Yoga a cult is like calling other health and fitness clubs in America a cult. It is absurd! Look for more relevant information regarding the unethical and illegal activities of the plaintiffs to be communicated soon with facts versus fiction. Their credibility is the one in question, not Dahn Yoga.”
Mike Paul, spokesperson, Dahn Yoga

Last week’s news brief about a lawsuit against the Dahn Yoga organization, a controversial group that SFR has covered previously, generated a goodly number of comments on our website. It looks like an astroturf campaign, judging by the pseudonyms and the striking similarity of the comments.

Many not only blame the messenger (that would be SFR), but also the woman who alleges she was sexually assaulted by Dahn Yoga founder Ilchi Lee, whom a follower describes as “the most giving considerate and hard working person I have ever met.”

It’s not all a love-fest, though. This comment, by a “Dahn Instructor,” suggests that Lee’s accuser just wants attention:

Jessica Harrelson is lying about these claims not only because she wants money, but because she knows that stupid, sensationalist reporters will eat it up. Why don’t you report AFTER the trial… And why don’t you report a public apology about your BS story AFTER the trial…

For the record, the reason newspapers don’t wait to report until “AFTER the trial” is because hundreds of years of legal practice in countries around the world has led to the expectation that trials will be public events. The reason people got so upset about Guantanamo Bay was that the military commissions there were closed to the public and thus, prone to abuse.

This is Civics 101, folks, which must not be included in Brain Wave Vibration courses.

Others worry about the harm to Ilchi Lee’s reputation:

Trail [sic] by media tarnishes the reputation and discredits the life of a person who has dedicated his life to empowering people to recover their health and happiness and toward establishing peace on this planet. This kind of irresponsible reporting will unfortunately prevent people from experiencing all the benefits of this practice.

More irresponsible would be to swallow Dahn Yoga’s sales pitch as a kind of miracle cure—as one commenter writes, “so much cheaper then paying at hospital!”

In any event, the response was enough to warrant a reply. And, it seemed worthwhile to post a copy of the complaint, so anyone who’s curious can read exactly what’s been alleged against Dahn. Here it is in PDF form.