I’d been practicing yoga for a decade when, pregnant and suffering from sciatica, I hired Mike*, a hot, young Anusara teacher to teach privates at my house. My lower back couldn’t take group classes anymore, so I asked around the yoga community for their opinion on the best local alignment instructor. Yes, I knew what Mike looked like. And yes, I was secretly a little giddy when the experts I surveyed unanimously chose him.
My then-husband’s eyes flashed with something between annoyance and fear when Mike first showed up at our door. Lean-muscled, blue-eyed, and tattooed, no one had ever accused the 20-something-year-old yoga phenom of being hard to look at. Having a crush on him was such an obvious cliché that I worked intentionally against it. I tried to imagine that behind his practiced words and experienced hands was a flat and immature personality. Luckily, there was also a watermelon of a belly between us, a literal barrier and a reminder of why I needed to keep things professional. It only kind of worked.
Behind Mike’s cerulean eyes and Ganesha forearm ink was not an immature young man with a flat personality, much to my terror. His knowledge of both yoga philosophy and human anatomy belied his age, and I found myself hanging on to his every word, secretly fantasizing that a physical adjustment might slip ever so slightly over the line. (It never did.) For the sake of my sanity and my marriage—and even though my lower back had never felt better—I decided to end things.
Women have been idealizing their teachers since long before Mike chanted mantra in my living room. And as the women of The White Lotus remind us, that draw is still alive and well. In season 3, which takes place at a luxury wellness resort in Thailand, three 40-something women on a reunion/girls’ trip quickly lock in on Valentin (played by Arnas Fedaravičius), their young, shirtless spiritual health pro. Covered in tribal tattoos and adorned with elaborate gold jewelry, his character seems almost strategically placed to entice horny tourists.
Yes, he’s eye candy, but Valentin is also an energy healer and a yoga teacher. When the women learn this, they tell their one single friend, Laurie (Carrie Coon) to seduce him during a session. Though wildly inappropriate to suggest crossing that professional line while he’s working, no one questions whether the objectified Valentin might be open to a sexual relationship.
“How was your energy healing with Valentin? Did he get his energy inside you?” Jaclyn (Michelle Monahan) teases Laurie after her session.
Shameless though this behavior may be, I found it neither unfamiliar nor unrelatable. Which begs the question: why are we like this?
According to sex and relationships expert Jess O’Reilly, PhD, host of the Sex With Dr. Jess podcast, cultural factors might be partly to blame. “The West portrays yoga as a skill to be learned, taught, and mastered, whereas in many of its traditional forms, yoga is a cultural and spiritual practice meant to be experienced collectively, rather than a hierarchical system with a single authoritative figure,” she explains. “This divergence influences how individuals engage with instructors—seeing them as personal coaches or even transformational figures rather than facilitators of a shared, evolving practice.” In this climate, says Dr. Jess, “a leader’s perceived unavailability or exclusivity can heighten desire, while proximity and familiarity can also foster attachment.”
Then, of course, there’s the thrill of the illicit. In almost every formal teacher/student arrangement, sexual relationships are either strictly prohibited or highly frowned upon. Crossing that line can feel like forbidden fruit in any mentor/mentee form, but—as The White Lotus so accurately portrays—something about the spiritual and wellness space seems especially sexually charged. There’s touching, sometimes minimal clothing, and the sweat, hormones, and serotonin are flowing.
On the first day of most American yoga teacher trainings, aspiring instructors are warned against forming intimate bonds with their students. Most yoga lineages abide by the yamas and niyamas, codes of conduct that dictate behavior, including sexual moderation. These rules exist for good reason. The inherent power imbalance between mentor and mentee can become dangerous when sex is added to the mix, especially if a teacher is leading a student spiritually. It creates a uniquely vulnerable situation and a powder keg for potential trauma.
It’s no secret that sex scandals have plagued western yoga in almost every major lineage—with those surrounding Bikram Choudhury and Anusara founder John Friend among the most infamous examples. These scandals, however, are rooted in coercion on the part of the instructor, while The White Lotus women’s pursuit of Valentin is something quite different. Instead of being manipulated into a sexual relationship with their spiritual teacher, these women are objectifying and pursuing him.
In real life as in the show, the appeal of this dynamic can prove irresistible due to both the allure of the taboo itself as well as a phenomenon known as erotic transference, whereby “attraction can emerge from the emotional intimacy and embodied nature of the practice, where trust, vulnerability, and physical awareness heighten emotional and physical responsiveness,” Dr. Jess explains.
Watching the women of The White Lotus fawn over their collective crush, I was reminded of the real-life ubiquity of this feminine urge to sleep with our instructors—something I’ve not only experienced personally, but have also frequently seen unfolding at yoga classes, retreats, spiritual workshops, and (only somewhat disturbingly) in my own family.
My dad became a yoga teacher in his retirement and the most awkward part of attending his classes was witnessing the starry-eyed adoration of his female students. Never before had I seen that kind of look directed at him—not from his female employees, or my friends’ moms, or even really my own mother (who loved him dearly). This look was reserved for David Anderson, the yoga teacher.
My mother has since passed, and my dad is now happily married to one of his students (teacher training warnings be damned). I asked his new wife what initially attracted her to him.
“Listening to his sexy George Clooney voice during savasana gave me a feeling of absolute peace and belonging,” she said. “I needed to know this man; he intrigued and excited me.” TMI, but I appreciate her candor.
One friend who seriously dated her male yoga teacher told me that she was drawn to him because her traditional upbringing taught her that men should lead and women should follow. Dr. Jess says this is a common sentiment, noting that cultural narratives positioning male authority figures as protectors or mentors may influence attraction to qualities like competence and expertise—two things any good yoga teacher is likely bringing to the classroom.
Another yogini told me that, for her, hooking up with her yoga teacher was mostly about the novelty of the context itself: “I think if I had met him outside of the yoga space, I would not have been attracted to him. He was not my type personality-wise, career-wise or looks-wise. I think it was the teacher dynamic that hooked me—and there was just so much touching. It did feel very sensual.”
Ultimately, in The White Lotus, it isn’t Laurie, but the married Jaclyn who ends up sleeping with Valentin after a night of partying with him and his friends. The most surprising twist of the season so far, however, is when the relatively reserved Belinda (Natasha Rothwell) hooks up with sexy wellness expert Pornchai (Dom Hetrakul). Belinda, a returning character from season 1, is the spa manager for another White Lotus property and has always kept things professional, but when she first sees Pornchai shirtless for a training session, all bets are off—and, really, who can blame her?
For a famously over-the-top show, The White Lotus is far from unrealistic in this regard, at least. Frankly, it’s true that in the West, women sometimes fetishize our male spiritual teachers—and do so in potentially problematic ways.
Still, that shouldn’t invalidate the cases where yoga teacher/student relationships turn into real love (like my dad and his wife), nor the fact that the inverse is also a common reality—female teachers, in turn, are sometimes pursued by their male students. In fact, one of my favorite yoga teachers, Mimi Ghandour, recently married hers. “He said to me, ‘You have the ability to center me physically, emotionally, and spiritually,’” she tells me. “Of course I melted.”
And while somehow I doubt we can expect this White Lotus love affair to end in wedding bells, I think my fellow yoginis will agree it certainly doesn’t hurt to see our collective fantasy come to life...on screen, at a safe distance.
*Name has been changed.
