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David Deida and his ties to the seduction community!
Did you even know there was a seduction community?
A few months ago, one of my clients called to say she had registered for a weekend workshop with David Deida at Kripalu. She said she was scared about facing the unknown. Having assisted at many of David's workshops and taken his "teacher training", I could understand the fear she felt, but as I felt into her concern, I was troubled because of recent revelations that are quite disturbing. I found it difficult to fall asleep that night and the next day I realized I could no longer be silent and that I needed to speak out about these issues. For some of you these revelations may seem unthinkable especially if, like me, you have benefited from this work. But for others, and there are others, you will realize you are not alone.
David Deida has become involved with a group of men who are associated with the “art" of Picking up and Seducing of women. They call themselves Pick-up artists or PUAs for short. If you google PUAs, the details are explicit. The PUA community has now added “the Deida” work to their repertoire inspired by a well paid appearance he made as the main presenter at a conference sponsored by Natural Seducers held in Toronto last June. Since David’s appearance, many other PUA sites have now added his work as a reference for how to pick up and seduce women. Some are now calling me for advice and recommendations. Needless to say, I am not interested in working with them.
I believe Deida’s involvement with the PUAs not only compromises his work, but actually puts participants in harm’s way, especially women.
David Deida and the Seduction Community
David Deida has gone down a very slippery slope. Last summer, he made a choice to attend Natural Seducers Superior Man seminar. His most popular book is called The Way of the Superior Man. The seminar included some of the most obvious pick-up and seduction promoters in the world. The PUA community is a sizable one comprised of men who began emailing each other on the internet about how to pick-up and seduce women for many years and then began meeting to share their “secrets”. Their exploits have been made popular by a book called The Game.
Many of the “shining stars” aka, master PUAs, of the seduction world now hold seminars in the US and Europe. They target men who have low self confidence as well as men who are experienced at picking up and seducing women and wish to improve their skills. David Deida not only participated as the headline presenter for the Toronto event, but now has an individual producing his West Coast events who has a website called Net2Bed (May 2008). His name is Adam Gilad. On Net2Bed.com, Gilad goes by the moniker of Grant Adams. He has been changing the constitution of his site to have the appearance of being more in alignment with the “spiritual” principles of the Deida work. By the time you read this, the site might have been taken down or altered but we have saved the page so you can see what it looked like just a week ago. Furthermore, we have a copy of his site when it was first started and there can be no doubt that Gilad is still intimately involved in mining the huge potential of the population of men seeking new and more affective ways to pick up and seduce women. He also has another website called Erotic Mastery (today) which you can open here as well. Here is Gilad's Net2Bed (July 2005) when it first when up.
Adam Gilad claims that he has changed his ways, but if he really has, he would not be involved with the likes of Net2Bed or Erotic Mastery. Net2Bed has been up for nearly 3 years and it is geared towards an obvious market which is exploited with almost daily emails. Some of his marketing emails can be found on the evidence page. He is intensely recruiting his Net2Bed subscribers to enroll in Deida’s workshops. Now David is even mentioning him by name in his promotional emails. What is going on in the mind of David Deida Greenberg? Greenberg is his real last name.
In October, Gilad produced the Los Angeles event for David Deida. He just produced Deida in San Francisco and Seattle. We received reports that David did not announce his workshop rules at the Seattle workshop. This is the first time we are hearing that he has dropped these rules. In my opinion, he's doing so to give the PUAs, who are paying $1000 for a weekend to attend, an opportunity to practice what they learn. I believe David Deida is no longer committed to creating a safe environment in the midst of his intense psycho-sexual processes. Whatever reason he may come up with for his failure to create a safe environment especially for women, the facts speak for themselves.
Having worked with David consistently from 2002 to 2006, his workshops always had more women than men. With the help of announcements sent to the Net2Bed list, Adam Gilad filled the available slots for men at the San Francisco event before the women’s. With Net2Bed emails that have the subject headings like – David Deida and 75 women, it’s no wonder the PUA (Pick-up Artist) wannabes are now enrolling in David’s seminars. Gilad is working overtime to sound as sensitive a New Age guy as he can to give the appearance of being a reformed PUA, but if you read his emails they are sales pitches that lead the reader to go to a series of products teaching men how to pick up and seduce. He may be putting on one face as a Deida organizer, but on a daily basis, he is emailing his list of subscribers to buy his PUA products along with a heavy push for these men to enroll in the Deida workshops he is producing. Look for him to defend himself with his academic background, a caring family man and some television work. That may all be true, but behind the scenes, just like too many politicians, he is saying one thing and doing another, DON'T BE FOOLED.
Deida Goes Silent on These Revelations
Over two months ago, I sent David an email insisting that he cancel these events because of the background and associations of his producer, Adam Gilad and more so because in using Gilad, he is not only compromising the integrity of his work, but placing the participants at risk, especially the women. Could you imagine being a single woman and going to one of these workshops expecting to do sexual spirituality work in a safe setting and then find yourself getting hit on by men who are attending in order to improve their pick-up and seduction skills? Furthermore, Gilad and the PUAs make endless references to hot babes both in words and in pictures, so if a woman attending a Deida seminar is not a "hot babe", how will she be treated? And if she is hot, will she be doing exercises with a man who is interested in opening something other than her heart? Click on to "Ugly Women" to see what looms in the future of Deida events.
Gilad cannot disprove or hide his connection to the pick-up and seduction world. And now, acting as David’s producer, he is looking to build a larger platform. He contacted me proposing that all the people who had worked for David are now being invited to participate in a future profit structure. I declined the invitation.
Also on the evidence page is a copy of the Natural Seducers site from June 2007 where David Deida is listed as their partner. David Deida and Natural Seducers as partners? Partners in what you might ask!
If David Deida is allowed to continue his work and stay involved with the PUA community, he places men and women especially, at risk. I mention men as well because often women who are in relationships attend David’s workshops with the intent of bringing back what they learn to their male partners. What man anywhere would want his female partner attending a workshop with participants seeking to improve their seduction skills?
Like Gilad, look for David Deida to suggest that his involvement with the PUAs is a noble effort to change the direction of that community. Perhaps he may reach a few, but with no infrastructure, no follow-up and no integration for his work, any reformed PUAs would quickly return to the goal of “the Game.” I believe David Deida is more concerned with money than maintaining and improving the quality of his work and the participants who attend. Yes, he has reached many people to see intimacy as a spiritual practice and personally, I am forever changed by the work, but this reckless pursuit of a community of seduction aficionados is not the game that respects the emerging spiritual community, the likes of who attend workshops at major holistic centers.
If you follow the web of associations to other sites connected to www.NaturalSeducers.com listing David Deida as their partner, you will find an endless array of information that denigrates and degrades women. There is nowhere where David Deida has revealed a plan to bring enlightened sex to the PUAs and I believe he is setting himself up to cash in on seduction boot camps that charge up to $3000 per weekend. Even the $2,750 he charges for his 7-day intensives at Omega and Kripalu doesn’t seem like a great deal given what men half his age are raking in from the PUA wannabes.
Furthermore, from calls and emails I have received over the years, David's workshops and intensives are leaving more scars than healing for some participants. At the last workshop I attended in 2006 as an assistant, David neglected to announce the workshop rules which are designed to create a safe container for the participants. I later emailed him that in neglecting to do so, several participants engaged in sexual activity during the seminar and as a result, a woman was hounded for months by a man she met at the workshop. David emailed me back thanking me for pointing this out to him.
Let Your Voice be Heard
Now is the time to do you homework and to speak out. Speak out to any group as to why they would sponsor David Deida knowing what is going on. Speak out and demand accountability. Ask David why he is involved with the PUA community. Ask him what will safeguard the women who attend his workshops and intensives. Needless to say, he has no phone number on his website but his email contact addresses are:
ddeida@tampabay.rr.com
david_deida@csi.com
dd@sugarloaf.net
Call David on his “game.” Ask the venues that bring him in if the cache of having a teacher of spiritual sexuality to enliven their schedule is worth the risk of placing their participants in harm's way? Everyone knows sex sells, but prior knowledge of irresponsible behavior is not worth the risk of a tragic occurrence and the negative publicity that follows.
With all the sexual perversion in the world today, I thought David Deida
was a shining star of love and respect, but that does not seem to be the
case.
I am deeply saddened to have to have brought to the public’s attention,
David’s failure to live up to the noble ideals of which he writes. We would
expect that the principles that he expounds to be fully embodied in his
actions and associations, especially where it matters most with regards
to the safety of the women in his workshops.
I believe that love, understanding and happiness are our natural state. But unconsciously, we habitually decide on lesser ways of being. Anyone in the position of influence such as David Deida must be called upon to answer to his community. Every spiritual teacher on the consciousness scene must be held to a high degree of accountability.
I urge you to send this website around the world so everyone from this point on will know what may be in store for them in a Deida workshop or intensive. I still use The Way of the Superior Man as an effective tool in my coaching practice. And I recommend this book to many people, but for all the reasons you will find on this site, I can no longer be silent about the truth of his marketing tactics.
I am sorry for how this may feel to many of you but each day I become more and more convinced that bringing seduction community pick up artists into his workshops places women at risk. I have just come across a statistic about sex abuse that cites adherence by men to sex role stereotyping and negative attitudes of men towards women as risk factors for perpetrating sexual violence. I know this is strong language, but if even one woman is at risk in Deida's "new" workshop community, then we are all responsible.
I sincerely hope you can reach David Deida and his sponsors and insist that he break ALL ties with the PUA / seduction community.
Sincerely,
Michael Jascz
www.DeidaCentral.com