How the founder of an ‘orgasmic meditation' startup ended up on trial

Yahoo

13-05-2025

She was once hailed by Gwyneth Paltrow as a 'magnetic' sex guru who held the key to female pleasure. But after a damaging 2022 Netflix documentary and an FBI investigation, Nicole Daedone, a proponent of 'orgasmic meditation' and the founder of orgasm company OneTaste, is on trial with her former head of sales Rachel Cherwitz after being indicted on a charge of running a conspiracy involving forced labour.
It's an extraordinary fall from grace. Just a few years ago, Paltrow was enthusiastically interviewing Daedone, 58, on her Goop podcast, while Khloé Kardashian chose Daedone's book Slow Sex: The Art and Craft of the Female Orgasm for her book club, saying: 'Orgasmic meditation is the key to ultimate satisfaction.'
The practice involves female participants removing all clothing from the waist down and then having their clitoris manually stimulated by another person (often male) to induce sexual pleasure.
But many of those involved with OneTaste are now viewing their experiences in a very different light, claiming that their vulnerability was exploited and that they were pressured into going too far. Is this simply regret reframed as accusation, or the emerging dark side of the powerful cult of wellness?
OneTaste has a vivid if nebulous origin story. In her 2011 TEDx talk, Daedone shared how in 1998 she had met a man at a party who practised 'contemplative sexuality'. Daedone has since been hazy on said man's identity – she's described him variously as a monk, a Buddhist, or just a 'cute guy' – but she did explain in frank detail what they did together.
Daedone lay down naked while the man shone a torch on her vagina and described the colours; her labia, apparently, were 'coral'. He proceeded to stroke her clitoris in a manner, she said, 'no firmer than you would stroke your eyelid,' and her response was life-changing. 'I just broke open, and the feeling was pure and clean.' Daedone then had her moment of revelation: 'Female orgasm is vital for every single woman on the planet.'
And female orgasm has been a long-standing interest of Daedone's. She had previously been part of The Welcomed Consensus, a group specialising in female orgasm (along with friendship, sensuality and communal living). One member claimed she could sustain an orgasm for three hours, 'not including cigarette breaks'.
In 2004, Daedone founded company OneTaste with coach and author Robert Kandell in order to share the practice, which she branded 'orgasmic meditation' (or OM, pronounced 'ohm'), with the masses. Their first base was a loft in San Francisco, and they quickly attracted 50 regulars, in their 20s and 30s, who took part in communal OM workshops.
Those ritualistic sessions involved a woman lying on pillows (a 'nest' in Daedone's winsome lingo) with her legs bowed open (or 'butterflied'), naked from the waist down. Her fully clothed partner would don latex gloves, apply lubricant, and stroke her clitoris. The aim was to reach a satisfactory conclusion within 15 minutes: Daedone would set a clock timer.
Over the next decade, OneTaste expanded its operations, setting up retreat centres in New York, Las Vegas and, in 2014, London, branded as TurnOn Britain. On the company's website, Daedone claims that at its peak it had 35,000 customers worldwide. Around 400 of those lived full time in the centres, renting rooms and working as dedicated staff who sold and delivered courses for OneTaste.
But despite Daedone's rhetoric, this was not a philanthropic effort. According to a 2018 report in Bloomberg Businessweek, an introductory workshop cost $199 (£151), a weekend course $499 (£378), a retreat $4,000 (£3,000), and an annual subscription giving you access to all the courses was a whopping $60,000 (£45,000). If you wanted full training to become a certified coach, that set you back $16,000 (£12,000).
Daedone published her book Slow Sex in 2012, comparing her philosophy to the Slow Food movement. OneTaste also sold everything from branded lubricant and pillows to instructional DVDs.
It certainly didn't hurt that the chic wellness movement was skyrocketing. The New York Times put Daedone, a glossy advocate, on the cover of its style section in 2009. She also used trendy therapy speak, inviting women to 'sit in their power', and presented her practice as spiritual enlightenment and connection rather than sex. In her TEDx talk, which racked up more than two million views, Daedone spoke about the western woman's crisis: 'I work too hard, I eat too much, I diet too much, I drink too much, I shop too much, I give too much – and still there's this sense of hunger that I can't touch.'
It was a well-crafted narrative; by 2017, OneTaste had an annual revenue of $12 million (£9 million), bases in nine cities and 150 employees. Then Hollywood came calling. In 2018, Gwyneth Paltrow invited Daedone on to her Goop podcast, telling her followers that Daedone's practice was 'the yoga of sex' – the ideal sales pitch for the wellness age.
According to Bloomberg, staffers looking for new clients were encouraged to target young, beautiful women and awkward but well-moneyed tech bros, and to grab their attention with openers such as: 'How's your orgasm?' Former OneTaste lead instructor Ken Blackman noted that Silicon Valley was the ideal original market, since it could frame OM as 'a new operating system for human connection'.
Former staffers told Bloomberg they played ice-breaker games at the start of OneTaste workshops that prompted participants to share vulnerable stories about their anxiety, loneliness or sexual trauma; staff took notes so they could hone future sales pitches for similarly troubled clients. OneTaste has denied this characterisation.
Daedone herself had a turbulent childhood. Growing up in California with a single mother, she got pregnant accidentally aged 16 and had an abortion. In 1994, aged 27, she made the horrifying discovery that her birth father was dying in prison after being convicted of molesting two girls. At that point, she said, 'Everything in my reality just collapsed.' It was then that she began her spiritual studies.
For OneTaste sales director Rachel Cherwitz, she had been diagnosed as anorgasmic (unable to achieve orgasm), and was recommended the company by her yoga teacher. She said that OM 'spoke to me in a pretty deep way'.
But whether or not Daedone and Cherwitz's motives were originally pure, OneTaste became a formidable business empire. Former staffers have said they were terrified of Cherwitz's daunting goals. Ahead of events where staff were expected to recruit new customers, she would allegedly motivate her team by showing them a YouTube video of lions hunting in a pack. Staffers reportedly used porn movie terminology, referring to themselves as 'fluffers' (someone employed on porn sets to keep the male performer erect). One told Bloomberg: 'You fluff someone to get them energetically and emotionally hard. You were the dangled bait, like, 'You can have more of this if you buy this $10,000 course.''
Clients were allegedly encouraged to take out multiple credit cards so they could pay for more and more courses. Former director of reach Joanna Van Vleck said in 2018, 'We took money from people that we shouldn't have,' and added that the company had revised its policies.
But it wasn't just participants shelling out thousands. Ruwan Meepagala worked for OneTaste for two years and left with $30,000 in credit card debt. When he complained about not getting paid, he said he was accused of having a 'scarcity mindset'. Other staffers reported being forced to work for free after getting into debt with the company, comparing it with a pyramid scheme.
Hamza Tayeb was drawn right into the centre of OneTaste, even marrying Cherwitz. He recalled taking part in an event called Magic School in 2015 involving ceremonial piercing and dancers holding snakes. Daedone bestowed the title of 'priests and priestesses of orgasm' upon a chosen few, including Tayeb. Another former staffer said: 'It was a religion. Orgasm was God, and Nicole was like Jesus.'
In 2018, after Bloomberg's damning report, OneTaste shut down its offices and retreats, pivoting to online education instead. In 2022, it rebranded as The Institute of OM.
But the company had another crisis that year thanks to the investigative Netflix documentary Orgasm Inc. Its director Sarah Gibson said she was contacted by Emmy-nominated writer and director Lena Dunham and encouraged to look into 'the wellness industrial complex and unregulated alternative healing modalities'.
Gibson's interviews with former OneTaste employees painted a grim picture. One said the organisation 'went from utopia to a hell hole'. Former staffer Ayries Blanck declined to be interviewed, according to the documentary, 'out of fear of reprisals,' but her story was told: in 2015, OneTaste paid her a $325,000 (£246,000) settlement after she claimed she was ordered to sleep with managers and clients, which she considered to be sexual assault.
The FBI began an investigation into the company in 2018 for possible sex trafficking, prostitution and labour law infractions, and in June 2023, Daedone and Cherwitz were indicted on a count of conspiracy for forced labour. The indictment claimed that the pair had instructed members to 'engage in sexual acts they found uncomfortable or repulsive' in order to reach enlightenment, that resistance 'was not tolerated', and that the company withheld promised wages and commissions.
It also accused OneTaste of subjecting participants to surveillance and indoctrination. Daedone and Cherwitz both pleaded not guilty. They face up to 20 years in prison if convicted.
Last week, their criminal trial began in New York. US attorney Sean Fern told the jury: 'They recruited vulnerable women to perform sexual labour for their benefit' in return for 'power, prestige and money'. Fern also claimed: 'The victims came to OneTaste seeking personal growth. They left as shells of their former selves.'
Cherwitz's lawyer, Mike Robotti, criticised the prosecution's 'frightening tales', and compared OM with 'yoga or CrossFit'. Robotti claimed that OneTaste employees 'were having fun, and they were having sex. The exit door was always open.'
Daedone's lawyer, Jennifer Bonjean, has defended Harvey Weinstein, R Kelly and Bill Cosby. She said in her opening statement that the complainants are now married with kids and don't want people to know 'what they were doing in their 20s'. She continued: 'Grown people made grown decisions they don't want to stand by.'
She has already scored one victory by getting a key piece of evidence thrown out: Blanck's handwritten journals, which featured in the Netflix documentary. It was later discovered that some portions had been copied from journals that were originally typewritten.
Other former employees are now giving testimony, including one known as Becky. She told the jury that she was expected to perform OM 'with anybody off the street' when she was 23, adding: 'I was the perfect mark.'
With little neutral evidence in play, it's a classic courtroom battle of competing narratives: Daedone's idea of sexual enlightenment and freedom versus former practitioners' alleged accounts of abuse and exploitation. It remains to be seen whether the jury decides that this temple of bliss was actually a world of pain.
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