Since last summer, a startup in beta mode has been asking for volunteers to participate in 55-minute sessions called “huddles,” where strangers discuss their deepest hopes and fears. The fledgling company, Peoplehood, is run by entrepreneurs Elizabeth Cutler and Julie Rice, who combined sweat and spirituality in their latest venture, high-end fitness chain SoulCycle.
Nearly 1,000 people have participated so far, Cutler and Rice said. On a recent night, I was one of 20 volunteers to connect to a remote session moderated by Shamicka Jonesan actress, dancer, and model who, in Peoplehood parlance, is a “superconnector.”
Wearing a sweatshirt with “PPLHD” on the front, Ms. Jones had an infectiously upbeat presence. After leading us through a series of breathing exercises, she introduced the topic of the day: uncertainty.
Before the discussion started, she laid out the ground rules. If you weren’t the person speaking, you were supposed to listen actively, without interrupting. To express support for a speaker, she had to use one of three responses: snap; placing his hands on her heart; or raising your hands, palms facing the screen.
Mrs. Jones then gave us a discussion message: “But how I really feel is blank space.” To fill in the blank, members of the group expressed anxiety about the war in Ukraine, the lingering effects of the pandemic, and a return to pre-2020 work settings. During this part of the meeting, which lasted about 20 minutes, I was trying to be a good Peoplehood person. I broke up. I put my hands over my heart. At one point, while trying to juggle active listening and coming up with the right answer, I accidentally jazzed up hands.
Then we were separated into pairs. Each person was instructed to speak for three minutes, without interruption. The message this time: What keeps you up at night? Once we all shared our 3am anxieties with a stranger, we were each given a new companion for another message: Name something you’re looking forward to.
Six minutes later, we returned to the full group to share our reflections. We then did some light stretching to relaxing music. Missed class.
Selling ‘Connection’
Ms. Cutler and Ms. Rice see Peoplehood as a natural successor to SoulCycle, which became a phenomenon because it made its clients feel as if they were sculpting not only their bodies but themselves. The network’s devotees wear SoulCycle gear as they pedal in unison on stationary bikes in candlelit rooms under the tutelage of guru-like instructors shouting messages of empowerment.
“What Elizabeth and I discovered at SoulCycle was that people came because they thought they wanted to get in better shape,” Rice said in an interview. “But ultimately what they found in those rooms was connection. We quickly learned that the product we were selling was connecting with other people.”
“A decade later,” he continued, “we realized that the connection should be its own product. We are the modern medicine for the loneliness epidemic.”
Prior to the first SoulCycle class in 2006, Ms. Rice was a talent manager at a company whose clients included Will Smith and Jennifer Lopez; Ms. Cutler worked as a real estate agent and Jin Shin Jyutsu acupressure practitioner. They met in Manhattan, where they were married mothers of young children.
They shared a common frustration at the time: They found most gyms boring, even unpleasant. Along with Ruth Zukerman, a third founder who left SoulCycle In 2009, they came up with the idea of a fitness class as a bonding experience. It would also be elegant, with instructors who were “more like spiritual gurus” than “boot camp sergeants,” as Ms. Cutler described the original vision in an interview from 2018.
The first location was a former dance studio hidden behind the lobby of an Upper West Side apartment building. SoulCycle soon became a much talked about chain. In 2011, luxury fitness company Equinox swooped in and bought a majority stake. Before leaving their active roles with the company in 2016, Ms. Rice and Ms. Cutler each received payments of $90 million. Now, with Peoplehood, they’re back in commissioning mode.
“We’re thinking about how do we put this into the zeitgeist in a way that makes it joyful and uplifting and meaningful, and also create a brand around it that makes its relationships great to work on,” Ms. Rice said.
The headquarters is in a three-story building, now undergoing renovation, in the Flatiron district of Manhattan. On one wall, a message reads: “Confidentiality is a promise we make to each other. What is said in the room, stays in the room.”
Mrs. Cutler and Mrs. Rice will also be selling Peoplehood merchandise, including prayer candles, hats, bags and sweatshirts. They declined to say what a session will cost or how much money they raised from investors in a recent fundraising round.
Marketing materials being shared with investors are peppered with enthusiastic spiritual language and startup jargon, including references to Peoplehood’s “digital and physical sanctuaries” and the two founders’ “superpower” of “finding, training and manage connecting rock stars to climb humans.” experience.”
“A little woo-woo”
The germ of the Peoplehood idea appeared early in the SoulCycle days, when Ms. Cutler woke up filled with anxiety about her new life as an executive and businesswoman. Fumbling with her phone in the dark, she did a Google search for “life coach.” Within a week, she and Mrs. Rice began meeting regularly with Meredith Haberfeld, who runs a leadership development and coaching firm.
“Once I gave them the idea of not having a lumpy rug where things get swept under the rug,” said Ms. Haberfeld, who is now a consultant with Peoplehood, “they were deeply committed to having the kind of relationship among them marked by transparency, personal responsibility, accountability and real conversations”.
Fast forward to 2019. Ms. Cutler was investing in startups and advising entrepreneurs. Ms. Rice was the chief brand officer at WeWork, reporting to Adam Neumann, a position in which she came up with the tagline “Made for us.” Ms. Rice left WeWork after two years, around the time the company public implosion. (She is an inspiration to the elisha kennedy character, played by America Ferrera, in the Apple TV+ series “WeCrashed”).
Ms. Cutler and Ms. Rice grew concerned about the state of speech in America, not just on social media, but at the dinner table, and began discussing their next big thing in earnest. When the pandemic hit, they consulted with scientists, psychologists, spiritual leaders, and therapists to develop the meetings. Last summer, they recruited friends (and friends of friends) to attend the first Peoplehood sessions.
“It’s a bit of a woo-woo, and I really felt an impact in a very positive way,” he said. Julio Alvarez, a 34-year-old tech industry leadership coach who participated in pilot classes. “Pause, breathing, listening, sharing, that’s what we need most in this world.”
Carolyn Cary, 60, a friend of Ms. Cutler’s who lives in Carrollton, Ga., has attended both types of meetings the company offers: sessions for individuals, like the one I attended, and those geared toward couples. . “It’s like yoga for the mind, and I need it,” she said.
Not everyone is sold on the idea. Jerrold Shapirowho teaches aspiring therapists as a professor of counseling psychology at Santa Clara University in California, warned of the dangers inherent in support groups run by people who are not trained to assess and manage therapy participants group.
“I cannot express how complex and intricate it is to be a group therapist,” said Dr. Shapiro. He added that, in his opinion, a company offering classes similar to group therapy sessions that are not led by mental health professionals would be “crossing the line, which, from a professional standpoint, is scary.” ”.
When asked about that, Ms. Rice said that Peoplehood is not intended to replace the work of psychologists and psychiatrists. “It feels therapeutic, but it’s not therapy,” she said. They are vitamins, not medicines.
“We put our guides through a very thorough training process,” he continued. “They attend many days of training and practice many weeks before they are included in the program. They continue to be audited and have additional training every week.”
Ms. Jones, the leader of the session I attended, said that she had benefited from the Peoplehood training. “I thought she was a good listener,” she said, “but I found out she was trash. The reality is: How often do you have time to let your thoughts unfold before someone else steps in?
The sale of spirituality and personal fulfillment outside houses of worship and therapists’ offices is nothing new in American life, the historian said. Natalia Petrzela, an associate professor at the New School who has studied cultural movements. A century after 19th-century transcendentalists advocated the betterment of humanity through communion with nature, clergyman Norman Vincent Peale brought a gospel of positivity to secular audiences through his bestseller “The Power of Nature.” positive thinking”. As part of the rapid social change of the late 1960s, idealists in rebellion against rat-race materialism joined communes and meeting groups.
In the following decade came the rise of Erhard Seminars Training, known as its T, a program led by self-improvement guru Werner Erhard. EST participants attempted to break free from old patterns in rigorous 60-hour seminars. Amid criticism of the movement and its leaders, EST splintered in the 1980s. However, Mr. Erhard helped spawn an industry of authors, motivational speakers, spiritualists, and television hosts who promised answers to existential questions and offered solutions to the ills of modern life.
tara isabella burton, who studied the “religiously unaffiliated” in his 2020 book, “Strange Rites: New Religions for a Godless World,” has written that many people who have lost trust in institutions will put their faith in Instagram influencers who They specialize in personal care. A center dedicated to self-improvement and community, marketed by experts and built on the model of a high-end fitness chain, could find a large audience, she said.
“Village status sounds like the natural culmination of our thinking about spirituality and commerce in 2022,” said Ms Burton.
Author Amanda Montell, who argued that SoulCycle played an “ecclesiastical role” in the lives of her clients in her 2021 book, “Cult: the language of fanaticism”, said she was skeptical of the company in the works of Ms. Cutler and Ms. Rice.
“Leaving your fitness in the hands of spinning instructors feels less risky than putting your spiritual, psychological and emotional health in the hands of someone trying to build and scale a giant business,” said Ms. Montell.
Ms. Cutler and Ms. Rice hope Peoplehood will become a regular part of their clients’ lives, teaching them the ways of what they call “relationship fitness.”
“What we’re doing here is really using a lot of that SoulCycle playbook to help people connect with themselves and with each other,” Ms. Cutler said.
