San Francisco has always made room for ideas that arrive before the rest of the country has decided what to call them.
Some become industries. Others disappear. A few become so controversial that the argument over the people behind them overwhelms any serious examination of the original idea.
OneTaste may belong in that last category.
Founded in San Francisco in 2004, the company became known for Orgasmic Meditation, or OM, a structured 15-minute partnered attention practice involving clitoral stimulation. Supporters describe it as a form of meditation designed to develop attention, connection and awareness. Critics have portrayed it as sexual exploitation dressed in the language of wellness.
Anjuli Ayer, who acquired OneTaste with her business partners in 2017 and became CEO the following year, is now trying to move the organization beyond that binary.
Her task is unusually complicated. She is working to grow the practice, support scientific research and build credible standards around its teaching while Nicole Daedone, OneTaste’s founder, and Rachel Cherwitz, its former head of sales, serve federal prison sentences following their convictions for forced-labor conspiracy.
Ayer believes the prosecution fundamentally mischaracterized the company and ignored evidence that did not fit its theory. At the same time, she understands that OneTaste cannot secure its future simply by relitigating its past.
The organization has to show what the practice is, what the research actually says and whether the work can withstand scrutiny.
A San Francisco Idea That Became a Global Organization
OneTaste began as a small San Francisco wellness venture and eventually expanded into New York, Los Angeles, Denver, Austin, London and other cities. The federal government’s own indictment described it as a California corporation with its principal place of business in San Francisco.
The company says approximately 35,000 people directly attended its programs, while substantially more encountered its ideas through books, online courses, public demonstrations and instructional videos. More than 100 outside teachers participated in its courses over the years, according to the organization.
That history matters to Ayer because it challenges the idea that OneTaste can be understood solely through the testimony of a small number of dissatisfied former participants.
It does not mean their accounts should be dismissed. Any organization that worked with tens of thousands of people will have participants who describe their experiences differently, including some who say they were harmed. Ayer’s argument is that those experiences should not erase the thousands of adults who say they participated voluntarily and found value in the practice.
Her business challenge is to build a structure capable of holding both realities without allowing either one to become the entire story.
That means clearer teaching standards, more explicit consent protocols, broader digital access and scientific research that can be examined independently of the company’s reputation.
Moving the Conversation From Sensation to Science
OneTaste’s strongest argument for a second look may come from researchers rather than its leadership.
Andrew Newberg and colleagues at Thomas Jefferson University have used functional MRI and PET imaging to study people performing OM. The researchers described the neurological response as a hybrid, containing some features associated with meditation and others associated with sexual stimulation. That does not establish OM as a medical treatment, but it suggests that the practice cannot be explained simply as conventional sexual arousal.
Other published research has examined interpersonal closeness, positive affect and mystical-type experiences reported by both participants in the practice. One study found that partnered intimate touch during OM was associated with increased feelings of closeness, particularly between people who were not romantic partners.
The most consequential research so far may be a small Phase 1 clinical trial involving people with symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.
Participants were asked to perform OM at least 12 times over four weeks. Researchers reported that average PTSD assessment scores declined from 60 to 28, a 47% reduction. The study concluded that OM appeared safe within the trial population and warranted further research.
The limitations are important. The trial was small, uncontrolled and commissioned by a foundation supporting OM research. Several researchers also disclosed previous experience with the practice. It cannot prove that OM treats PTSD, and independent replication will be necessary before any clinical conclusions can responsibly be made.
Still, this is how emerging research generally begins. A signal appears, limitations are identified and larger studies determine whether the finding survives.
For Ayer, the appropriate response is neither blind acceptance nor automatic dismissal. It is more science.
The People Behind the Data
The scientific findings are supported by personal accounts from people who say the practice helped them recover a sense of connection after trauma.
Combat veterans Bob Sabado and Andy Garcia have described OM as helping them reconnect with emotions that had been muted by their military experiences. Garcia, who served a 13-month combat tour and was medically discharged with PTSD, has said the practice helped him stop feeling like a machine.
These accounts are testimonials, not clinical proof. They should be understood that way.
They nevertheless raise a serious question for a health and wellness culture that frequently says it wants new approaches to trauma: What happens when a potentially useful practice is so culturally controversial that researchers, patients and institutions become reluctant even to examine it?
San Francisco has seen versions of this before. Psychedelic-assisted therapy spent decades associated primarily with illegality and counterculture before returning to universities, clinical trials and mainstream medical debate.
That history does not mean every unconventional idea is eventually vindicated. It does mean social discomfort is not a scientific finding.
From Personal Practice to Public Service
The influence of Daedone’s work has also moved beyond OneTaste.
Unconditional Freedom, a nonprofit that grew from the same community, reports that its Art of Soulmaking prison curriculum has reached more than 250,000 incarcerated people through over 1,500 correctional facilities in 48 states.
Its Prison Monastery model combines meditation, writing, yoga, gardening, restorative justice and other structured practices intended to help incarcerated people develop responsibility and emotional awareness.
The program was piloted at the Mendocino County Jail before expanding into other facilities, including the Central California Women’s Facility. Its leaders say that when the program was placed inside one of the prison’s most violent housing units, women from elsewhere in the facility began requesting transfers into it.
Another related initiative, Free Food, serves chef-prepared meals to people experiencing food insecurity. Rather than operate as a traditional meal line, the program is built around the idea that guests should receive the atmosphere, service and dignity of a restaurant.
These programs do not determine whether a federal conviction was legally sound. They do complicate the portrayal of Daedone’s work as being concerned only with control, profit or sexual access.
For Ayer, they demonstrate what the underlying philosophy looks like when applied to prisons, hunger and social isolation rather than sexuality.
A San Francisco Company Prosecuted in Brooklyn
There is another aspect of the case that has received surprisingly little attention in the Bay Area.
OneTaste was founded in San Francisco. Its principal place of business was here, and much of the conduct described at trial arose from the company’s California operations. Daedone and Cherwitz both spent substantial portions of the relevant period in California.
Yet the investigation was conducted through the FBI’s New York field office, and the prosecution was brought by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York in Brooklyn.
The venue was legally available because OneTaste also maintained operations in Brooklyn. The indictment alleged that the conspiracy occurred in the Eastern District of New York “and elsewhere,” and prosecutors presented evidence that OneTaste participants performed work while residing in a Brooklyn OM house.
That explains how the case could be prosecuted in Brooklyn. It does not fully explain why Brooklyn became the government’s chosen forum rather than the Northern District of California.
The distinction matters.
Venue is a legal question. Prosecutorial selection is an institutional one. The office that develops a case determines which investigators shape it, which grand jury hears it, which court interprets the evidence and which regional culture surrounds the trial.
No publicly available document appears to provide a definitive explanation for why EDNY took the lead.
For Ayer, the location reflects the wider problem confronting OneTaste. A company created within San Francisco’s tradition of experimentation was ultimately judged thousands of miles away through a framework that treated its unusual practices and language primarily as evidence of coercion.
That does not invalidate the verdict. It does make the route to that verdict worthy of examination.
A Case Built Around Forced Labor, Not a Sex Crime
Daedone and Cherwitz were not convicted of sexual assault, prostitution or sex trafficking. They were convicted of a single count of conspiracy to commit forced labor.
Prosecutors argued that psychological, emotional and financial pressure caused certain OneTaste participants to provide labor and services they otherwise would not have performed. The defense maintained that the participants were adults who entered and left the organization voluntarily and that the government transformed influence, unconventional beliefs and later regret into criminal coercion.
A federal jury accepted the government’s case. Daedone was sentenced to nine years in prison, while Cherwitz received a sentence of 78 months. Both have appealed.
The investigation also produced an episode that continues to trouble Ayer and the defense.
Personal journals attributed to a leading government witness had been presented publicly as contemporaneous accounts and appeared in the Netflix documentary Orgasm Inc. Before trial, the government acknowledged that it could no longer stand behind the authenticity of the handwritten journals. The witness had recreated the material years after the events described. Prosecutors did not use the journals at trial and did not call that witness.
The case nevertheless proceeded.
Ayer believes that moment should have caused investigators to reexamine the assumptions underlying the prosecution. Prosecutors maintained that other witnesses and evidence independently established the forced-labor conspiracy, and the jury agreed.
The disagreement is now before the federal appellate courts.
Building an Organization That Can Outlive the Case
Ayer is not waiting for the appeal before determining what OneTaste becomes next.
The organization is expanding access through free digital instruction, an OM application and an online platform. Its current structure connects OM with a broader portfolio of projects involving incarceration, hunger, women’s programming, home design and emerging technology.
Ayer’s ambition is large. She has spoken about reaching as many as one billion people with the philosophy and practice.
Reaching that scale will require more than a compelling founder or a devoted community. It will require independent research, credible governance, enforceable consent rules and the willingness to address criticism without abandoning the people whose experiences contradict the dominant narrative.
Ayer is also unwilling to build the company’s future by erasing Daedone.
She believes the founder was prosecuted in error and that the government reduced an unconventional but voluntary community to a criminal theory that may have consequences far beyond OneTaste. Religious-freedom scholars have begun raising similar concerns about whether expansive theories of psychological coercion could eventually be used against spiritual and intentional communities whose beliefs fall outside the mainstream.
The appeal will determine whether the convictions survive legal review.
The longer-term question is different.
It is whether San Francisco produced a dangerous organization that was finally held accountable, an early health and consciousness practice that became trapped inside a sensational narrative, or something more complicated than either version allows.
Anjuli Ayer is betting that the science, the public-service work and the experiences of the people who continue to practice OM will eventually provide the answer.
She is building the company on the assumption that its most consequential chapter has not yet been written.
Orgasmic Meditation has not been approved by the FDA to diagnose, prevent or treat PTSD or any other medical condition. Research into its potential health effects remains preliminary.
