Media: clients accused the personal growth center of sectarianism

Clients of the Samara center for personal growth "Harmony" accused the organization of sectarianism. One of the victims told the Baza telegram channel that people spent large sums of money and performed humiliating tasks under the guise of personal growth training.

According to Baza’s interlocutor Oleg (name changed), he paid 100 thousand rubles for training on leadership development from business coach and head of the Harmony center Ella Prudnikova. The program had three stages and, according to the victim, resembled a sect: participants were forbidden to talk about what was happening in the center and contact the police.

The first stage was called “Basic”. In it, participants were forced to share their innermost, intimate secrets with each other, supposedly for the sake of team unity, Oleg said. Later, this information was allegedly used to pressure and extort money.

The second stage was called “Transformation”. Oleg told the telegram channel that as part of it, participants were forced to shave their heads, sit for hours in the pose of a monk, scratch words on cemetery tombstones, walk in public places in an astronaut suit or wrap themselves in cloth, crawl on the floor and imagine themselves as a caterpillar.

In the third stage, called “Leadership,” participants were forced to wash strangers’ feet with a toothbrush, pretend to be sex workers and ask intimate questions to random passers-by, the victim said.

At the same time, Ella Prudnikova allegedly studied the financial situation of course participants and borrowed large sums. According to Oleg, at first the head of the center returned the funds, but three years ago she stopped doing this.

She borrowed eight million rubles from an interlocutor of the telegram channel, Prudnikova, and also issued a loan for him in the amount of nine million rubles. Oleg tried to return the money, but he failed, since the money could not be returned, since the property of the head of the center was registered in the name of relatives. Other participants are also trying to sue the center's management. According to Baza, preliminary damage from the activities of Harmony could reach 100 million rubles.

In December 2025, Samara police opened a case after complaints from injured Harmony clients, MK wrote . In relation to whom and under what particular article, the publication did not specify. Journalists noted that, according to their data, at least seven people contacted the police, and the total amount of damage for these claims amounted to about 100 thousand rubles.

The case was opened after the governor of the Samara region, Vyacheslav Fedorishchev, intervened in the situation with the center. He was approached by the husband of one of the training participants, 27-year-old Alena, a participant in the war in Ukraine named Oleg.