March 2025

# Your Higher Self (Le Plein Potentiel)

Dereck Daschke

Truman State University, ddaschke@truman.edu

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## Recommended Citation

Daschke, Dereck (2025) "Your Higher Self (Le Plein Potentiel)," *Journal of Religion & Film*: Vol. 29: Iss. 1, Article 62.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.32873/uno.dc.jrf.29.01.62

Available at: https://digitalcommons.unomaha.edu/jrf/vol29/iss1/62

This SXSW Film Festival Review is brought to you for free and open access by DigitalCommons@UNO. It has been accepted for inclusion in Journal of Religion & Film by an authorized editor of DigitalCommons@UNO. For more information, please contact

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# Your Higher Self (Le Plein Potentiel)

## Abstract

This is a film review of *Your Higher Self (Le Plein Potentiel)* (2025) directed by Annie St-Pierre.

## Creative Commons License

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This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

## Author Notes

Dereck Daschke is a professor of Philosophy & Religion at Truman State University and holds a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago Divinity School. Particularly interested in the intersection among religion, psychology, and wellness, his academic work over more than two decades has analyzed the transformational breakdowns and creative buildups in the form of apocalypses, mysticism, new religious movements, psychedelics, the Bible, Bob Dylan, and, of course, film. He regularly teaches "Religion and Film" at Truman and has overseen a number of student research theses that have contributed to the conversation about just why it is that movies capture our meaning-making imaginations in the way they do.
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## Your Higher Self (Le Plein Potentiel) (2025), dir. Annie St-Pierre

> "It takes a lifetime to get to know oneself."

French-Canadian Annie St-Pierre's documentary look at the burgeoning—and lucrative—life coaching industry is titled *Le Plein Potentiel* (“Full Potential”) in French, but “Your Higher Self” in English. The film arguably exists in the subtle difference between the two titles, the French name referencing the pragmatic goal of tapping into one's reservoirs of creativity, energy, and ability, which may be stagnating in one's current situation, while the English name references the psycho-spiritual concept of a core of true being that transcends ordinary ego consciousness. In such philosophies, striving for one's full potential helps uncover, actualize, and integrate aspects of one's higher self into day-to-day life, making a person happier, healthier, and more powerful.

Presenting a mosaic of personal improvement techniques and programs, including horseback riding, ice water plunges, family roleplay, group laughter, sexual BDSM training, and so on, the film reveals wounded selves trying to repair parts of their lives, large and small. In this way, the various efforts occupy a cultural space somewhere between therapy and charismatic
"cults," seeking to heal family and childhood trauma and creating an environment suited for a person to unleash their full potential. However, the idea that religion and spirituality often have a focus on self-improvement against the constraints of society, biography, or biology is hardly new. Hinduism, perhaps the oldest continuously practiced religion in the world, conceives of the sacred core of the human being—our soul—as *atman*, which is a form of the divine whole known as *brahman*. Daily practice of the four *yogas* brings about peace and liberation, if not in this lifetime, then in some future one. Relatedly, Buddhism distinguishes itself from Hinduism in part by its therapeutic focus on liberating the self from cosmic cycles of suffering, with the Buddha seen as the “physician of the soul.” Even Christianity, the largest religion in the world and the most dominant cultural force in the West, promises to heal psycho-spiritual wounds through a relationship with Jesus himself, portrayed as a healer in the Gospels who informs sinners, “your faith has made you well.”

But above all, the focus on self-improvement at the heart of life coaching programs echoes in the New Age, a movement with roots in the late nineteenth century but emerging in mainstream US consciousness in the 1960s through 1980s. Attractive to many in the “spiritual but not religious” population who do not find the answers they seek in mainstream religion, both New Age faiths and life coaching offer a veneer of spirituality over an eclectic array of practices that help assign greater meaning to personal discontent with the world and one’s life in it. From what the audience sees in this film, the clients do seem to get out of these exercises what they’re looking for, if only a push into a more confident, better supported direction—one which they have wanted to pursue, even as a lifetime of negative messages in their heads held them back. One coach sums up this change in internal motivation by stating, “Some say it takes courage to be yourself. I say it takes courage *not* to be yourself.”
However, discordant notes arise when the context for the coaching is revealed to be more artificial than expected. Early on, then again towards the end, the film presents an intimate one-on-one encounter between a coach and a client, only to show they are being observed and critiqued on the other side of a two-way mirror. Later, a man receives coaching via a virtual reality headset, being encouraged to be his truest, most authentic self, by an avatar that has no "worldly" reality at all. In another sequence, a health lifestyle influencer is shown rehearsing and filming a promotional video for an audience of potential followers and, presumably, clients. Director Annie St-Pierre takes a deliberately neutral stance throughout, not tipping her hand about what may be "good" or "bad," but these segments in particular pull back the curtain on how much this wellness industry is still driven by corporate values—which is to say, money, influence, and power, where health (or the perception of it) is just another commodity to be bought and sold.

Opening the film with a quote from philosopher Byung-Chul Han about how the obsession with self-optimization makes people perpetual laborers of their own selves, there is a subtle but undeniable undercurrent through *Your Higher Self* that reflects the alienating role of capitalism in our perpetual inability to feel safe, stable, or happy, despite our personal achievements and relative affluence. Turning that discontent into someone else's market opportunity is, at the very least, in tension with the self-empowerment goals that the programs ostensibly exist to provide. On the other hand, the various programs St-Pierre captures feature a number of traditional aspects of religious practice tied to better health outcomes, such as ritual, community, unconditional positive regard, aspirational imagination, and personal support in times of anxiety and crisis. Just because life coaching may rely on a limited, transactional model does not necessarily mean that it cannot offer the right person the right tools to fix what ails them. There are certainly worse ways to spend one's time and money—including, at times, within mainstream organized religion.