Photo: Axel/Bauer Griffin/Film Magic
If you like self-help gurus, read Goop, or are familiar with Bennifer’s Plantation Wedding, you’ve probably come across life coach Jay Shetty. He offers advice that he claims is based on knowledge he gained while studying with monks in India. . Since he started churning out inspirational videos in 2016, he has gained an amazing following and many celebrities have praised him. His vast self-help empire has captivated everyone from Michelle Obama to Kim Kardashian to Matt Damon and, of course, Gwyneth Paltrow. The same year that Shetty officiated at Bennifer’s wedding, Erewhon named a smoothie in his honor, “Jay’s Love Potion.”
Well, it looks like someone finally gave some bullshit about the whole Shetty deal. Journalist John McDermott says he was asked to write a profile. esquireclaims. It has become clear that Shetty’s claims, particularly his statements about his religious backstory, are contradictory. Mr. McDermott is guardian. Here’s what we learned.
Shetty’s entire persona is built around the stories he has shared on his talk shows, advice videos, and in two best-selling books. While attending business school, he attended a lecture by a monk named Gauranga Das, had a major spiritual awakening, and skipped his studies. He graduated and studied at an ashram in India for three years.
Based on McDermott’s findings, this story is likely distorted at best. First, Shetty frequently changes his age in his stories. Sometimes he says he was 18, but other times he claims he was 21 or 22. Gauranga Das and Shetty’s legal team have confirmed that their encounter took place in 2007, when Shetty would have been 19 years old.or 20.
But there is a bigger hole. According to accounts from people who knew him at the time, Shetty did travel to India in the mid-to-late 2000s, but not for as long as he claims. According to some former colleagues (one of whom he reportedly dated for a year), he reportedly spent most of his time as a monk not in Mumbai but in the Bhaktivedanta suburb of London. It is said that he lived in a mansion called the Manor. Gauranga Das and Shetty’s lawyers have both argued that they had only spent a few months in India before moving to the country, but McDermott’s then-current travel blog (at one point during the interview In an interview (which has since been made private, Mr. McDermott), he is reported to have called out: The main ashram of Bhaktivedanta. In a 2011 post, he spoke of returning from “almost four months in India” and spending time at London’s City University “handing out flyers and books and enjoying festivals on the streets across the UK”. It seems so.
According to some, Shetty was not as isolated from society as people believed during his monkhood. They say he spends a lot of time filming viral YouTube videos in London and, as he has claimed in the past, was so engrossed in his studies that he didn’t even know who the Prime Minister was when he returned to civilized society. It is said that it was not the case. One employee recalled, “You saw him in sweatpants more often than you saw him in a robe.”
Shetty also said that some people His religious education appears to have taken place in the Hare Krishna movement, a Hindu religious organization officially known as the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON). According to his lawyer, guardian, who grew up in the Hare Krishna faith, which he has not mentioned publicly, did not find the faith meaningful until he met Gaurangas Das in 2007. ISKCON has a controversial past involving allegations of abuse in the 70s and 80s. , that might be the reason why Shetty wants to distance himself from it.
Shetty has been facing accusations of plagiarism over the years. In 2019, he deleted more than 100 YouTube and Instagram videos after YouTuber Nicole Arbor discovered the source material for some of his go-to fables. He’s currently crediting and tagging the Instagram accounts from which he gets the videos, but several creators said: guardian He does not ask them for permission or payment to repost the content.
McDermott also looked into the Jay Shetty Certification School, a one-time $7,400 self-help course that purports to give students a master’s degree in life coaching. The school’s accreditation turned out to be questionable at best. Before McDermott started making calls, the company’s website listed partnerships with a handful of universities, but none of them had confirmed their connection to Shetty’s program. (Most of these have since been removed from the site.)
The same applies to Ofqual, the UK government’s exams regulatory arm. Ofqual is listed as an approved body in Shetty’s school’s brochure, but its approval has been refused. guardian To impose some kind of regulation on the course. Ms Shetty’s lawyers argued that this was legal because the school paid the assessment fee to a private exam accreditation body called OTHM, which was approved by Ofqual, but OTHM said Ofqual He also denied that he had regulated the teachings of
guardian notes that the general structure of Shetty’s schools – vague qualifications, high price tags, and a focus on recruiting new students – resembles pyramid schemes. Still, a small number of alumni left only rave reviews for the newspaper.
As of Friday afternoon, Shetty had not directly commented on any of the accusations in the report and appeared to be business as usual on his social media accounts. For the past 24 hours, Shetty has been sharing inspirational clips from her blog. She gave her own talk and promoted upcoming workshops for her $40/month “community”, Genius. He also dropped a new podcast episode about how to stop caring. Does he seem to be taking his own advice?
The Cut has reached out to Shetty’s representatives for comment and will update this post if we hear back.
