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She was a popular yoga guru. Then she embraced QAnon conspiracy theories
Picture prints of the late Guru Jagat on the market on the RA MA Santa Monica yoga studio.
Emily Guerin/KPCC/LAist
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Emily Guerin/KPCC/LAist
Picture prints of the late Guru Jagat on the market on the RA MA Santa Monica yoga studio.
Emily Guerin/KPCC/LAist
QAnon — the baseless conspiracy concept that claims {that a} cabal of Devil-worshipping, blood-drinking elites management politics and media — is intently recognized in political circles with some supporters of former President Donald Trump. Nevertheless it additionally has a toehold in yoga and wellness circles.
Themes like every little thing is related, nothing occurs and not using a goal, and nothing is what it appears are central to each yoga philosophy and conspiratorial pondering.
“In the event you’ve been practising yoga, these are going to be very acquainted concepts to you,” stated Matthew Remski, a former yoga instructor and journalist who hosts a podcast about conspiracies, wellness and cults referred to as Conspirituality.
In the course of the pandemic, many yoga lecturers started to talk extra brazenly about their perception in conspiracies, to the purpose that there’s now a time period to explain this phenomenon: the “wellness to QAnon pipeline.”
To know what wellness and conspiracy theories have in widespread, I made a decision to observe the radicalization journey of a Los Angeles-based Kundalini yoga instructor named Guru Jagat (to listen to the total story, subscribe to the LAist Studios podcast Imperfect Paradise: Yoga’s “Queen of Conspiracy Theories,” which publishes on Jan. 3).
An LA yoga instructor with superstar followers
Guru Jagat was born as Katie Griggs however used her “non secular identify” professionally.
She ran a Kundalini yoga studio within the Venice neighborhood of Los Angeles referred to as the RA MA Institute for Utilized Yogic Science and Know-how, the place she taught celebrities like Alicia Keys and Kate Hudson. A part of why she was so common was that she was one thing of a contradiction: She wore white flowing garments, wrapped her hair in a turban, and will chant in Sanskrit, however she additionally swore profusely and talked about intercourse and vogue at school.
Jaclyn Gelb first took a category with Guru Jagat in 2013 and was instantly drawn in.
“A yoga instructor that talked like that, that was actual. That was grounded,” she recalled. “I knew immediately. That is my instructor.”
Quickly, Gelb was practising 4 to 6 hours a day, taking chilly showers (which is a Kundalini yoga factor), and attempting to get family and friends to affix.
Gelb at all times preferred that Guru Jagat was an edgy disruptor, unafraid of talking her thoughts. Earlier than the pandemic, she spoke about conspiracies often, however that appeared like a part of her schtick. However after the pandemic began, Gelb observed her instructor starting to talk extra brazenly at school and in her podcast, Actuality Riffing.
Guru Jagat shared her perception that the federal government wished everybody at dwelling for causes aside from public well being. She prompt that the coronavirus was being sprayed in airplane chemtrails. She stated that synthetic intelligence was controlling our minds and prompt meditation as a technique to take again management.
“And she or he stated, ‘That is what you get for spending the weekend on YouTube, watching alien movies,’” Gelb recalled. “That caught my consideration, as a result of it was like, ‘Oh, she’s, she’s falling into rabbit holes.’”
Quickly, Guru Jagat was defying native stay-at-home orders to apply maskless and in-person. On her podcast, she started to interview controversial individuals with fringe beliefs, like Arthur Firstenberg, a New Mexico-based author and activist who believes 5G wi-fi web brought on the coronavirus pandemic.
Gelb stated it was onerous for her to observe her instructor change, however she additionally could not look away. She started to want somebody near Guru Jagat would “determine a technique to wake her up, a technique to snap her out of it.”
However in December 2020, Gelb reached her restrict. That is when Guru Jagat invited David Icke to talk on the studio and on her podcast.
“That simply was not one thing that the lady I knew earlier than would do,” Gelb stated. “That was so deeply offensive.”
British conspiracy theorist David Icke at an anti-lockdown protest in Birmingham in 2020.
Christopher Furlong/Getty Photographs
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Christopher Furlong/Getty Photographs
British conspiracy theorist David Icke at an anti-lockdown protest in Birmingham in 2020.
Christopher Furlong/Getty Photographs
Icke is a widely known conspiracy theorist and antisemite who claims that reptilian extraterrestrials management the world. By the point Guru Jagat interviewed him in January 2021, he’d been banned from Twitter for spreading falsehoods about COVID.
Their dialog ranged from the lockdown to different far-right speaking factors.
“The wellness trade, it has been hijacked by all of this, this type of woke agenda,” she stated.
Guru Jagat wasn’t the one yoga instructor to plunge down the conspiracy concept rabbit gap through the pandemic.
From yoga philosophy to conspiratorial pondering
Remski, the host of Conspirituality, observed a variety of yoga lecturers flirting with QAnon through the early months of the pandemic. At first, he suspected it was a advertising and marketing ploy. With yoga studios across the nation all of the sudden closed, lecturers have been compelled to compete for a similar on-line viewers. However because the pandemic progressed, some lecturers, like Guru Jagat, didn’t stroll again their rhetoric.
After all, many individuals apply yoga with out believing in conspiracy theories. Nevertheless, yoga philosophy and conspiratorial pondering have rather a lot in widespread, Remski stated, making it simple to slip from the previous into the latter.
In each circles, there’s an emphasis on “doing your personal analysis” and “discovering your personal reality.” And many individuals who apply and train yoga mistrust Western drugs, preferring to seek out various options or attempt to let their physique heal itself.
“The relativism round reality, which has so lengthy been part of wellness tradition, actually reared its head within the pandemic,” stated Natalia Petrzela, an creator and historian at The New College. “This concept that ‘reality is simply within the eye of the beholder’ is one thing which might really feel form of empowering once you’re sitting in yoga class, however when it is the pandemic, and that form of language is being deployed to form of foment, like, vaccine denial or COVID denialism, it has the identical energy, as a result of we’re all steeped on this tradition … it may be used for actual hurt.”
QAnon, specifically, might have a selected resonance for yoga practitioners, based on Ben Lorber, a researcher at Political Analysis Associates, a suppose tank that displays right-wing actions, as a result of each communities share the concept of a better reality accessible to a choose few.
The key reality that QAnon followers consider is that the world is managed by “the Deep State,” an evil cabal of elites who worship Devil and sexually assault kids. In yoga, it is extra nuanced, however may embody concepts like enlightenment or non secular awakening.
One follower leaves, however others stay
Jaclyn Gelb stopped taking lessons with Guru Jagat; she was offended together with her former instructor.
“She was so clever. She had a lot energy,” she stated. “She may have performed a lot good.”
However as Guru Jagat radicalized, she stored lots of her followers.
Nancy Lucas is one other one among Guru Jagat’s long-time college students who stated she preferred listening to what she referred to as “each aspect of the story” in her class and on her podcast.
“I believe she was giving individuals from all walks of life that chance to return there and communicate and provides their perspective,” she stated. “I do suppose she felt that the press was being biased, and I believe I do too. I imply, if you happen to’re banning individuals’s feedback from Twitter and Fb, we do not have an open discussion board for dialogue.”
Guru Jagat’s story got here to a sudden, surprising finish on Aug. 1, 2021, when she died of a pulmonary embolism. She was 41.
Since her demise, her yoga studio, the RA MA Institute, initiated an elaborate interval of mourning, together with two weeks of steady chanting, a gong ceremony, and a 13-day-long “Mayan ceremony for readability and route.”
Since then, Guru Jagat has grow to be a saint-like determine to lots of her followers.
In a YouTube tribute, pupil Angela Sumner described her this fashion: “Even if you happen to suppose that she’s a rip-off artist, even if you happen to suppose she’s a conspiracy theorist, you may’t take a look at her eloquence and her teachings and deny that she is without doubt one of the biggest lecturers that is ever lived throughout our time.”
To listen to the total story, take heed to Imperfect Paradise: Yoga’s “Queen of Conspiracy Theories” from LAist Studios starting Jan. 3.