‘It's only Boomers who think therapy is woo-woo – and they're dying off'

Telegraph

a day ago

In 2002, a then-26 year-old Vishen Lakhiani typed a question into Google: 'How can I get better at life?' He'd moved from his native Malaysia to study computer engineering at the University of Michigan, before pitching up in Silicon Valley with hopes of building a tech forum. 'But my timing sucked. The dot-com bubble burst shortly after I got there,' he says, getting fired after 11 weeks at Microsoft, and finding the only work available 'dial for dollars' gigs at call centres.
And so he began selling technology software to law firms. 'It was a horrible job because I was an engineer; I knew nothing about sales.' The firm was 'ruthless', he adds. With no base salary, if you didn't close a sale, you didn't get paid.
With his funds drained (he'd lost $30,000 – £22,100 – trying to fund his startup), he began renting a couch from a university student in California, and turned to Google to try and reverse his fortunes. 'I feel like a failure. What do I do?', Lakhiani, now 49, remembers thinking. Through those searches, he found an online class on intuitive meditation, 'where you go into an altered state and you tap into your intuitive senses. We know intuition is real… but what I didn't realise is how powerful it was.'
From a corner table in a London hotel lounge, Lakhiani tells me that this two-day class transformed his sales patter, and his life. What he tells me does sound rather unbelievable, but he swears it changed his fortunes completely. 'Rather than just call people at random from the Yellow Pages, I would sit still, go into a relaxed state of mind, close my eyes, move my finger down the page, and as I moved name to name, I would just listen to my heart. And sometimes I would get a yes, sometimes I would get a no. I would call only the yeses.'
Lakhiani says that his sales doubled overnight. 'As I got better at the technique, the sales doubled again, and then doubled again. In four months, I got promoted three times,' and was made vice-president of sales. When his seniors asked how he'd made such a leap, he explained it was down to meditation. 'My boss said, 'Well, that's b------t. But can you keep doing it?''
Mercifully, Lakhiani no longer spends his days flicking through directories of 'a------e' lawyers. Jaded after a year on the job, he quit, got a meditation licence and started a website, Mindvalley, through which he sold classes and meditation CDs. 'Back then, in 2004, meditation was considered woo-woo,' he says. But after the topic was covered by a couple of mainstream media outlets, 'it just took off.'
In 2016, Lakhiani launched the Mindvalley app: now, the company 'has well exceeded $100 million (£73.8 million) in revenue annually,' claims to have 20 million customers, and recently held a 'manifesting summit' helmed by Gwyneth Paltrow (Lakhiani calls her 'a living icon'). Oscar-winning actor, producer, Matthew McConaughey has appeared on the podcast. It has also earned Lakhiani two New York Times bestsellers, along with over 1 million followers on Instagram, and 'guru' status among fans.
The platform offers a mix of masterclasses and ' fireside chats' with speakers including Paul McKenna, Nir Eyal, the behavioural scientist, and biohacker Dave Asprey. Mindvalley also provides 'certifications' to train people in roles from business coaching to personal training (fees are in the thousands of dollars); Lakhiani has previously said this netted $12 million (£8.8 million) in revenue over the space of a year.
Mindvalley's success is undeniably impressive, even if Lakhiani's mien is more corporate exec than Zen master. The classes, with titles such as 'Become Immune to Overwhelm' and 'How to Turn This Year into Your Most Abundant Year Yet' feel primed for modern audiences with short attention spans, for whom a catchily-titled video is more appealing than soul-searching, or reading a book.
How did he create a cult hit? 'Personal growth is booming. People are becoming more aware of who they are, even in cynical countries like the UK,' Lakhiani says. Meditation is no longer considered woo-woo: 'That's a Baby Boomer idea. And those Baby Boomers, they are slowly dying off… Your grandparents needed therapy as much as a 25-year-old kid might. But your grandparents weren't aware.'
Lakhiani, who has an 11 and a 17-year-old with his former partner (from whom he 'consciously uncoupled' in 2019), spends 17 minutes of each day meditating, an 'active' self-help form of the practice integral in the Hindu family in which he was raised in Kuala Lumpur. Today, he follows a six-step process (outlined in a video with 3.5 million views) that 'takes away all of the emotions that we don't want, and it accelerates all of the emotions that we do want.'
The first phase centres around compassion, which 'involves you seeing in your mind's eye how you're connected to all life'. Second is gratitude, which 'reduces anxiety, [and] increases social connectedness.' Forgiveness comes third. Phase four requires visualising your future, 'three years out. Phase five, you visualise how you want your day to unfold, which gives you a sense of control. And phase six, you ask for a blessing from God, if you believe in God. If not, you simply ask for a blessing from your internal state.' Former NFL star Tony Gonzalez, R&B singer Miguel and tennis player Bianca Andreescu have all spoken about following the six-step programme, which 'took off like crazy' when Lakhiani released it online for free in 2022.
Along with the praise, there has inevitably been criticism. One YouTube video about Mindvalley, viewed 36,000 times, asks: 'Are Courses Legit or Cult?'; others are unimpressed with the $399 annual membership fee, and its promise to transform your life in the space of 60 minutes. When I put this to Lakhiani, I am quickly shut down. 'Of course your life is going to transform. Anything that you read is creating some degree of transformation.' He is a pro at immediately denying criticism – no matter the evidence to the contrary – and information-dumping, throwing out half-references to studies and telling me that 'the science' backs whatever topic he's on at the time.
Whether or not you buy into his brand of Silicon Valley self-improvement, Lakhiani is fully committed to the 'mastery of the self'. Be it healthy eating and exercise (at 40, he overhauled his regimen, going from 22 per cent body fat to 14 per cent), meditation or reading up on longevity, 'most people live their entire day working, and then they go into relaxation mode in front of the television. I believe that we'd have far better lives if we cut down your work by one hour and instead focused an hour on self-growth.'
All of this will be easier in the future, Lakhiani believes, when 'we get over this b------t idea of the 40-hour work week.' The optimal schedule is in fact 21 hours, he says; Elon Musk and Bill Gates have expressed support for the theory, too. 'These titans of industry know what's coming, and what's coming is robots… I think it's going to lead to massive improvements in health, in society, in peace of mind.' If, that is, we can use the time for good, rather than frittering it away on our phones.
Mindvalley this month launched the virtual therapist and personal development tool called Everyone Elevates (EVE), which users can download to their mobiles as part of the $399 membership price. It is designed to span every part of life: a chatbot therapist who you can message problems to, and receive advice in return; AI-designed meditation programmes; the ability to tell you the macronutrient content of your meals based on photos you upload; a video function whereby it tells you how to improve your gym workouts, and stories at bedtime, to foster deeper sleep.
How does he really think a bot can be equipped to handle discussions as serious as suicidal ideation, or help people if they've suffered from abuse? 'Chatbots have a concept called scaffolding,' Lakhiani explains, which 'will let the chatbot know what it is not allowed to say. And if anything sounds like it needs a medical doctor or a trained human being, the chatbot brings in that human being.'
Lakhiani believes that with computer power accelerating at a rate of knots, AI's remit 'is about to explode', leaving us primed 'to step into a future that is wildly powerful', and 'transformative'. More time and more technology, he urges, will overhaul our lives for good. I wonder about social mores that seem to suggest the opposite: flagging mental health rates, for instance, and our propensity for doom scrolling – but Lakhiani is, as ever, undimmed. 'What I firmly believe is every generation of human beings is getting better and better.'
Lakhiani's routine
Sleep
Every night I go to bed at 11:30pm, and I wake up at 7:30am. I've combined CBT with supplementation to help me with my sleep; I believe sleep is very, very important.
Self-improvement
I practise the six-phase meditation when I wake up, which takes 17 minutes. I take a 20-minute lesson on something on Mindvalley, and always allocate 30 minutes a day to train myself on how to use AI more effectively.
Food
I eat five meals a day because currently I'm on a weight training diet; I'm building muscle mass, so I have to eat a lot. My breakfast is always six eggs; lunch is yogurt with blueberries and some honey. Dinner is anything I want. In addition to regular meals, I take two protein shakes a day, each with around 50g of protein.
Fitness
I work out almost every day for 90 minutes, doing 10X – high-intensity interval training based on the methodologies of a medical doctor called Doug McGuff.