The group, they say, allows for the verbal and mental abuse of its followers, has sketchy financial practices, and more recently, has circulated COVID-19 disinformation. More than a dozen of Jagat's former employees, students, and business partners spoke with Insider about what they characterized as a culture of abuse in the Ra Ma community. Hughes would learn she was far from the first woman to be drawn in by Jagat's charisma. Hughes said she lost more than $20,000 that she invested in the business, including the leases and unpaid time, and that she ended her business relationship with Ra Ma less than a year after it began. "They would get calls from her at 3 o'clock in the morning saying, 'Where's my hairbrush?' I didn't get it because I don't do that. "It never dawned on me, that level of where they were at with serving Guru Jagat," Hughes said last year.
Ra Ma Yoga Institute wasn't just a new-agey business with a remarkably devoted team, she thought to herself: It was more like a cult.
In that moment, Hughes started to piece together the clues - the around-the-clock working hours Jagat's staff kept, many of them unpaid the expectation that followers treat Jagat like royalty the verbal and financial abuse of teachers. "They literally rounded me up and they were attacking me, like, 'She's your teacher. Hughes refused.Īccording to Hughes, one day in August, seven men and women belonging to Jagat's inner circle surrounded Hughes in the studio, as they berated and screamed at her for refusing to give in to Jagat's demand. But then, Hughes said, Jagat demanded that she have Hughes' bedroom for herself. That was finally happening through a partnership with the turban-wearing guru named Jagat, whose legal name was Katie Griggs and who like Hughes was white.įor five months, Hughes and Jagat shared a yoga studio that Hughes had rented in the resort town of Palma de Mallorca in relative harmony, with Hughes and her 3-year-old son living in an apartment upstairs.
Philipa Hughes thought her dream was coming true when she teamed up with the yoga celebrity Guru Jagat to open a studio on the Spanish island of Mallorca in 2016.įor years, Hughes had wanted her own space to teach Kundalini, a niche form of chant-heavy yoga. Even now, it's not clear what kind of accountability exists within the organization.īut what is Ra Ma and who was Guru Jagat? Social accounts tied to Ra Ma and Jagat's inner circle remain active, and sales of its yoga events continue. The institute is looking to move ahead without its founder. She had also been accused of platforming a Holocaust denier and spreading COVID-19 conspiracy theories.Īccording to the institute, Jagat died of pulmonary embolism after complications related to her ankle surgery. The news came at a tumultuous moment: Former devotees of Jagat's teaching were accusing her and her mentor of abusive and manipulative practices and of running a cult. On August 1, Guru Jagat - the charismatic leader of the Ra Ma Yoga Institute in Venice, Los Angeles, whose following included celebrities like Alicia Keys and Russell Brand - was reported dead at the age of 41. What happens now? How a white woman in a turban captured a devoted following, spanning continents, for her yoga practice that some former members say was abusive and cultish Insider/OctoBy Haven Orecchio-Egresitz Email Before the sudden death of its leader, Ra Ma Yoga Institute was accused by some former members of being a cult.
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