The glamorous new face of mindfulness
You’ve never heard of her, but celebs are hailing Jody Shield as the new stress-busting queen. So could she work her magic on HANNAH BETTS?
ABEAUTIFUL spring evening, high above the London skyline, and I am with a group of high- powered, middle-class women listening to a guru teach us to tap away our troubles, rapping on our collarbones to release stress.
Amid all the beaming, hugging and chanting, it feels like being a member of the world’s most glamorous cult — the sense of high-gloss wellbeing is utterly infectious. This is the wellness movement at its most invitingly aspirational.
We are guests of the chichi Shangri-La Hotel in London’s Shard for a talk entitled Staying Zen. More than 100 women — and four slightly furtive-looking chaps — have paid £40 for an hour of tapping, reflection and meditation. And everyone, but everyone, is ecstatic.
For we are in the presence of Jody Shield, a radiant thirty-something who serves as guru-in-chief to a generation of women who feel lost, miserable and burnt out by the pressures of life.
These women herald Jody as their saviour and follow her every utterance, issued via LifeTonics, or mental health tips for helping you let go of trauma.
After a privileged childhood in Liverpool — her father was a lawyer; her mother a restaurant owner — Jody pursued a career in advertising. ‘For ten long years I kidded myself it was the perfect job for me,’ she says.
‘I was working 12-hour days without a lunch break. It was a laughable workhard, play-hard mentality. Burned-out and running on empty, I was always the last one in the office as I never felt I’d achieved enough to leave on time.’
Having suffered from bulimia in her teens, the stress of the job eventually pushed her to the point of breakdown in 2009. ‘I was in bed for two or three weeks with what I thought was an illness, but when it didn’t go away, I realised there was more to it.’
But, as is the habit of her generation, Jody used this crisis point as a springboard for change. Realising she could no longer face the world of advertising and the attendant social pressures, she booked a one-way ticket to South America to find herself for ten months.
The highlight was a shamanic healing ritual in the jungle.
Upon her return, she trained in healing techniques, quit her job and founded LifeTonic.
TODAY,
Jody, 36, calls herself a meditation ambassador (for yoga brand Lululemon), inspirational speaker (at festivals and for brands such as Nike and Stella McCartney) and an ‘intuitive mentor’, counselling by feeling what clients need.
The timing couldn’t be better for Jody’s emergence as spiritual leader du jour. Mindfulness has crept into all aspects of life.
While Jody can’t lay claim to global domination quite yet, her influence is growing, not least among the well-being sorority.
The build-up to the publication of her new book LifeTonic has been marked by approval from Ella Woodward ( now Mills, of Deliciously Ella fame).
Ella enthuses: ‘ I’m inspired by Jody’s energy. She’s kept me grounded and allowed me to let go of things that were holding me back.’ Jody’s book shares Ella’s publishers and is similarly marketed. Jody must hope for the same magic (not to say revenue) Ella has enjoyed. Other big wellness names have offered support. Jasmine Hemsley ( half of the bookwriting, TV presenting Hemsley sisters) remarks: ‘Jody makes it cool to look within, love yourself and go get what you desire.’ When I meet Jody in her London Docklands flat, she tells me Ella is a good friend. ‘She’s an inspiration for how young women can be successful entrepreneurs in well-being.’ Does she feel mindfulness and meditation are taking over from Ella- style clean eating as the next wellness trend? ‘Absolutely,’ says Jody. ‘It was food and exercise first because they’re tangible. Then there’s an emergence of something deeper — which is where meditation and healing come in. We’re realising there’s more going on behind the scenes. It’s all very well eating well and training the body, but what we need to look at next is what’s happening inside. Why are you stressed? Why is everyone anxious? Anxiety is a modern woe.’
There are waiting lists for her small, intensive sessions, including her mentoring scheme, which costs £1,750 for 12 weeks. Her larger groups of 80 to 120 sell out. There are internet group seminars from £30 a shot.
‘It’s like a cult!’ I say. ‘A cult you’ve built in less than four years.’ She chuckles: ‘Which is crazy. I’ve even done an event for 1,000 people. Yet, it’s mostly word of mouth.
‘I’ve been doing this for just three-and-a-half years — on my journey for six-and-a-half — and I haven’t done any advertising.’
Her qualifications, however, are hard to pin down.
She tells me she’s ‘trained with healers all over the world’ in chakra cleansing (in Buddhism and Hinduism, chakras refer to energy centres in the body); meditation; and Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT), the tapping on ‘energy meridian points’ to combat anxiety (often dismissed as a pseudoscience).
‘I’ve also taken courses on the internet and done workshops to understand more about love, relationships, finances, stress and mindfulness.’ A traditional therapist might take issue with the idea that this is training. Yet for Jody, the benefits are that intuitive therapy does not involve a traditional talking cure. ‘My approach is faster
than traditional therapy. The feedback has been: “We’re so in our minds that we don’t want to keep talking around issues. We want action.”
‘We connect with emotional blockages, old trauma, stuff you hold on to — that’s when you have big releases.’
I ask her if she could try her magic on me. After a discussion of my issues — the sudden illness and death of my parents and the perilous health of a family member — she leads me through a meditation.
I close my eyes as she guides me through my breathing, tells me to surrender and gets me to turn my attention to my hips and pelvis (the ‘inner seat’), tail- bone, heart, shoulders and stomach. We gaze eye-to-eye.
I don’t feel anything — not even the resistance she has promised. No ‘growing pains’ as my body aches its way into dispelling baggage, no guest appearance by my inner child.
Jody tells me she can ‘sense what you’re sensing even if you don’t’, noting loneliness, abandonment, pain, heartache. Instead, I feel only a void.
The exhortation to adopt the phrase ‘I surrender’ strikes me as a useful corrective to my gung-ho attitude. And I love the turmeric tea I have been served. But otherwise I feel nothing.
The same thing happens a few weeks later at the Shard. I like Jody and will it to work, but her words don’t strike me as anything I haven’t heard before.
The next morning, I give her method one last shot: an 8am session at the London members’ club, Soho House.
LOOKING around, there are 20 or so of us. A 37- year- old lawyer says she’s used Jody’s LifeTonics and classes for a couple of years to deal with work and motherhood strains.
‘ Each session teaches me something different,’ she says. ‘She’ll say things you may not relate to then, but that connect to things that have happened. You don’t have to deal with them. But memories will come up and something will shift.’
This makes some sense. Therapy is hard. The first time I had it, I was sick. Despite my recent horrors, I am too tired to embark on a course of it. This time, I feel the benefits. I find myself asking why I dream my mother is alive while still knowing she died. It’s not a dream I have about my father, despite being closer to him. I recall a quote ‘The first death is the only death,’ and surrender to the emotion.
Lights bloom in front of my lids and I smell jasmine. It occurs to me that a state of surrender could help my relationship. I think about a project I’ve been putting off for years and realise how profoundly I’m connected to it.
These may sound small, but hit me as revelations.
As we emerge, Jody assures us meditative rest is ‘deeper than a night’s sleep’.
As I encounter the day’s first problem — a broken laptop that would normally have me frothing at the mouth — I feel Zen. Maybe there’s a Jodyite in me yet.