Meditation has been good for Olivia Chow’s career.
In her first month of attending Ziva Meditation on 38th Street, the trend forecaster met Noël Rohayem, a clothing designer whom she later helped to find a new job. That led to a partnership, forged last summer, for which the two are creating a made-to-fit clothing line that will be introduced next year. Most weeks, they meet at Ms. Chow’s apartment — starting every business meeting with a short meditation — to go over marketing plans, fabric swatches and sketches.
Meditation is more than peace of mind for Ms. Chow; it fuels work. Recently she said she was hired by three fellow meditators to make custom-fit clothes. “I network wherever I go,” Ms. Chow said.
There could not be two less compatible concepts: the quiet of the ancient practice of meditation and the heart thump of striving New Yorkers looking for the next opportunity. Now, meditation studios and conferences catering to Type A Manhattan careerists are becoming a new hub for networking without the crass obviousness of looking for a job. It is hard to quiet the mind in a city where competitive cab-hailing is a blood sport. So why not look for a little stress relief, or start-up financing, among empathic meditating friends?
Ben Bechar, a technology entrepreneur, said he had attended as many as four networking events a week with little to show for it. However, at the Path, a new invitation-only meditation class that officially opened last month, he said he had met not only a potential investor, but also five beta testers for his new app. The investor introduced Mr. Bechar to other financiers, too, and he said he hoped to find out in a few weeks whether he will get the funding he seeks. “I’ve had more success at meditation than I’ve had at any networking event I’ve attended,” Mr. Bechar said.
New York’s wave of mindful networking is an export from Silicon Valley’s highly caffeinated technorati. Soren Gordhamer, who lives in Santa Cruz, Calif., about 30 miles west of Facebook and Google, used to work for the actor Richard Gere at the charity Healing the Divide, an affiliate of the Gere Foundation.
In 2009, Mr. Gordhamer founded Wisdom 2.0, a conference held in San Francisco and attended by technology entrepreneurs eager to raise their consciousness as well as investment dollars. Mr. Gordhamer leads them in guided meditation as they explore compassion and awareness in the digital age. Two years ago, he brought the conference to New York, calling it Wisdom 2.0 Business. More than 400 people attended last month.
What makes meditation palatable to entrepreneurs and executives these days is that it is perceived as a tool to help increase productivity. A quiet mind more easily recognizes unexpected business opportunities and is poised to react more astutely. “If you are looking solely for an investor, you might be guided to, or looking for, the guy in the business suit,” Mr. Gordhamer said. “Instead, you may need to be talking to the guy in jeans.”
Some meditation instructors welcome students intent on networking because they recognize that people are driven by different motivations. Among them is Emily Fletcher, who founded Ziva Meditation in 2012, a membership-based studio that caters to a wide-reaching clientele, including Broadway actors and investment bankers. “If you come to meet an investor and you meditate, that is great,” she said. “I don’t care why you come. I’m just glad you did.” If you want to meditate at Ziva, finding an investor may not be a bad idea. Ms. Fletcher charges $1,100 for a four-day introduction, as well as unlimited access to follow-up classes and support. Her online meditation course costs $250.
Few meditation studios have capitalized on mindful networking more than the Path, which has emerged as a downtown hub for technology and fashion entrepreneurs. Clients must be invited and pay $20 to attend an 8 a.m. session on Mondays at a 12th Street studio space. The class tends to be jammed; more than 90 people regularly show up. Attendees are encouraged to drink tea and mingle after class.
“When someone says, ‘I’m an engineer working for Google and I want to jump to a start-up,’ people in class are more open to helping you out,” said Dina Kaplan, a former local television news reporter and founder of the Path.
Even when striving for quiet reflection, the extremely connected can’t help doing what they do best — expand their network. Laurel Touby is an entrepreneur and the founder of Mediabistro, a media industry community-building platform. At the Path, she met a product manager from The Knot, a wedding website, who was willing to set up a friend of Ms. Touby’s with a company recruiter. Drew Austin, a founder of Augmate, a company that makes wearable technology, said he met a job-seeking engineer with whom he planned to have coffee. “We are hiring aggressively,” Mr. Austin said. “Finding people is the hardest part.”
For some of the young and cool om set, meditation is better than happy hour. Jesse Israel, a 30-year-old music entrepreneur from Brooklyn, said he was starting a group meditation in November for millennials at a downtown loft used as an office space for Men in Cities, a lifestyle accessories brand. Yuvi Alpert, founder of Men in Cities, will meditate with Mr. Israel’s group. “We are young, modern people,” he said, “and we need a place to meet.”
Meditation-based associations can lead to the swapping not just of energy, but of equity as well. Mr. Israel met Nadeem Kassam, an entrepreneur who was then living in San Francisco, at a conference in Utah in 2012.
“We decided to meditate on the edge of a cliff,” Mr. Kassam said.
Mr. Israel said, “I realized he was the best thing and I wanted to work with him.”
Mr. Israel offered him a slice of a new business he was founding, as well as a partnership role. In return, Mr. Kassam said he offered Mr. Israel a similar deal in an entertainment and health care company he owned. “Every time I’m in New York, we go for a meal and have a breath session,” Mr. Kassam said. “You can form a bond in silence.”
Some fans of meditation are willing to take big risks on people based solely on their joint appreciation of the practice. Bianca Rothschild, an online marketer and digital strategist who was then living in Australia, attended the Wisdom 2.0 conference in San Francisco last February. In a meditation session guided by Agapi Stassinopoulos, the sister of Arianna Huffington, Ms. Rothschild met Khajak Keledjian, a founder of Intermix, the fashion retailer.
Mr. Keledjian presents himself as a model of successful meditation, sitting cross-legged for photographers in his homes in New York City and the Hamptons. Impressed by her Zen and savvy, Mr. Keledjian wooed Ms. Rothschild, convincing her to move to New York to help him research health and wellness investments. She agreed and arrived this fall. “I thought I should put my ego aside and just take a risk,” Ms. Rothschild said. “That’s what it means to be part of this movement.”
The instant connection can be powerful, said Amber Shirley, the chief executive of Soul Sisters Collective, a membership organization for female entrepreneurs. When meditating at Ziva over the summer, she encountered Riley Huston, a special projects coordinator for the nonprofit group Boys Hope Girls Hope. It took little time for them to bond.
“When I met him, we hugged,” Ms. Shirley said.
Mr. Huston said he told her: “I have been looking for you. You are exactly who I wanted to find.” On Oct. 18, Soul Sisters Collective hosted an event called “Dress the Part” in the cafeteria of Boys Hope Girls Hope, and now plans to organize monthly events, including dance and cardio exercise classes.
The consciousness raising could lead to all sorts of coupling, Ms. Shirley said. “If someone recommended a guy, and I met him through Ziva, I would date him,” she said. “No questions.”
From: The New York Times