For many, spirituality and business success might seem mutually exclusive concepts – that to achieve the former you have to reject the latter. But self-made millionaire David Hans-Barker is not only proof that you can achieve both, he’s also made it his mission to teach what he calls the ‘spiritual hustle’.
Today he’s the Founder of YogiLab, Co-Founder of Guide Education, and a meditation teacher, but David hasn’t always had it all. Born in Mysore, India, having fled an oppressive religious cult when he was still young, he was raised in poverty by a single mother on the rough streets of Southall, West London.
At 14, finding himself increasingly drawn into gang-related crime, he managed to break out of “that regressive mental cycle”, as he describes it, to find a path to discovery through the power of meditation.
Finding authenticity
Having turned his life around and gained a degree in Comparative Literature from the University of Kent, David realized that authenticity was the key to finding spirituality.
“In my early 20’s I didn’t want to be rich and have a Ferrari. I wanted to live in the middle of nowhere, somewhere with chickens where I could volunteer and build villages in Africa,” he says. He chose to live like a monk for three years, which took him deep into meditation and ultimately gave him the skills which later would allow him to succeed in business.
“Meditation helped me realize that everything is pattern recognition,” says David. “You can use pattern recognition to do market strategy in the same way you can when you’re analyzing a literature book,” he says. “And with the same idea, you can understand the patterns that you are yourself built from – if you meditate deeply,” he says.
His insight allowed him to be able to predict market movements and envision new business opportunities for people, which led to him making serious money. “All these opportunities just started to come my way,” he says. “On a more real level, when I came out of meditation, I just had a lot more positive feedback from the world.”
Meditation for social change
By the age of 27, David had achieved financial independence by hitting the million-dollar mark, and not soon after he became an eight-figure entrepreneur.
“I know meditation changes lives because it changed mine forever,” he says. Seeing firsthand how much the practice helped both himself and his family deal with real-world issues had such a profound effect on his life that he wanted everyone to have access to the same power, regardless of their circumstances. “Meditation is a practical skill – not just a spiritual hobby of the elite – which is why we’re bringing it to the people,” he says.
Now his mission is simple: to deliver meditation to 80 million individuals – 1 percent of the current global population, in line with The Maharishi Effect, which is linked to the belief that if 1 percent of the population meditates, it will produce measurable improvements in the quality of life for the entire population.
YogiLab brings people together
One starting point in this mission was the creation of YogiLab, established to deliver meditation as a real-world skill, bringing the worlds of business and spirituality together, and applying meditation to all areas of life.
David founded YogiLab alongside his fellow ‘spiritual hustlers’ Brian Kelly, Sascha Haert, Aren Bahia, and Aurimas ‘AJ” Juodka. Each of the center’s five coaches is not only highly qualified to teach entrepreneurial and spiritual development practices but they are all successful entrepreneurs in their own right.
Their physical space is The Istana in Uluwatu, Bali, which today harnesses the experiences of each of his tribe to bring a multi-purpose and next-level venue on the cliffs of one of the world’s most spiritual locations.
He explains that the whole point was to be able to create a meeting place where both “billionaires and backpackers” could come together. Having mixed in both of those circles at different times of his life, David said he was surprised to discover a new truth. “Because I grew up thinking that money was evil, I was surprised to find that the billionaires I met were among the most conscientious people that I’d ever known.”
Bringing together different ends of the social and wealth spectrum also ties in with his deeply held belief that “meditation levels the playing field”.
Meditate to advance
YogiLab hosts free online Vipassana meditation courses every month, with a strong focus on how to apply meditation to your life in the most practical way.
Meaning ‘to see things as they really are’, Vipassana is one of the world’s most ancient techniques of meditation, having been taught in India more than 2500 years ago as a remedy for universal ills.
David says the reason YogiLab is focussed on Vipassana and giving it away for free is because that’s the one technique that, from experience, he knows does everything.
“That’s the only way I figured any of this out, not by listening to some guru, not by joining some tradition, it’s just by testing things on myself, seeing what worked and seeing what didn’t. And being honest about that.” He goes on to explain how his self-experimentation inspired the YogiLab logo – a yogi inside a conical lab-flask, “because the whole point is that we’re all our own laboratory”.
Having originally offered free meditation online during the pandemic, when meditation centers were forced to close down, YogiLab now has over 10,000 people signed up for their next course and has reached over 100,000 people since July 2020.
New methods are being adapted to reach even more, including the creation of YogiLab Meditation Hubs, guides to help people create and run their own meditation centers. And not forgetting ‘Spiritual Hustler’s Day’ to bring meditation to the real world, and to create the 80 million meditators needed to trigger the Maharishi Effect.
Spiritual Hustlers Day
Online coaching program ‘Spiritual Hustlers Club’ empowers participants to step into their potential by achieving personal and financial success and living their purpose.
“In the Spiritual Hustler’s Club, we see spirituality as a practical skill. There is no separation between the hustle and the soul. Because, when you infuse your life with focus and meditative states, you’ll discover that everything becomes spiritual,” says David.
And at the heart of everything, he concludes, is meditation.
“Which is why if I want to give one thing to anyone for free, it’s Vipassana. If I have kids, and I have a choice between giving them billions of dollars or being able to adequately practice meditation, I would hands down give them Vipassana meditation. Because if you can do that well, it pretty much gives you mastery over yourself and over anything you want to master.”
