Get well on the way to enlightenment

His former City boy colleagues may taunt him that he's missing out on the champagne, the cigars and the holidays in the Maldives but the Gordon Gekko lifestyle has ceased to interest former hedge fund analyst Adrian Kowal.

The handsome 29-year-old is doing something much more exciting: "I did this Dance Your Inner Animal' workshop the other day! And this week I did something called Transformational Breathing, which is pretty trippy "

Kowal declares that his new venture, Evolve, is "a yoga centre with a twist". It's only been properly open for a month but is already proving popular with the local yummy mummies who are delighted to find, at last, a place in South Kensington that does decent yoga.

Yet an even greater allure is the refreshing idealism that radiates from Kowal and his ethereal girlfriend and business partner, Corinne Blum, also 29. They remind you of sky children beamed down from some exotic planet in Star Trek as they talk of setting up a brave new spiritual world in South Ken.

"We wanted a sense of a community," Adrian enthuses. "Somewhere away from the Buy this! Sell this!' mentality. As well as yoga, we offer treatments and evening lectures: everything from how to decorate your house sustainably to a lady coming to talk about orgasms. And we're going to start a garden on the roof "

Kowal, of English, American and Ukrainian descent, is one of a new breed of City types who have found corporate life too stifling and have dared to do something about it.

"I was surrounded by people with lots of money who didn't have the contentment of knowing where to channel it," he says, adding that his city pals are now starting to come to Evolve. "They start out skeptical and end up sheepish when they see how our treatments work."

However, according to Alison Pothier, a former top-level investment banker for JP Morgan and UBS, there is still a stigma attached to appearing too "out there" in a City environment.
Pothier trained in a variety of alternative therapies for eight years while still working at her banking jobs.

"A huge number of City people are into this stuff but they're not out' about it. I used to meet with colleagues behind closed doors for sessions."

Pothier, 39, left futures and acquisitions two years ago, yet still works in the corporate world — this time from the outside. Her new company, the Corporate Intuitive (tagline "What is mastery if we only master mediocrity in ourself?"), offers group therapy workshops which combine a synthesis of techniques she has taken from a number of practices such as life coaching, Angel cards, crystal healing and shamanic work. Yet she refers to her work simply as "Intuition workshops" so as not to frighten off the suits.

This summer she gave an "Intuition Workshop" to a major global company based in London. She can't give the name because of the mumbo-jumbo fear but she can say the company is in the Forbes Top Three in terms of size. She believes this signals the beginning of a change that all the City exiles I talk to mention.