SHYAM MEHTA

Shyam has stopped working in finance and now works on The Loving Heart Centre, to create love and happiness in the world. He loves God. Shyam has been practising yoga since 1957 and been teaching yoga since 1973. He has a Czech mother and Indian father but was brought and has lived almost all his life in England, with a Christian upbringing. At Cambridge University he did maths. He became interested in yoga philosophy and Hinduism. Later he became a Hindu and then in 2001 he gave up his Hindu sacred thread in order to fully devote his life to helping all nice people become happy. He has had a variety of religious experiences in his life and worships God almost every moment of his waking hours.

Yoga Experiences

Shyam's mother fractured her spine and was told that she would always be in a wheelchair. Fortunately, in 1956, she met BKS Iyengar who helped her to partially recover.

From 1957 until 1996, nearly 40 years, Shyam studied yoga under BKS Iyengar, going to India once per year for in-depth training in Hatha yoga postures and learning these also in his classes in London. In 1978, he received his advanced teaching certificate. He was a faithful student and worshiped BKS Iyengar with the honor due to a father.

From 1973 until 2001, Shyam taught Hatha yoga classes, following in his mother's footsteps of sincerely communicating the message of love behind Hatha yoga practice.

In 2001 he founded The Loving Heart Centre, his organization for promoting love and happiness in the world. He has since written hundreds of articles of benefits to mankind, ranging over all the topics needed by men and women for their personal development and happiness. All these articles are intuited directly from God, but are also based on his life experiences.

Although he taught mainly without payment and did much charitable work to promote yoga, Shyam was always dissatisfied with his progress and wanted to help humanity more. The biggest change happened in 2002, following special prayers to Shri Ganesh (the Hindu God in charge of the development of the world). Although brought up a Christian, Shyam had developed a strong liking for Indian philosophy and religion, besides yoga philosophy, during his college years from 1972 to 1975. He subsequently became a Hindu, reading the Scriptures, and learning about the philosophy of Bhakti (loving remembrance of God) as developed by Bhagwan Shri Ramanuja, founder of Visishtadvaita.

He has a good background (47 years) in yoga asanas, some knowledge of Kundalini yoga and Tantric yoga, and of Pranayama, Pratyahara and Dhyana.

Following his prayers to Ganesh, he gave up his sacred thread (representing a double commitment - to God and to one's wife) and committed to God to try his hardest to make the world a happier place, specifically by helping all nice people to become happy.

Shortly afterwards he met Amma (Sri Mata Amritanandamayi Devi).

In 2002, he performed Ishvara Pranidhana (surrender to God), and from that time, exclusively follows God's will without any variation.

Shyam focussed fully on helping mankind rather than his personal development. He followed the five ethical principles (yama), and also the five religious observances (niyama), of yogic discipline. Until 2004 he followed the path of karma yoga. He spent one year engaging in jnana yoga and then commenced the practice of bhakti.

Works

Shyam's finance works are listed and available from the web site 'GEMS'.

Details of Shyam's non-finance publications are set out on the page 'Books'. Many of his 23 books are available, in a variety of languages, for free download by visiting the web page 'Books'.

The books can be purchased from most book sellers. The books are available in English and are becoming available in Arabic, Bengali, Chinese Mandarin, French, German, Gujarati, Hindi, Italian, Marathi, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu.

Shyam is also co-author, with his mother and sister, of the best-selling book "Yoga: the Iyengar Way", published by Dorling Kindersley in 1991.

Many of his paintings can be viewed on the page 'My Paintings'.

Financial Career

Until November 2007, Shyam worked at various financial sector firms, for example:

• Bacon & Woodrow: consulting to the insurance and pensions industries. 
• Shearson Lehman Hutton: Associate Director, conducting research into the worldwide life and property/casualty industries (for an explanation of what has happened to them, see Greed and Glory on Wall Street: The Fall of the House of Lehman). 
• Tillinghast Towers Perrin: Life Division as Research Consultant, responsible for European R&D, consulting particularly on risk and pricing issues. 
• Merrill Lynch: Director, Global Industry Specialist Group, working with numerous institutional clients on asset/liability and derivative strategies and on securitization. 
• Watson Wyatt: Equity Partner in the Insurance Practice, from early 1999. He engaged in research and consulting, particularly concerning the application of modern finance to European financial institutions, and building the firm's asset modeling capabilities. 
• BNP Paribas: Member of the Financial Institutions Group management committee, Head of Insurance and Pensions Strategy. He helped BNP Paribas' institutional clients on their corporate finance/M&A and capital markets issues, including topics such as shareholder value strategy, capital raising/management, securitization, asset/liability policy, and use of derivatives in balance sheet management and product development.
• Skandia Group: Head of Long Term Financial Risk Management, examining Skandia Group risk, value and strategic issues for the Group CEO, CFO and Chief Actuary.

In the actuarial profession, Shyam had a high profile as a result of papers such as "Pricing of Insurance Risk", "Quantifying the Success of a Life Office- Cost of Capital and Return on Capital", "Allowing for Asset, Liability and Business Risk in the Valuation of a Life Office" and "The Financial Theory of Defined Benefit Pension Schemes" (which he co-authored with Jon Exley and Andrew Smith). A recurring theme of his has been to suggest that actuarial techniques should be abandoned, to take account of the numerous developments in financial economics since the 1950s. He is well known for his many speeches, articles and presentations on modern finance, having lectured for example at the Stern Business School of New York University, and at Moscow State, City and Heriot-Watt Universities.

In conjunction with Andrew Smith (Partner, B&W Deloitte) and Jon Exley (Director, Barclays Capital), he formed 'GEMS', www.gemstudy.com, an organization devoted to explaining to finance professionals working in the investment, insurance and pensions sectors how modern finance can be applied to the many questions that arise in these industries. The web site also contains many articles and papers about these subjects.

The work of Shyam in particular, and of GEMS generally, has been highly influential in creating change to the way financial institutions are run across the world, particularly in Europe and the USA.

Shyam has stopped working in finance and now works on The Loving Heart Centre, to create happiness in the world.

Personal Note

Shyam has been married but is now single. He has no children. He lives in London and Kiev and travels from time to time to India. He was born in Enfield, Middlesex, England on 7th December 1952. His mother was from Czechoslovakia and his father from Gujerat in India. His education and financial career was all in England, except for six years between 1954 and 1960, in Bombay. Shyam Mehta is a mathematics graduate of Cambridge University and, until he resigned in January 2005, was a Fellow of the UK Institute of Actuaries.