Gaia

Early history

Gaiam was founded in Boulder, Colorado in 1988 by Jirka Rysavy. His vision was to serve the "conscious consumer," a group subsequently named the "Cultural Creatives" by sociologist Paul Ray in 1996: educated consumers who make purchasing decisions based on their values.The company states that its original name was the result of fusing "Gaia", a mother earth deity, with the phrase "I am", for the "interconnectivity of all things".In 2001, it merged with the Californian company Real Goods Solar. In 2005, Gaiam acquired the media assets of GoodTimes Entertainment and Jetlag Productions. In 2003, the company bought a 50.1% share in its UK distributor Leisure Systems International . In 2007, Gaiam acquired both Lime.com and Zaadz.com for a greater community presence.

Recent history

In 2011, the company launched Gaiam TV, a streaming service for videos on yoga, meditation, and fringe science. renamed to Gaia in 2015.In 2012, Gaiam acquired Vivendi Entertainment, a DVD distributor from Vivendi subsidiary Universal Music Group Distribution, merging it with its home entertainment division to form Gaiam Vivendi Entertainment. In 2019, USA Today ranked Gaia, Inc as the world's fastest-growing retailer, spending up to 120% of revenue on advertising.In 2018, criticism by a filmmaker formerly employed by Gaia, Patty Greer, ended with a public apology to Gaia Greer after he accused them of "promoting Luciferianism and using directed-energy weapons against critics."In June 2019, Gaia started live streaming events from a new event center at its Louisville campus. Events are live streamed in 185 countries with simultaneous translation, and feature speakers such as Gregg Braden, Caroline Myss, Bruce Lipton, and Graham Hancock. In November 2021, American singer and actor Demi Lovato announced that they had become an ambassador for Gaia.

Meditation intention experiment

From September 30 to October 5, 2017, Lynne McTaggart hosted an American Peace Intention Experiment, broadcast on Gaia TV. The experiment involved large numbers of people participating in group meditation specifically directed at decreasing violent crime in Fairground, an area around Natural Bridge Avenue in Northern St. Louis, Missouri, which was rated the most dangerous street in America. For six months after the experiment. Jessica Utts, a University of California professor of statistics, analyzed four sets of crime data in St. Louis from September 2014 to March 2018 to determine what effect the Experiment had on crime. From October 2017 to March 2018, property crime increased in Fairground, but violent crime decreased. McTaggart reported that she did not know if the change in crime levels was caused by the Experiment or not, but that she continued to have hope. This decrease in violent crime according to Utts was 45%, in contrast to a national decrease of 0.9% during the same year nationally