Conscious Cooking: How Radhi Devlukia-Shetty is Making her Own Brand of Spirituality, Mindful Living and Ayurveda

The name Radhi Devlukia-Shetty might not instantly ring a bell, but the 31-year-old British Indian, who now calls America home, has been posting motivational content on Instagram for a while. Through her social media platforms, YouTube channel and website, the culinarian, Ayurvedic virtuoso, dietitian, and mindful-living creator shares delicious plant-based recipes, clean-beauty rituals, wellness tutorials, life lessons and mantras to promote a healthy lifestyle. Her daily posts and stories include singing and dancing videos as well as sweet moments with her husband, Jay Shetty, a British Indian author and purpose coach famous for hosting the podcast “On Purpose.”  

“Conscious cooking is something I’ve been practicing for about 6 years now,” she says on her website. “In the Vedic culture, it is believed that the mood, mindset, and energy of the person cooking is infused into the food and absorbed by the person eating it. So cooking with love and devotion and saying a little prayer before serving the food is such a sweet loving practice that has the ability to nourish not only the body but the mind and soul too.”

Devlukia-Shetty created the website during the pandemic, as a way of sharing how to nourish your body, mind and soul through cooking. And it here that she steps into the true expression of her dharma: serving others by sharing her own gifts that she learned through her family heritage, nutrition and dietetics degrees, and Ayurvedic schooling. “I don’t claim to be a ‘chef’, nor have I had real training to be one,” she says on the website. “I simply adore food and feeding people brings me so much joy.” She credits her “spiritual teacher” Radhanath Swami who “always says that knowledge or skills are worthless unless they are shared and so this is just my little way of sharing what I’m learning with you all.”

The Power of Meditation

Devlukia-Shetty connected with her husband through meditation and spiritual healing which she discovered as a means to overcome childhood trauma. Having been bullied, teased for the way she looked, “she grew into an insecure adult” she told Yoga Journal. “I lacked self-awareness. I never felt I knew enough about anything to teach it,” she said. “I didn’t trust my own work or abilities. I always believed other people could do it better.” 

And in order to fit in and be liked, she started tailoring her life to fit what others expected of her. It was only after discovering the power of meditation that she regained herself. She’d grown up in a spiritual home, but she never truly got in touch with her spirituality before meditation became part of her daily routine, she told Yoga Journal. Meditation not only helped her regain her self-confidence and self-love, she also discovered the joy of serving people.

She told Ecco Coco magazine that although she saw her mother and her grandmother “practice their spirituality with so much conviction and faith throughout my life,” she was yet to feel her own connection to it. And in order to “eel her own connection” and “understand their meditation practice,” she started going to a local temple and learning for herself. She would go there at 4.30 every morning to meditate for two hours, before going home to get ready for work. “If I want to experience this, I need to immerse myself into it, just to see if it’s worth it, ”she told Coco Ecco. “That’s really where my faith began and I haven’t stopped since.”

However, she told the magazine that “without a deep foundation of meditation and without those roots, which are constantly nourishing me through my spiritual practice,” she’s unable to give to people in the way she wants to. “What is life without service,” she told the magazine. “That’s the best thing I learned in this Vedic culture and on this path, is that everything is about service and we get so much joy from serving other people than we do in taking. Whatever we can do to facilitate us being the best versions of ourselves is such a beautiful practice and meditation to keep throughout your life.

Love for Cooking

Growing up outside of London in an Indian home, Devlukia-Shetty developed a love for cooking. “My grandmas, my mum, my dad and my sister all got some serious skills in the kitchen,” she writes on her website.

She was 18 when she studied nutrition at Nottingham University at the recommendation of her mother, her biggest influencer. But she never looked into what the career options were for that degree, she says. When she realized she wanted to work with patients in a hospital or other clinical environment, she discovered she’d have to get a second degree, in dietetics, which she spent three years working on. 

At home, Devlukia-Shetty was inadvertently exposed to Ayurveda as well. A lot of the principles were already deeply rooted in how I was brought up—I just didn’t realize it was called ‘Ayurveda,’” she says. “Whenever I would get ill, my mum used to give me [superfood immune-booster] ashwagandha in hot water, and now I understand why. In this way, Ayurveda opened up a whole new way of living and understanding how to relate to nature.”

She told Ecco Coco that her cooking is influenced by her upbringing and the diversity she was raised with, resulting in recipes with a merger of East and West. “It’s so beautiful to be able to bring the spices and the healing properties I grew up eating, into the food that you’re used to here,” she said.

After getting married, she and Jay got a house near her parents’ house as she felt she still had a lot to learn from her mother. However, three weeks after moving in, the couple left for New York and later Los Angeles. Despite the distance, Devlukia-Shetty still cooks with her mom and grandma. She told Coco Eco Magazine: “I am cooking my breakfast while my mum is cooking her lunch, and we’re always on the phone to each other. I call her for everything and she’s actually become one of my bestest friends!” 

Discovering Ayurveda

It was only after moving to the U.S that Devlukia-Shetty truly discovered Ayurveda. She met Divya Alter, an owner of an Ayurveda restaurant in New York City. She began apprenticing for Alter in the kitchen. The partnership lasted for two years on and off. Around that time she also began studying for her Yoga Teacher Training. But she was unable to complete it as she and her husband moved to Los Angeles in July 2018. 

Despite the knowledge she had gained, Devlukia-Shetty felt she wasn’t qualified to share her knowledge with the world. So last year she completed an Ayurveda Health Counselor degree from California College of Ayurveda. 

With the newly acquired knowledge and confidence, Devlukia-Shetty not only began incorporating Ayurveda in her daily life, but she also began sharing that as well. It nourished her body as well as her mind and soul, she told Ecco Coco. “I learned about it through my spiritual and Ayurvedic practice which are both intertwined,” she said. “It’s all about a practice of conscious eating and mindful practice to do with cooking, and the end of it is the gratitude prayer. The mindset and the energy you put in your food have the possibility to affect your body. It’s all about finding pockets of your day when you find mindfulness, and cooking and eating should be a part of that.”

The Jay Shetty Influence

Devlukia-Shetty was drawn to Jay because of his profound spirituality and is the foundation on which their relationship is built. She was the first guest when her husband launched his podcast – “On Purpose.” She appeared on the show again for its first anniversary. On the show, she revealed that she was in awe of Jay. “I was in awe of him. He also looked really cool – he had a bald head. He didn’t look like the type of person that would be thinking about these things because he had tattoos and a bald head, but then he was in robes. And I said, ‘This is really, really cool, but weird at the same time.”

They got married in a low-key 2016 ceremony. However, due to Jay’s hectic schedule, the couple didn’t have their honeymoon until August 2019. “Thanks for going over and above for me even when you don’t have to u always do,” says a caption on a photo of their delayed honeymoon on Devlukia-Shetty’s Instagram stories. 

The couple regularly displays their strong bond via social media. On Dec. 27, 2020, Devlukia-Shetty posted a photo saying: “Make someone laugh or smile today… it really will bring YOU so SO SO much joy to bring joy to another… and YOU @jayshetty… thank you for always CONSTANTLY trying to make me smile or laugh in any way possible… LEMME TELL YOU AAALLL. MANS GOT BANTER & JOKES FOR DAYSS.”

She told Coco Ecco magazine that her husband has also been an important influence in her life. “I feel so lucky to be able to see how he lives his life day in, day out,” she said. “He was a monk before, and that period of his life really molded who he is now.” She told the magazine that one of the things she has learned from her husband is about equanimity, “which is a quality that is often spoken about in the Vedic culture.” 

Explaining it further, she said: “We go through so many emotions in our lives and so many ups and downs, and usually we try to stay in the up’s, and we get really excited when we’re excited, but when there’s low’s, we get sad and upset. It says that with good spiritual faith and meditation practice, we may be going through the ups and downs, but with what we’re feeling, there aren’t so many waves. It’s equanimity. You flow through it in your mind and in your life, because you have perspective constantly.”

Jay often takes to his social media handles to praise and encourage his wife as well. “AMAZING wife just launched her very own YouTube channel,” she shared last year. “It’s been absolutely incredible to watch her create her recipes, record these videos and I’m so excited for her to share her incredible energy with the world! I deeply appreciate all the love and support you give me and it would mean so much to me if you subscribe to her channel for delicious recipes, wellness tips and overall her special energy! I’m so proud of what she’s doing because she truly wants to help spread joy and serve.”

Life Lessons and Mantras

What attracts fans to Devlukia-Shetty’s social media platforms is her charming and gregarious personality as well as her daily doses of gyaan and videos. Yoga Journal says one of her “most popular” videos is about the right way to drink water. According to Ayurveda, water should be consumed at room temperature while sitting down—and not within 30 minutes of a meal, she says in the video. “When you drink standing up, gravity causes water to flush through the body without time to nourish the organs and tissues.”

Equally popular are her mantras and life lessons on her Instagram page. In a recent post, she writes: “Hard to hear but true. Sometimes what annoys us most about others is what we need to work the most. Think about that.”

Another post says, “If you find yourself starting to judge people more, paying more attention to faults, weaknesses and downfalls. There’s probably something inside of you that you’re trying to avoid. Judging others becomes a form of distraction from the necessary work that needs to be done. Don’t let it fool you.” There’s daily reminders as well. “Some days you are sunshine with a little rain. Somedays sunshine with intermittent clouds and sometimes you may be sunshine covered in thunderstorms. Whatever the weather, remember you are always shining.”

And there’s this: “If you were hurt, choose forgiveness; if you were disrespected, choose compassion; if you were betrayed, chose loyalty; if you were broken, choose to fix.”

Creating a Conscious Revolution

Devlukia-Shetty has come a long way in her spiritual and Ayurvedic journey and is well on her way to create a conscious revolution with her vibrant and effervescent energy. But that’s not all. She is incorporating sustainable fashion into her repertoire as well. She has created an uber chic travel bag, the Radhi Weekender, with vegan brand Samara, as well as a necklace she has designed.

Her future plans include a cookbook. “I would love to do a cookbook in the future, but I am taking it a step at a time,” she told Coco Ecco. “I have been thinking about it, but honestly I just find that whatever way I am able to share the information that has transformed my life. I know for a fact that what has changed my life has the opportunity to do that for other people, and I would never want to feel as if I didn’t make the effort to share that in as many ways as possible. That’s definitely my goal to try and reach as many people as I can, with the information I have been lucky enough to receive.”