Breathe in, Breathe Out, is it working yet?
Part I of the Mindful Inc. Series exploring the 4 billion dollar mindfulness industry and what it does to our mental health.
(All graphics: Divya Karthikeyan)
Hello readers, hope you’re all safe and sound. Welcome to the second issue of Sick, Sad World, and for those of you who’ve recently subscribed, I urge you to read the first issue to get a solid primer before you dive in. It’s compact, I promise. Also, thank you for joining me on this wild journey.
This second issue kicks off Mindful Inc., a series exploring the 4 billion dollar mindfulness industry. Part I is ‘Pods in, Tune Out’, a researched long read which looks at the history of how modern mindfulness came to be, corporatizing meditation and the gamification of mindfulness. This is lengthy but packed, so settle in. Plus, this piece is not exhaustive of the entire industry or the Buddhist doctrine, so I’ll add some resources to read more, and do the usual roundup. This is just a different, researched critical essay, and if mindfulness has worked for you, great.
I’ve been having a bout of mania thanks to my bipolar disorder for over two weeks. I’m technically either an insomniac now or manage 2 hours of sleep at best, and if you’re the kind that loves your work as I do, I average writing 4000 words a night (not a brag, some of those words are downright awful to read the next morning). I’m also up during the day. I sing I cook, I make art, I read like I’ll never feel a book in my hand again, and I don’t have the patience for Netflix. My thoughts race, I talk really fast, and if you’re texting me you’ll be hit with a tsunami of words at the rate of nanoseconds, and god bless the people in my life who can handle that. There are some darker sides of mania in general, like substance abuse, grandiose delusions, sexual impulsivity, overspending, and anything that just numbs the excess bursts of energy that are uncontrollable and tough to handle. But I have the work and sleep problem right now, which is another demon on its own.
I’ve been told by well-meaning acquaintances and friends to try meditation, usually with an app as an aid. It’ll calm me down, it’ll slow me down, it’ll take care of the excess energy. And I did, the last time I was manic. I would never be quick to dismiss it, of course, breath is incredibly important to regulate when you’re constantly racing. There are cute, fun exercises with cartoon bears and smiley suns, and lessons to be learned. There are streaks for how long you can keep meditating and learning those lessons. It’s all so very easy and slick and friendly, and I have no doubt that it has helped many people. But it didn’t do much for me because well, not to be reductionist, but my mania and my mental illness is not a puzzle to be solved or something you put a number on to measure by the number of days I’ve obeyed an app (also see: Duolingo), and it’s especially not a route to dismiss important, subjective thinking that I was missing out on because I was told repeatedly by the beautiful, husky British accented voice in my earphones to “tune out the noise.”
But the noise here was my self-hatred and rage accumulated over years around being “abnormal” or “sick”, and by tuning it out, I missed the opportunity to sit with it and address it. Because addressing it would mean doing the real work, and maybe taking a few days off, or a break, or just time to really pause. That would mean the instant fix-all mechanism of an app to push you back to work after a 10 min timed meditation “that you can do in the convenience of your cubicle!” would fail its purpose. And that’s the productivity and ROI (return on investment) driven world of mindfulness today.
If you’ve come this far, great. Thank you. I’ll tackle two things in the first part of the series Mindful Inc. And I promise I won’t sound like a conspiracy theorist.
First, the origins of the industry, and how it was built on cultural appropriation and colonization of thought (Buddhist philosophy, of course) and manipulated to fit an idea that would maximize productivity. Second, a look at the mindfulness app giants dominating the market, gamifying wellness, and their business and ethical models.
It’s interesting to note that, in the history of mindfulness, the practice actually emerged also as a form of dissent in the revival movements in Burma, Thailand, and Sri Lanka. Under occupation by the British Empire, Theravada Buddhist monks had resisted conversion attempts by Christian missionaries by promoting vipassana, a form of “insight” meditation.
But this was later imparted to various reformers who then globalized it and made it more accessible to the Western world. In the process of this handing down, the downplaying of the Buddhist doctrine as well as more difficult concentration practices pushed the concept of “mindfulness” to be the heart, or rather, the face of Buddhism.
The father of modern mindfulness is Jon Kabat-Zinn. He’s on the board of every mindfulness institute and company out there, even one in Syria that helps teach mindfulness techniques in Arabic to those grappling with the trauma of war and devastation. He also calls the mind wandering, “a thinking disease.”
Mindfulness is a 4 billion dollar industry today, and Kabat-Zinn has made it so with the not-so-radical-and-quite-obviously-colonialist idea of divorcing the “incense and the chanting and religious mumbo-jumbo” from the “true” practice of mindfulness. Dan Harris, a famous TV anchor and author of self-help bestseller ‘10% Happier’, said of meditation that it has a “massive PR problem.” (not going to go into the connotations of this, that’s a whole other story and a Part 2) Mindful eating, mindful walking, mindful working, mindful listening, mindful coloring, you name it, there’s a book on it. But Kabat-Zinn learned exactly those practices from Burmese revival movements that were always rooted in subjectivity, questioning and thinking, at his alma mater - the Insight Meditation Society. Why was it lost in translation?
In his book “McMindfulness”, Ronald Purser makes a case for exactly where things changed and bring up this interesting anecdote from Kabat-Zinn’s life that he proudly proclaims as life-changing in a conference. Purser says he found a way to put a positive gloss on what is considered a passive state. Not very sexy or glamorous to sell, unless you fashion it in a way that appeals to a certain narrative of self-improvement in 10 mins flat.
“It’s more in what you could call a domain of not-knowing,” Kabat-Zinn explains. He then provides an example of how “not-knowing” helped in his encounter with a homeless person. I quote him here.
“I was walking by somebody who was panhandling, and that happens a lot where I happen to be at the moment, but he wasn’t actually panhandling. He didn’t say anything. I just passed him by. But there was something about the feeling of moving past him that I felt like I did not want to pass him by. So I went back and put some money in the cup that had there and he said, “Thank you.” The way he had said “thank you” had so much dignity in it. I mean, it has so much — I felt so badly for this guy.
I mean, we’re in such a bad economic situation that people are out there on the streets in so many different degrees of deprivation. And many of the people who panhandle are actually quite aggressive. But the way this person just said “thank you,” it just really moved me. And my impulse was to want to be his friend and give him more money and take him home. None of which I did. But there was that moment where I really saw this guy and it was its own thing. It didn’t need another thing to happen. It was just a beautiful exchange.”
Make what you will of this, but Kabat-Zinn feeling touched by this exchange, and a homeless man being nice and courteous and well-behaved despite his situation and economic deprivation, is seen to him as the way to be, the model. If he had been aggressive or dissented in some way, his deprivation will not be to blame, his “attitude” will, which will be considered deviant, uncouth behavior. The gratitude, which was unexpected, and “had so much dignity” as he says, is a bonus. Be like him, he says. And this logic of - a man who does not exhibit rage because of his poor social conditions, and therefore is good, ideal, optimal, is the brainchild exactly from Kabat-Zinn’s theory of not-knowing.
What is the role of mindfulness today? What does it achieve? Better grades? Better performance? Higher productivity? Lesser absenteeism at work? Happier lives? Or as Huffington Post once put it, “Mind-blowing sex? Maybe the current version snugly fits between the interests of mammoth economic and political institutions, and the worker, the productive individual, and the woman trying to find her bliss. Is it too fetishized and replete with false promises? Definitely.
Hakuin, a master of Zen, foresaw this, fearing “dead sitting,”, bordering on apathy with no concern for the suffering of the world.
But the eighth-century Indian master Kamalaśila put it best - To stop thinking entirely would mean spending five hundred eons as mindless zombies.
The pioneer, before Headspace and Calm and all the other mindfulness and meditation apps out there, was Google.
An engineer by training and corporate culture star Chade-Meng Tan was the in-house “Jolly Good Fellow” (not kidding, this was his actual title) at Google. Google’s program was called “Search Inside Yourself”, self-explanatory in that all solutions to problems lay within yourself. Problematic thinking yes, and Meng Tan went a step ahead, discounting the possibility of any socio-economic and political factors that externally influence our way of living and working. Meng promises: “Mindfulness can increase my happiness without changing anything else.”4
In a 13 minute (he mentions the time, not me) book called Joy on Demand authored by Meng Tan, he refers to something called the Joy Point.
Once this point is reached, he says, the practitioner can easily access joy during practice, basically at will. When you reach the point, he argues, meditation will be further incentivized, thus increasing joy points, but also, you must get there quickly before you lose interest. He also exclaims visibly through the page on how The Dalai Lama said it just takes 50 hours of committed practice to reach it.
Throughout the book are analogies revolving solely around job productivity, showing up at work and money. Lots of money. Meng Tan’s idea there is a finish line and if achieved, salvation is guaranteed is contradictory in nature because he recommends meditation even after the “joy” point is achieved, and commodifies and packages the idea of inner peace as perishable if you don’t catch ‘em all on time.
But apps provide the ultimate chase, the hit, and the quantitative manifestation of Meng Tan’s joy points. 47-year old Andy Pudiccombe took to the stage at a conference packed with thought leaders and head honchos. He didn’t throw an endearing quip about his aunt, or tell a story about his childhood, or go on-brand to promote Headspace, his meditation, and mindfulness app.
Unlike the father of modern mindfulness, who shunned eastern culture humbug, he quoted the legendary poet Rumi.
“Live life as if everything is rigged in your favor,” Pudiccombe recited, and recounted his 10 years as a monk all around Asia.
Headspace is now valued at 320 million dollars. It’s a cute, jolly meditation app with a round orange circle for a logo. You log on to the website and find out exactly how many people are meditating on the app, and it eggs you on to start. 4-day streaks, 5-day streaks, reminders, it has it all. But I wanted to explore the other offering od Headspace - Headspace for Work. And the first line that jumps out?
“Nobody wants to be a cog in the machine.”
I sat with 10 white papers available to employees and students looking to bring the app to their workplaces and institutions. Headspace for Work evolved out of the struggle to keep the app afloat and partnering with giants like Google, Linkedin, General Electric, and Ford to provide subscriptions as wellness boosters and improving work culture caused revenues to skyrocket. They have 300 big business clients today.
What’s important to observe is the language of these pitches.
Mindfulness training can help employees learn to shift their perception and regulate emotions, specifically reducing negative emotions like anger and frustration.*
Research shows that happy employees are 12% more productive than their unhappy counterparts. In one study, happier salespeople sold 37% more than others who were not happy.*
And the caveat:
* Headspace is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease or medical condition.
I’ll counter these pitches with an actual scientific clinical study of studies on workplace stress.
Stanford Graduate School of Business researchers analyzed 228 other studies, found the top ten stressors were derived from poor management practices and overly demanding corporate cultures.
The biggest causes of stress were a lack of health insurance, the constant threat of lay-offs, lack of discretion and autonomy in decision-making, long working hours, low levels of organizational justice, and unrealistic demands. Job insecurity accounted for a 50% increase in poor health, and long work hours correlated with a 20% rise in mortality.
Will mindfulness and meditation and shifting perception help manage emotions around systemic rot that runs deep? And how long does one “manage” them when the fear of losing a job looms large today? Or when racial and gender injustices in the workplace prevail? Or when you can’t go to the doctor?
The other giant, Calm, has a co-founder with an interesting origin story that I feel foreshadows what was to come.
Acton Smith, the co-founder of the Calm app that is now valued at 1 billion dollars, was once a Tamagotchi fan. Tamagotchis are like small pets that you log on to, feed, hug, and developed depending on how they were nourished and nurtured. He started his career in building the online gaming company Mind Candy and managed to strike gold with his own Tamagotchi variant, Moshi Monsters. 2012 was the peak, and then it dropped in popularity and left him depressed and dejected. He then discovers meditation of 10 minutes at a balcony overlooking, (won’t go into the details) and decides to start the app with his friend. They struggle, but what saves them is not brand partnerships like Headspace, or working with companies. It’s the military, sports, schools, and they love it. Because it functions like a game, or as researchers call it “gamified mindfulness.” It can work, and it has.
But there are pitfalls. Journalist Sigal Samuel puts it excellently in her reported piece in Vox.com.
One night around 11 pm, I was tinkering with “Stop, Breathe & Think”, an app that drives users towards stress-taming exercises in much the same way SuperBetter does. I had just completed the mini-meditation it recommended, so it rewarded me with the “Night Owl” sticker. I was about to do another exercise when my friend texted, asking if I wanted to have a phone call. I ignored her. There were 43 other stickers waiting to be collected on this app, and I kind of wanted them.A moment later, I realized how foolish that was. Surely, talking to my friend (or, for that matter, going to sleep at 11 pm) would be better for my well-being than racking up another virtual reward.
Gamification keeps us coming back, but to a point that can actually start to feel addictive, cutting into our time with restorative forces such as friendship or sleep. Many gamified anxiety apps incorporate research by trained psychologists. But they’re often collaborations between psychologists, game designers, and entrepreneurs.
I’d like to conclude here and say that I think these apps work in terms of managing stress in the short term, and in emergency situations. They have for me. It’s like a panic button. But, to market it as a panacea for all evils? It’s a slippery slope, and we’ll never get to Joy Point, 50 hrs or lesser.
READ Ronald Purser’s critique of modern mindfulness and moving towards a more civic, collective, and intersectional definition.
LISTEN TO Suspiria by Thom Yorke, a reflective ballad on the impermanence of bodies and dark times.
WATCH Tigertail on Netflix, a stunning Taiwanese immigrant drama on unspoken pain across generations and a poignant resolution.
Please share your thoughts! Glad to receive bouquets, brickbats, tomatoes, cake, anything! See you in a fortnight with Part 2.
Divya, Good read. An African told me once that she goes out and get an eyeful of sea or a wonderful sight of dense green forests for an uninterrupted time when she feels lost. She does not believe in getting into a dingy room and pouring her heart out to the psychiatrist and feeling miserable again. It is quite subjective. Personal. Absolute respect for your writing.