Mindfulness will change your life!
Or, at least, there is a whole industry out there trying to convince you of that. A quick Google search will lead you to many, many websites extolling the benefits of mindfulness in all areas of life, from wellness to social connections to productivity.
On its website, Headspace claims that “completing just one 15-minute session of meditation using the Headspace app resulted in a 22% reduction in mind wandering” and that daily use for four weeks “resulted in 14% increase in focus.” Headspace goes on to say that a daily meditation practice will reduce anxiety, lower blood pressure, boost immunity, improve sleep, increase pain tolerance for those with chronic pain, enhance relationships, and develop compassion.
In an interview with CNBC, Acton Smith, a co-founder of Calm, said that they “believe Calm is a superpower. It improves our sleep. It improves our relationships. It makes us better leaders and better parents.” On Calm’s website, we find 12 benefits of meditationthat restate the benefits on the Headspace website but add to the list better emotional health, heightened self-awareness, slower cellular aging, diabetes prevention, lower risk of Alzheimer’s disease, and overcoming addiction.
It’s no wonder that so many workplaces and schools promote mindfulness. Headspace states that mindfulness helps employees reach “peak performance” by helping them to bring their “best selves” to work. Active+ claims that mindfulness enhances employee productivity by minimizing distraction, reducing multitasking, overcoming procrastination, managing emotional responses, and enhancing team collaboration.
Mindfulness is even being promoted as a tool for social change. Jon Kabat-Zinn’s Mindfulness in Action website provides the most thorough listing of applications of mindfulness I’ve been able to find. All you have to do is click on the petals of the flower to “explore the global mindfulness community.” These petals include “global justice” and “activism.”
All this makes it sound like mindfulness—just a short meditation every day!—is the solution to just about everything. But can that be true? What is mindfulness anyway? And what does sociology have to say about it?
What is Mindfulness?
Mindfulness.org defines mindfulness as “the practice of being fully present and aware of your current experience—without overreacting or getting lost in thoughts” and calls mindfulness “an innate human ability that you can access and cultivate through practices like seated, walking, standing, or moving meditation.”
At its core, mindfulness is about being fully present in the moment. In mindfulness meditation, we notice our thoughts and feelings when they arise, or when we’ve gotten caught up in them. Then, we let them go so that we can return to the present moment, usually by focusing on our breath. Our goal is not to keep thoughts and feelings out, but instead to release when we notice we’ve gotten distracted by them. We can be mindful in this way by doing sitting meditation and also in the activities of daily life.
Mindfulness in everyday life is about paying full attention to whatever is happening in the moment—whether that be drinking a cup of coffee, going for a bike ride, playing with your child, having a conversation, or working at your job. Mindfulness is about being present for each moment rather than multi-tasking or getting caught up in our thinking about anything other than what we are doing.
Practicing mindfulness can help us to be both more aware of the present and less reactive when thoughts and feelings arise. When negative thoughts or emotions arise, it helps us learn to pause so that we can respond to the situation more mindfully.
Development of the Mindfulness Industry
Although many religions practice mindfulness, mindfulness in the Western world largely derives from Buddhism. There are many schools of Buddhism, but all share a common core of wisdom. Very briefly, the Four Noble Truths recognize that life is suffering but that there is a path to ending that suffering. Mindfulness meditation is just one part of a path that includes both wisdom and ethical behavior.
By the 1960s and 1970s, interest in Buddhism had spread across the United States primarily in the countercultural movements of the time. By the 1990s, a secular mindfulness movement had developed that stripped Buddhism from the practice, replacing it with a focus on personal wellness.
The mindfulness movement and the contemporary mindfulness industry in the United States is usually traced back to Jon Kabat-Zinn. Kabat-Zinn, a doctor specializing in chronic pain and also a practicing Buddhist, began using mindfulness meditation techniques to treat chronic pain. The effectiveness of these techniques got Kabat-Zinn thinking about mindfulness as a public health initiative.
By 1979, Kabat-Zinn had developed a program called Mindfulness Based Stress-Reduction (MDSR), which he described in a series of popular books, including the now classic, Wherever You Go, There You Are. In time, Kabat-Zinn began to see MDSR therapy as an “effective way to heal and transform the world.”
Since then, the mindfulness movement has expanded into an enormous market. The mindfulness meditation apps market alone (including Headspace, Calm, Insight Timer, and others) was valued at 1.2 billion US dollars in 2025 and is expected to grow to 3.2 billion by 2033. According to the Business of Apps website, Calm and Headspace are the industry leaders. Calm alone has about 3.5 million subscribers. Headspace has about 2 million subscribers and partners with 5,000 workplaces who offer the app for free to their employees. Only 5 percent of users stick with the apps for over 30 days, but that does not seem to have slowed the growth of the industry.
Sociological Critiques of Mindfulness
In Part 2 of this series, we will investigate sociological responses to the development of the mindfulness industry and the benefits it extols. First, we’ll dig into the argument that the mindfulness trend is one more way that social problems have been “psychologized.” Second, we’ll investigate paradoxes in the secular mindfulness movement.
