Ryan is clearly sincere and enthusiastic. He seems optimistic that mindfulness can transform failing public schools and dysfunctional healthcare systems, and even catalyze a different economy. The exaggerated promises and heightened expectations — combined with media and scientific interest, and commercial pressures — are generating hype. This has made mindfulness more than a simple passing fad — it’s become institutionalized. But so were other fads that came and went. Just because mindfulness is everywhere doesn’t mean it’s everything that everyone needs. However, Ryan is caught up in the buzz, and seems unable to see past buzzwords.
The subtext throughout his book is that the elixir of mindfulness can salvage society. “We don’t need a new set of values,” Ryan writes. “I really believe we can reinvigorate our traditional, commonly held American values — such as self-reliance, perseverance, pragmatism, and taking care of each other — by adding a little more mindfulness to our lives.”24 We don’t even need new ideas. We just need to make America great again. As usual, this comes straight from Kabat-Zinn, who wistfully repackages nineteenth-century Transcendentalism.
Recalling Henry David Thoreau’s celebration of nature and aimless strolling, Kabat-Zinn makes it sound like nothing else is needed. “Thoreau was singing a song which needed hearing then as it does now,” he writes. “He is, to this day, continually pointing out, for anyone willing to listen, the deep importance of contemplation and of non-attachment to any result other than the sheer enjoyment of being.”25
Mindful Lobbying
Regardless, Kabat-Zinn seems attached to promoting mindfulness in government. He has had more success in the United Kingdom, where he met members of parliament in 2012, along with Lord Richard Layard — a promoter of “happiness economics” — and the creator of Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy, Mark Williams. In 2013, Williams and Chris Cullen from the Oxford Mindfulness Centre led an eight-week mindfulness course for MPs. Since then, over two hundred parliamentarians and hundreds of staff have taken courses.
Mindfulness in Westminster has been a focus of media attention, with most of the emphasis placed on its power to treat mental health problems. The comedian Ruby Wax, who credits mindfulness with saving her life, has also told MPs it could help them win votes by helping them to focus better on voters.26 As early as 2004, Williams secured the endorsement of the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence for using MBCT to treat recurrent depression on the state-funded National Health Service (NHS).27
In the media, and in formal government briefings, rising rates of depression, anxiety and mental illness are dramatically emphasized. Though its promoters mumble the caveat that mindfulness may not suit everybody, they mostly wax exuberant about its benefits. When mental illness is discussed, it is mysteriously divorced from the social, economic, and political conditions that exacerbate it. Its symptoms are mostly framed as self-contained personal problems that can be treated with “evidenced-based” scientific mindfulness, helping people back to work to be productive. The appeal of mindfulness has increased after a decade of austerity-driven cuts to the NHS and public services. As Madeleine Bunting, a Guardian columnist, says, “mindfulness has unlimited applicability to almost every healthcare issue we now face — and it’s cheap.”28
Bunting co-launched an advocacy group in 2013. Founded at the instigation of Labour MP Chris Ruane, The Mindfulness Initiative lobbies politicians and their policy advisors to support the funding and teaching of mindfulness, both in the UK and around the world.29 It draws on the work of mindfulness research and training centers in Oxford, Exeter, Bangor, and Sussex. And in 2014, it helped to set up the Mindfulness All-Party Parliamentary Group (MAPPG), whose stated purpose is: “To review research evidence, current best practice, extent and success of implementation, and potential developments in the application of mindfulness within a range of policy areas, and to develop policy recommendations for government based on these findings.”30
The creation of the MAPPG received gushing media coverage, some of it from those personally involved. “It was an arresting occasion partly due to the setting,” wrote Ed Halliwell, who was at the time a co-chair of The Mindfulness Initiative, a contributor to Mindful magazine, and a prominent mindfulness teacher:
We are perhaps getting used to meditation happening in health centers, private businesses, even schools — but here it was being practiced and taken seriously in the symbol of the British establishment, by politicians from all three main parties, offered up as a way to approach some of the most pressing social issues of our time.31
The MAPPG led a nine-month study, culminating in a 2015 report, Mindful Nation UK.32 This came with a foreword by Kabat-Zinn, declaring that it “may be a singular and defining document” with findings “addressing some of the most pressing problems of society at their very root — at the level of the human mind and heart.”33 The executive summary proposed rolling out mindfulness programs in the healthcare system, schools, workplaces, and prisons. “Our long-term vision,” said the authors, who included both Halliwell and Bunting, “is of the UK as a group of mindful nations, an international pioneer of a National Mental Health Service which has, at its heart, a deep understanding of how best to support human flourishing and thereby the prosperity of the country.”
A few days prior to the report’s publication, Kabat-Zinn wrote a glowing endorsement of his own, deftly sidestepping critics by warning about “opportunistic elements” that seek to cash in on the craze for mindfulness:
Some have expressed concerns that a sort of superficial “McMindfulness” is taking over which ignores the ethical foundations of the meditative practices and traditions from which mindfulness has emerged, and divorces it from its profoundly transformative potential. While this is far from the norm in my experience, these voices argue that for certain opportunistic elements, mindfulness has become a business that can only disappoint the vulnerable consumers who look to it as a panacea.34
This also came with an assurance that nothing he endorses could possibly be part of this critique, since he well understands that “a real understanding of the subtlety of mindfulness is required if it is to be taught effectively.”35
However, the problem isn’t just bad courses — or auxiliary products such as mindful coloring books, apps, massage oils, or cosmetics. Commercialized mindfulness involves selling specialist expertise in the form of training programs, for which Kabat-Zinn wants public money. “Funding is necessary to bring a high-quality evidence base into step with widespread popularity, to establish and disseminate best practice and train teachers, and to identify and properly support those most in need of mindfulness,” he writes. “Governments and public bodies have a crucial role to play in improving access to the best evidence-based courses.”36
Kabat-Zinn seems to suddenly want to get on the right side of history with regards to McMindfulness. “This is not McMindfulness by any stretch of the imagination,” he told The Psychologist a few months earlier.37 When asked about his role in the commercialized McMindfulness craze, he is predictably dismissive. “First of all, that term first came out of one person’s mouth or one person’s mind. When you say it is popping up, of course, every term like that tends to just go viral on the web, but it just came out of one person’s mind.”38 Yes, the term came out of my mind (and also my co-author’s, David Loy, making that two minds) when we published our viral article “Beyond McMindfulness.” Defending his MBSR brand, Kabat-Zinn claims, “It’s about the teachings of the Buddha.” Which sums up the problem: it’s Buddhist when it suits him, but not when it doesn’t. As for other “opportunistic elements,” two of Mindful Nation UK’s editors are professional mindfulness teachers. This obstacle to skepticism — with lobbyists preparing a policy document seeking government funds — wasn’t addressed with a conflict of interest statement, which is a standard requirement in reputable scientific journals.
Along with Ed Halliwell, the other teacher-cum-editor is a Buddhist, known as Vishvapani. He was given t
his name by the Triratna Buddhist Order (formerly called the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order), which runs mindfulness courses in most of its centers across the UK, and all over the world.39 Another Triratna member advises The Mindfulness Initiative, which bills her as follows: “Vidyamala is co-founder and Director of Breathworks — an international mindfulness teacher training and delivery organization specializing in mindfulness for pain, illness and stress.”40 In addition to teaching courses of his own, via a private company, Vishvapani is an associate of Breath-works.41
The Triratna organization has itself been criticized. There were numerous allegations of sexual abuse by its leader Sangharakshita (Dennis Lingwood), who died in 2018, aged ninety-three. Lingwood urged heterosexual followers to try homosexuality, allegedly telling one unhappy young man “you need to keep persevering.”42 He later apologized for “all the occasions on which I have hurt, harmed or upset fellow Buddhists.”43
Caveat Emptor
The commodification of mindfulness has led to teachers being professionalized. Consumers of mindfulness programs are often called “clients” or “service users.” This colonization of the teaching process by market logic, with its demands for competition, marketing savvy and entrepreneurship, seems to weigh on Vishvapani, who admits:
Mindfulness trainers like me can now earn a living from teaching meditation: for a few it is a very good living. But doing so mixes one’s practice with drives such as anxiety about money, ambition and the desire for status. Similar issues arise in any vocational pursuit, but we need to be alert to them if our practice is to keep its integrity. My concern about the secular mindfulness movement is not so much that the practice is co-opted and commercialized, as that practitioners are.44
Slick presentation is no guarantee of a teacher’s competence. Mindful Nation UK acknowledges the challenges of upholding standards by regulating teachers. In an article addressing the problem — titled “Has the science of mindfulness lost its mind?” — the researchers Miguel Farias and Catherine Wikholm note: “there is no professional or statutory registration required to teach mindfulness-based interventions such as MBSR and MBCT.”45
Since anyone with minimal training can set up shop, the only mark of a teacher is having students. In the meantime, Mindful Nation UK is creating what Kathryn Ecclestone calls an “unaccountable state-sponsored intervention market,” in which the vulnerable are not only molded to suit the interests of neoliberalism, but also actively monetized by “new types of therapeutic entrepreneurs.”46
The UK report says the main obstacle to implementing its ideas is a shortage of teachers. Although it estimates that 2,200 mindfulness teachers had been trained in the previous decade, only seven hundred were deemed clinically qualified to teach MBCT to depressed NHS patients. These seven hundred were thought to be able to treat twenty-five thousand people annually, which equates to “just 4.3% of the 580,000 adults at risk of recurrent depression each year.”47
However, there are also other aspects to the problem. As Farias and Wikholm warn, since anyone can teach mindfulness without being a therapist, or having formal mental health training, under-qualified teachers could soon fill the vacuum:
For individuals experiencing common difficulties such as stress, anxiety or depression and considering paying for therapy or attending a mindfulness group, the combination of media hype and comparative affordability of a mindfulness group may easily sway them to opt for this, potentially placing their mental health in the hands of someone who may lack adequate training and experience working with psychological difficulties.48
Glossing over such issues, the report urges policymakers to invest in training one hundred new MBCT teachers annually over five years, at an estimated total cost of £50 million.49 The authors cite research by Mark Williams, who created MBCT and introduced it to MPs, suggesting the treatment helps prevent multiple episodes of depression, reducing relapse rates by 43%. However, MBCT is not necessarily this effective. A follow-up study by Williams — not cited in the report — found reductions only applied to those who had experienced three or more depressive relapses, while the rate of relapse for subjects with two or fewer episodes actually increased.50 The most benefit accrued to the most psychologically vulnerable, who had experienced childhood trauma and abuse. This only adds to concerns about whether mindfulness teachers with no professional training in psychotherapy can be expected to care for such people competently and safely.
Other important findings were ignored. One meta-analytic study by researchers at Johns Hopkins University — well-publicized in 2014 — showed that mindfulness was no more effective than physical exercise or other relaxation techniques. It found moderate improvements in depression, anxiety, and pain, and very small reductions in stress, but there were few other measurable benefits.51 Another major trial on MBCT — conducted by an advisor to the Mindfulness Initiative, Willem Kuyken — found no evidence that it was more effective at preventing relapses than antidepressant medication.52 It was not even more cost-effective, despite suggestions to the contrary in Mindful Nation UK.
Just Stop and Drop
A core group of about twenty British politicians attends a weekly drop-in mindfulness class at Westminster. Teachers also offer twice-yearly silent practice days. Politicians enthuse about the positive effects on their attention spans, impulse control, kindness, and meta-cognition skills. One Labour member of the House of Lords, Andrew Stone, says being mindful helps him have “different kinds of conversations.”53 A Conservative MP, Tim Loughton, takes hour-long baths and expenses his water bill to taxpayers, saying: “I also reserve a little part of ablution time for some mindfulness.”54 The director of The Mindfulness Initiative, Jamie Bristow, parses such comments in Kabat-Zinn-ese: “This increased familiarity with inner experience in the act of political discourse represents a significant, if not profound shift towards less tangible insights into the human condition, that may offer a key to some of society’s most pressing problems.”55
For now, British politicians are spreading the gospel of mindfulness training, addressing other parliaments around the world. More than a dozen national legislatures are introducing courses. In 2017, MPs and Lords welcomed politicians from fourteen countries to the “Mindfulness in Politics Day” at Westminster. Esther Ouwehand from the Netherlands summed up the benefits from her perspective: “Mindfulness really enables me to stay in touch with what is most important to me: my own values.”56
Apparently fearing this might be misread, The Mindfulness Initiative’s Jamie Bristow — who reported the remark — was quick to stress: “Mindfulness practice is often miscast as a symptom of navel-gazing individualism.”57 As he sees it, what has happened in parliament shows “consideration of mindfulness as helpful to the whole: the whole body politic, the whole of society.” Bristow’s colleague Willem Kuyken goes further, comparing the significance of Kabat-Zinn’s work to that of Darwin and Einstein: “What they did for biology and physics, Jon has done for a new frontier: the science of the human mind and heart.”58
Before addressing the 2017 summit, Kabat-Zinn told a journalist: “This is not a weirdo lunatic fringe trying to take over the world, but an oxygen line straight into the heart of what is deepest and most beautiful in us as human beings.”59 Also in attendance, “remotely,” was Congressman Tim Ryan. He told the same reporter: “Meditation allows me to take a timeout, step back and see issues as interconnected. That kind of big-picture problem-solving is desperately lacking in both US political parties today, and has in many cases been replaced with an almost hyper-partisan kind of hate.”60 In Ryan’s view, “we must intentionally try to reduce the influence of these things in our lives so we can think clearly and dispassionately about how we build a better future.”61
There is obvious merit to this basic idea, but at some point we have to do the actual building. And that takes more than Kabat-Zinn’s reheated Transcendentalism, and its unproven claims about a universal goodness accessible to all through “bare attention.�
� Yet he refuses to talk about more than tuning into the moment, which is certainly calming but not a great fount of political wisdom. Unfazed, Kabat-Zinn asserts that turning inward on oneself can fix fake news and overturn the surveillance state, whose requirements it subtly instills through self-regulation:
The mainstreaming of dharma through mindfulness is prima facie a positive and healing occurrence and a tremendous opportunity for addressing some of the most fundamental sources of pain and suffering in our world at this moment in time. That would include the Orwellian distortions of truth we are now seeing on a daily basis in the news, and the perpetuation of dystopian “governance” by seemingly elevating greed, hatred, and delusion to new heights, with all its attendant consequences for the fragility of democratic institutions.62
But for all this overblown rhetoric about the common good, Kabat-Zinn’s emphasis is on individuals and personal fulfillment. The social world — as it seemed to Thoreau, his inspiration — becomes a source of distraction from innocent freedom in the moment. One of Kabat-Zinn’s favorite aphorisms is just to “drop in” to this pleasing immediacy.
As he recently put it: “Stop and drop: meaning, drop in to your experience of experiencing, and for even the briefest of moments, simply holding it in awareness as it is.”63
Meanwhile, his disciples in the corridors of power note “the concept of ‘mental capital’ has helped leaders and policymakers to see that the cognitive and emotional capacities of individuals determine the health, resilience and future performance of businesses,” to quote The Mindfulness Initiative’s Jamie Bristow.64
Such base concerns are not discussed by Kabat-Zinn. His vision of a mindful politics is that by accessing “pure awareness” — letting go of attachment to “doing” — we will rediscover the innocence of our untrammeled inner nature. He sees mindfulness as the gateway to authenticity, and becoming truly human. Like the mindful nations in the heads of Tim Ryan and UK MPs, no specific prescriptions for collective change need be provided. Simply by stopping and “dropping in,” we will be fully autonomous — happy servants of a neoliberal order that they probably imagine they oppose.
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