Jeremy Mohler

Writer and meditation teacher

Like everything these days, mindfulness is being co-opted by neoliberalism

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If you’ve paid any attention to politics recently, particularly on Twitter, you’ve heard the word “neoliberalism.” It’s used to describe so many different politicians, ideologies, and policies that it’s hard to define what it means.

But it’s important to define, because neoliberalism shapes almost everything about our lives, even how we practice meditation—and that’s a problem.

My favorite definition comes from political scientist Wendy Brown, who says it’s “the expansion of markets—understood as competition—to every feature of life, including democracy, human social life, education, social services, and so forth.”

Think about how social media has turned our lives into a contest for attention—for more and more likes, shares, comments, “engagement.” And how high-stakes testing has transformed K-12 education into a competition with winners and losers. And how journalism has become a battle for clicks.

Neoliberalism is dog-eat-dog capitalism on hyperdrive, and the real sinister thing it’s done—what makes it different than prior forms of capitalism—is make us incapable of solving big problems together.

Climate change, gaping inequality, mass incarceration, the opioid crisis. History shows that the only way to fix these sorts of enormous problems is when massive political movements are able to force the government to increase and reprioritize its public investments.

But it’s hard to imagine another Civil Rights movement or a return to the New Deal era, when nearly a third of American workers were in a labor union.

Neoliberal logic makes us think that the solutions to our problems are individual. If you’re lonely, just post on Facebook. If you’re struggling to pay the bills, just work harder. If you’re unfulfilled at work, just quit and “do what you love.” If you’re worried about the environment, just become a vegan.

God forbid we’d band together and fight for a higher minimum wage, universal healthcare, or ending the fossil fuel industry.

What does all this have to do with meditation? Two things.

What meditation produces, mindfulness, can help you notice when you slip into this way of thinking.

When you notice your mind is off in the future, telling yourself to hustle, to work harder, to pull on your bootstraps, let go of the thought. Note silently in your mind, “thinking”—or even “neoliberalism.” Bring your attention back to the sensations of your breath, feelings in your body, and the sights and sounds around you.

Mindfulness won’t stop you from neoliberal thinking, but it can help you notice when you’re in the trance and snap out of it.

And two—I meet so many people who are trying to get into meditation by themselves. They want to know what apps to use, how often they should practice, what books they should read.

Go figure: meditation is being filtered through neoliberal logic. Corporations are rolling out mindfulness programs for employees left and right. Meditation is on every list published about what to do to have a more productive day.

“[Meditation] can provide benefits, but the way they’re being deployed is a neoliberal cooptation, where they are then refashioned as performance enhancement methods in alignment with institutional goals, whether it’s a corporation or the military,” writes Ron Purser, professor of management and practicing Buddhist.

When I got started with meditation, I learned from other people, like, in the flesh, in real life—but it took me awhile to get there. I’d spent years as what Zen priest Roshi Joan Halifax calls a “book Buddhist,” reading about meditation but rarely actually practicing it.

Then a girlfriend took me to a class. Seeing other people meditate—people that looked like me, normal people—encouraged me to do it more often. Going on a weekend retreat with 20 people, albeit strangers, motivated me to meditate every day. Talking about mindfulness with other people inspired me to learn how to teach meditation.

It’s absurd that this has to be said, but to really embrace meditation—and to live in a society that has a shot at solving climate change and our many other crises—we need other people.

Free ebook on mindfulness meditation

My ebook, How to Get Out of Your Head, will help you start or stick with a regular meditation practice. Get it for free here.

Listen to my podcast Meditation for the 99%

On Meditation for the 99%, I take meditation out of faraway monasteries, expensive retreat centers, and Corporate America, and bring it to work, relationships, and, especially, politics. Listen everywhere podcasts are available.

The mindfulness movement has a class problem

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There’s an inside joke among practitioners of Buddhist-inspired meditation about the lack of working class representation in the growing mindfulness industry. “The Upper-Middle Way” is a play on the Buddha’s first sermon, which prescribed a middle way between the extremes of self-indulgence and asceticism. But a new study suggests that mindfulness can lower levels of anxiety and depression for those suffering most from American society’s extreme economic and political inequality.

Walk into a meditation studio or attend a weekend retreat and odds are almost everyone will be both white and white-collar. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, while the percentage of Americans who practice meditation more than tripled from 2012 to 2017, black and Latino people continue to practice at lower rates. Those with a high school education or less, no matter their skin color, are significantly less likely to meditate.

As a meditation teacher, I hear people stress about finding their true calling, feeling disconnected from nature, or President Donald Trump’s latest Twitter outburst. Everyday problems, sure, but different than experiencing racism firsthand or not having enough money to pay rent.

It’s only when I teach at labor union offices—which I do to get out of the mindfulness bubble—that the conversation shifts. Workers say they’re grateful for having a rare moment to think about themselves. Less talk of spirituality; more worry about toxic managers, long commutes, and caring for children.

That’s what makes the findings published in October in the Journal of the Georgia Public Health Association so encouraging. Researchers at Georgia State University wanted to study the effectiveness of mindfulness practices with parents of young children living in poor communities, who, because of persistent poverty, unstable employment, and family disruption, often experience increased feelings of anger, depression, and anxiety. They led 15 parents from one of Atlanta’s poorest neighborhoods, all black and most women, through eight weekly lessons, including breathing exercises, practicing gratitude, and mindful eating. At program end, there was an increase in the parents’ self-reported mindfulness, particularly less reactivity and an improved ability to label thoughts. Also, self-reported levels of anxiety and depression decreased. A number of the participants said they enjoyed the lessons and expressed interest in deepening their mindfulness practices.

This fits with a bevy of recent findings that mindfulness can improve the relationship between parents and their children. Mindful parenting may lower the risk of child abuse, decrease anxiety and depression in children, and more. But that meditation can help those dealing with the highest levels of social and financial instability is especially promising given the mindfulness industry’s blind spots.

“Mindfulness, like positive psychology and the broader happiness industry, has depoliticized and privatized stress,” writes San Francisco State University management professor Ronald Purser in his recent book McMindfulness: How Mindfulness Became the New Capitalist Spirituality. To a growing chorus of critics of so-called “corporate mindfulness,” meditation is being wielded by the likes of Google and Goldman Sachs to pacify employees who otherwise might openly voice their stress and dissatisfaction. Rather than organize a union, employees are encouraged to do “self-care.” Instead of allowing more time off and paying higher wages, corporate executives learn “mindful leadership.”

That’s the rub when it comes to mindful parenting, policing, or any other change in individual behavior. Just like the fact that wearing body cameras has little to no impact on police officers’ use of force, becoming more mindful won’t end poverty, lower the cost of health care, or stop climate change. Only collective action with demands for systemic change will, what Martin Luther King Jr. called, “a radical redistribution of economic and political power.”

Nearly half of residents in the Atlanta neighborhood where the study took place live under the federal poverty level. Almost a quarter are unemployed. The neighborhood is considered a food desert and ranks third citywide for the number of individuals incarcerated or returning from incarceration.

Practicing gratitude, taking time to savor the taste of each bite of food, or noticing sensations in the body won’t help change these conditions for the study’s participants. Still, that they now have a way to ease some of their suffering that can be practiced for free almost anywhere at any time, can only help.

Free meditation cheat sheet

I’ve come up with a cheat sheet to help you start and stick with a regular meditation practice. Get it for free here.

Listen to my podcast Meditation for the 99%

On Meditation for the 99%, I take meditation out of faraway monasteries, expensive retreat centers, and Corporate America, and bring it to work, relationships, and, especially, politics. Listen everywhere podcasts are available.

It’s okay to meditate, do yoga, etc., while fighting for social justice. In fact, it’s necessary.

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Four years ago, I left a cushy tech industry job to work alongside teachers, bus drivers, and other workers in the labor movement. Burying my head in the sand and looking out for myself hadn’t been enough.

Our society is so violent, backwards, and corrupt. I had to starting helping change it.

But sometimes I struggle to square my politics with my meditation practice. How can I sit in silence as corporations exploit workers, white supremacists march in the streets, misogynists fill the White House, and the rainforests burn?

That’s why I love this metaphor from the spiritual teacher David Deida.

It reminds me that there’s room for many approaches to dealing with life’s problems, that I don’t have to choose one approach over another, and that integrating so-called “self-care” with social justice is actually the healthiest approach of all.

Imagine yourself as a stained-glass window.

“You look at yourself and notice there are pieces broken out of you,” Deida says. “There are hunks of glass missing. You’re battered, abused, chipped, wounded, rejected.”

The first approach, therapy, is like fixing or replacing altogether the broken pieces of glass. It helps you function better by healing dysfunction.

Say, you aren’t getting along with your father. Your therapist could help you forgive him for how he treated when you were young, and over time the relationship might improve.

Meditation, yoga, and other similar practices are like wiping the dust from the stained glass so the light shines through. They increase the flow of life in the present moment.

Our minds are constantly stopping the flow by following thoughts into the past or the future. Meditation is practicing letting go of thinking and observing the flow (of thoughts, bodily sensations, emotions, sounds, all of experience), over and over again.

Doing meditation (or yoga) isn’t the same as therapy. Sure, it can feel therapeutic, but it’s not meant for investigating the causes of emotional problems. It’s about being here, right now.

“You can be broken as fuck, and still do good yoga,” Deida says. “You can be entirely dysfunctional therapeutically, psychologically, emotionally, you can be a wreck, and still be a master yogi. Yoga doesn’t fix the parts of you that are broken. It just takes the dust off.”

The third approach, spirituality, isn’t about fixing the broken pieces or wiping away the dust. It’s about realizing that you’re the light itself, whether you’ve meditated, or you’re broken, or whatever’s happening. It’s realizing you are “one with everything”—there’s no separation between you and everything else.

Prayer, looking at the night sky, being in nature, and taking psychedelics are examples of spiritual experiences.

Let’s make this concrete. Say, you don’t like your job. A therapist might help you manage the stress it’s causing you. Meditation, yoga, etc., might help you feel a little better for short periods of time. Spirituality might make you realize a job is nothing relative to the 93-billion-light-years-wide universe.

You’re probably wondering, what about quitting or getting a new job?

There’s a fourth approach missing from Deida’s metaphor, which I call “political economy.” This would be like trimming the trees outside the window, i.e., changing the environment around the window so more light shines through.

As the label suggests, this is the realm of politics and economics, i.e., addressing the dysfunction outside of oneself, in society. Examples: leaving your job, starting a union with your coworkers, protesting, running for elected office, voting, starting a business, hiring a career coach, etc.

In other words, therapy helps you function better within dysfunctional conditions. Meditation helps you flow with the conditions, whatever they are. Spirituality is unconditional, i.e., finding peace and freedom no matter what. Political economy helps you change the conditions.

Meditation, therapy, and spirituality, by themselves or even all together, aren’t enough. They aren’t going to end capitalism or white supremacy or patriarchy or [insert oppressive system here.]

We also need societal change, specifically, what Martin Luther King Jr. called a “radical redistribution of economic and political power.”

Yet, raising taxes on corporations, restructuring the economy, or ending racism—which are easier said than done—won’t be enough either.

We also need to work on ourselves. It’s not one or the other.

Free meditation cheat sheet

I’ve come up with a cheat sheet to help you start and stick with a regular meditation practice. Get it for free here.

Listen to my podcast Meditation for the 99%

On Meditation for the 99%, I take meditation out of faraway monasteries,expensive retreat centers, and Corporate America, and bring it to work, relationships, and, especially, politics. Listen everywhere podcasts are available.