A followup to Kris’s recent post on mindfulness and learning. This from the New Yorker about a currently very popular “teacher” of mindfulness techniques. Andy Puddicombe. Mr. Puddicombe has a cloud app called Headspace, which offers support for mindfulness.
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One of Paddicombe’s “guided meditation” sessions is below, this one for mobile and/or commuters, even if you are on a bicycle, he says. PSA believes the commute time can be taken advantage of for mobile learning; a lot of the US population spends an hour or two every day commuting, sometimes more. That includes kids on school buses.
Not that we should be surprised anymore, but interest in mindfulness and other well being/ happiness methods in “mainstream American culture” seems to be at the “highest” levels since the 60s. Frankly, it seems surreal to a survivor of that period, to see the same ideas being taken seriously as “stuff we all should do”.
Perhaps this is coming to the fore as a “millennial” POV, so maybe we should get used to it being more than a passing fad. Millennials are under a lot of stress in the present economy, so it makes sense that they are looking for alternatives. Also reminds of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, moving up the pyramid to more “self actualization“.
Last April, in New York City, three thousand people gathered for THRIVE, yet another TED-style ideas conference offering mental and spiritual rejuvenation to the business world. It was organized by the “Morning Joe” co-host Mika Brzezinski and the new-media mogul Arianna Huffington, and conceived, Huffington said, to correct a problem that she had perceived in herself and other harried strivers.
According to the event’s Web site, “The relentless pursuit of the traditional measures of success—money and power”—had resulted in an “epidemic of burnout”: stress-related illnesses, relationship problems. In addition to frantically pursuing the traditional measures, it was time to introduce a “ ‘Third Metric’—a combination of well-being, wisdom, wonder, and giving.”