In October 2018, the magazine Mindful published an excellent article by Sam Littlefair called,  Can Your Smartphone Make You Mindful?, that addressed many of the things about which I had been thinking. I have been a meditator myself for over fifty years and have spent extended time with incredible teachers, often being fortunate to be able to travel to other countries to be with them. My husband, Jim, and I, who frequently teach the 8 week MBSR course together, are often asked questions about Mindfulness apps and whether we like them or not and whether we recommend certain ones, e.g.,  Calm or  Headspace, over others. Other times we are asked how the MBSR course is different from an app, whether any app can be a substitute for the 8 week MBSR course, and if it can be just as effective. 

And so, I have been thinking about the electronic world that many of us live in with its upsides and downsides and decided that I should make my own experiment. In truth, I have not personally deeply explored apps myself, although I know that many of our students, when coming back to our retreats (which they are invited to attend for free for the rest of their lives) tell us that they have at times found the apps to be useful refreshers. Personally, I have resisted the digital world, but have had to admit that it has allowed many more people to contact us as well as other serious teachers.

 

For all the years that I have been a meditator, I would get up in the morning and go downstairs where I have my meditation cushions waiting for me and meditate before moving into the rest of the day. My computer is upstairs, however, and I have been upset to realize that in the past year or so I have found myself stopping at the computer to check my messages before going downstairs to meditate. I also have a larger, more seductive, smartphone now, and even worse in terms of my picture of myself, I realized I had begun checking my smartphone before even leaving the bedroom. And, taking it to the limit, if I was still tired when I awoke, I sometimes even brought the phone into bed with me first thing in the morning! (This was something I had never done with my land line portable phone. As a matter of fact I often would even turn that old stand-by portable phone off until I'd completed my morning routine.) 

 

Previously, I had written in an earlier newsletter about the work of Sherry Turkle, Founding Director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and the Self, who has written about the effects that smart phones have had on college students' relationships in her book,  Alone Together. Even reading as much as I had about the potential perils of having an affair with the electronic world, I realized I had been seduced by my device!  First thing in the morning, my smartphone had enabled me to surf the  New York Times, to catch up on so-called  breaking news, (often just another example of, or point of view on, something I had read about before), look at texts from my children, check the weather, and whatever else that suddenly seemed important to do. Before I had even realized it I had developed a new habit. This was so, even though for quite some time I had become aware that when I was working on my computer, it was very difficult for me not to disappear as I was pulled further into the electronic world, unable to maintain a sensation of my physical body in order to help me stay centered in myself. Before I knew it, I was too often traveling further down the rabbit hole.  Now, I was literally in bed with my phone! Viscerally, I was directly experiencing just how addictive a smart phone could be. 

 

So, I decided to make an experiment by mindfully trying two things. First, upon waking up, I decided to start using a recorded meditation (either one of my own or one by Jon Kabat-Zinn) on my phone in bed first thing in the morning. It was pleasant and seemed at least subjectively to be somewhat grounding. (Breaking up with my phone  cold turkey had seemed too harsh.) But, then after a few weeks of trying that, I decided to go the distance, and made the decision to walk past my phone in the bedroom when I first woke up and to re-ignite my old romance with my formal sitting meditation practice on cushions downstairs in my office. 

 

Here is the result of my non-empirical research.  I haven't missed my phone for one moment! "Breaking up" had not been hard to do. I don't think I am fooling myself when I say that the quality of my mornings and my whole day has returned to something I would name as greater well-being, more energy and wholeness. 

 

This experience with my smart phone and the difference I experienced once I returned to meditating in my office minus all electronics led me to think about  the questions our students had been asking about apps. First and foremost,  at this point, there is no completed research establishing the efficacy of mindful apps. This starkly contrasts with the hundreds of empirical studies establishing the effectiveness Jon Kabat-Zinn's 8 week MBSR curriculum. Richie Davidson, a world-renown researcher on mindfulness and neuroscience states, "I don't know of any scientific evidence to show that any mindfulness app works. We know very little about their effectiveness good or bad." Secondly, because apps are so closely aligned with the smartphone (and have all the limitations, as well as convenience, of smartphone use), this raises questions about the apps' possible addictive qualities and effectiveness as a vehicle for mindfulness. Sam Littlefair, in  Can Your Smartphone Make You Mindful? ,   offers this conclusion: "Mindfulness at its core, is a tool for disrupting habits - especially unhelpful habits... apps and smartphones themselves are designed to reward us with dopamine in exchange for usage, creating a habitual, if not addictive, pattern of craving and satisfaction."

 

Additional criticism of apps is that their focus is on the  head (Headspace) and not on the wholeness that is a human being. Mindfulness is often reduced on the app to a guided meditation or a breathing exercise. And, features like notifications are only as helpful as the capacity for intentionality once a person has received a notification. Is it possible or likely that when my smartphone reminds me that I should be becoming more centered and embodied in the midst of my rushing that that will be enough to throw a monkey wrench into my hyperactive automaticity? Again, Sam Littlefair offers that: "W hen a meditation app becomes just another habit, like checking email, it risks becoming less mindfulness training and more so just another piece of technology taking up headspace."

 

Thus, the answer to the question "what do you think about the apps?" is the old adage, "If you take the fort, you have the territory." In this instance, the fort which I am most familiar with is the well-researched 8 week MBSR curriculum. For those of you who have committed to a program like this, the apps can take their proper place as adjuncts to practice. A relevant illustration of the importance of developing a solid foundation for living in a healthier way is the history of the creation of  Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy For Depression program. When Segal, Williams and Teasdale began their ground-breaking study of what came to be called mindfulness-based cognitive therapy for depression (as distinct from, but using the skills from, Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction), they initially became frustrated while trying to teach their research subjects mindfully-based skills. They knew that their program had great potential but they were not getting the results they hoped for. They realized that they had been proceeding from a top down approach believing that they could teach these skills without having put in the time to actually develop the skills in themselves, and so they approached Jon Kabat-Zinn and asked him for help understanding what had gone wrong. His advice was for them to take the 8 week MBSR course themselves, developing their own practice and skills, before trying to teach it to others. They all took the 8 week course, deepening their understanding, and then ran the study again. This time they obtained significant results with their subjects who had been through two episodes of major depression. This made all the difference in terms of their research and eventually for developing a less academic version of their program, which with Jon Kabat-Zinn's assistance, became  The Mindful Way Through Depression. 

 

Unfortunately, the commodification of mindfulness that has occurred with mindfulness' growing popularity as a self-help technique has contributed to the continuing misunderstanding that this program can be approached as if it were a kind of self-help that can be integrated into people's lives simply by reading a book or even just listening to an app. In addition, as one of our students in a recent class expressed it: " Taking the MBSR class was powerful because of the chance to learn new skills for living a healthier life, with such motivated high quality peers who asked great questions." This is not to say that apps cannot be enormously helpful just as inspirational speakers or books can be helpful. They can certainly help us find our way to the right door. However, without undertaking the discipline of a time-tested, and for today's world, an empirically validated curriculum, taught by experienced teachers who are practicing themselves and who can help tailor the program to each person's individual needs, chances are that the undoing of the entrainment of habitual cultural rhythms and norms will not have much of a chance of actually happening.