The Trouble with Mindfulness Apps (2016) | Hacker News Reader

The Trouble with Mindfulness Apps (2016)

mindful.org

67 pointswalterbell58 comments

Meditation and mindfullness are free. You really don’t need an app. What you need is a book to get started and learn: Cudalasa’s Mind Illuminated is absolutely life changing.

When it comes to mindfullness, there is a lot of bullshit out there. As an objective and critical person, I find it hard to trust anyone. If you’re in the same boat, delete all these apps and buy a copy of Cudalasa. Once you’ve internalized the method of meditation, it’s there for life.

I need to read a 500 pages book to get started? I've had a few mindfulness mediatation sessions with a teacher, and he was able to convey the most important parts in 10 minutes.

No, you don't need to read the whole book just to start. It divides the practice into ten stages, and you don't move on from a stage until you have mastered it. So you only need to read about the first stage to get started.

Mind Illuminated isn't really about mindfulness meditation though, but about getting to the threshold of Enlightenment (this does involve mindfulness).

If anybody just wants to have some grease to start, get the Kabat-Zinn book and listen to the CD.

Can you share the details of your teacher, how you found him, etc?

Just to get started you would read the first chapter or two.

There's a subtle irony here...

Reject the mindfulness apps and trust no one, but hey read this mindfulness book!

Haha I am realizing that now. It does indeed sound like a totally fluke argument, but what I can assure you is that Apps I've used require $10/month subscription and that I think is excessive. Get a book, read it once, and sell it off and you have all the knowledge and understanding of mindfulness for life. It is not like a C++ reference book that I need to pull off every other day for reference. It is a technique which once you learn, its cemented and you don't need anything else forever!

In case anyone is searching by author name, it's actually Culadasa.

Which search engine do you use? I don't think it's possible to search for "Cudalasa" and not immediately be corrected to "Culadasa", seamlessly and with zero ambiguity.

In which case, why are you even pointing this out? The commenter spelled a name wrong and anyone with a single ounce of intelligence can understand from context what was meant.

The pirate bay?

I’m slowly reading through this book, and I agree that it’s really, really great. I disagree, however, that this means one should “delete all these apps”. I’ve tried the Headspace and 10% Happier, and I think they’re great introductions for anyone who might not be ready to absorb the simple-but-not-at-all-simple language of The Mind Illuminated. It seems that perhaps you’ve forgotten that each of us is on a path, that it’s perfectly fine if this path is different for everyone, and that there is no end to the path outside of death or loss of awakening; certainly not “I finished this cool book”. As someone else has already pointed out, there’s quite a bit of irony in your commentary.

There's a good subreddit dedicated to the book: https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMindIlluminated/

And if you really want an app, someone made a beautiful one for android, free and without ads, that follows the stages described in the book: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ragone.io.quie...

I found the light gamification useful to establish my practice.

Where can I get the book for free?

If you see somebody reading it at the bus stop, you can grab it out of their hands and run away.

Completely accurate, whilst being impractical and a bit dangerous.

You are a genius. I love it.

This is getting downvoted and piled-on but it doesn't seem to me like an unreasonable response to a comment that starts "Meditation and mindfullness are free. You really don’t need an app." and then goes on to recommend a book.

I hope you were just asking for directions to your local public library. Violating Buddhism's Second Precept isn't an ideal way to get started on Buddhist practice.

I thought we were talking about mindfulness. When did we get to Buddhism?

Same thing, roughy.

Or rather: mindfulness was derived from Buddhist ideas.

The library

Do some useful work for someone and ask them to reward you with the book.

Put it on your Amazon wish list and hope someone gifts it to you.

The usual place, aka libgen.

http://skytorrents.in/search/all/ed/1/?l=en-us&q=Mind+Illumi...

I tend to lose track of time when I meditate, so I found an app that silences my phone and then alarms audibly every fifteen minutes. I guess that is my version of a mindfulness app.

What's the name of the app?

I'll second the book recommendation above (mind illuminated).

Completely felt the same about these kinds of apps previously and likely still do, I've a had a few people recommend them to me and I've dismissed them immediately because to meditate or clear my head I want less electronics, I want to be away from anything remotely related to pixels on a screen.

Since I haven't had much luck on my own, I recently started to use headspace, basically it's just audio of a guy talking for a few minutes. It's helped me quite a bit, I imagine this would work just as well if it were a teacher or friend but I feel few people have to have access to someone who will do that with them every day.

Each lesson gives some tips on how to help not remove thoughts but accept them which I always tried to manually delete thoughts but it always failed and there was too much resistance. I'm adverse to taking any type of anxiety medications so this is a much cheaper and risk-free alternative.

I don't pay for it as that does distract from the point but it's been beneficial (I think). It's likely not science, but it helped create a routine of letting yourself breathe for a bit which in itself is useful.

I feel the same way. Headspace's guided take 10 course was a solid introduction for me, but once I got used to regular practice, headspace's "extras" weren't needed anymore. Now all I really want is a timer and tracking of when I meditated, so I use Insight Timer.

That's exactly what I did - the ten-talk intro for headspace, straight to the Insight Timer timer with some background sounds.

"When your favorite mindfulness app says it’s based in science, check twice. Few actually are."

As far as I know, none of them are is based on science.

Computer science!

Like one of my CompSci professors said. I don't know how we got away with calling this a science.

Yes, also when we call programmers engineers, same same.

What bothers me most about these is that they often charge money. In Buddhism the teaching of mindfulness has been offered through “dana” (donations). Teachings so close to our hearts shouldn’t be commercialized in my opinion. If they are, they lose a lot of their essence. Hard to explain :)

I think it depends on if you see a fee as buying mindfulness or supporting a teacher. I really don't have a problem with the latter.

I downloaded and have been using Oak for a few weeks now and so far, I think I like it. I haven't seen ads and the app is pretty basic. They have guided and unguided sessions and I find myself returning to the guided version even though I've pretty much memorized the instruction. The voices are nice and I actually find myself doing a better job of staying focused on my breath.

I don't know that it's been beneficial yet, but it is becoming a habit.

It also introduced me to Alan Watts and that can't be a bad thing.

What is this "Oak" app you mentioned? There are a lot of Android Apps with Oak in their name. Thanks.

Looks like it is for iOS only. https://www.oakmeditation.com. Apparently by Kevin Rose of Digg among other things fame.

It's an iOS app: https://www.oakmeditation.com/

For me it hits the sweet spot for simple, attractive, and useful.

You could argue that selling apps is more akin to selling books than it is to teaching people how to sit.

Same goes for how things like Yoga have been appropriated and commercialized. (Please read my last sentence if this comment upset you).

While it generally costs more to live in the west than the east, it seems to upset a lot of new yogis that Yoga is not traditionally paid for transactionally in India, in the westernized model. Nor is India a country of 1 billion Yogi's.

I'm very happy for people who find any kind of practice, exercise, etc that improves their life. Excluding people from that on the basis of money alone is something that I have not been able to agree to agree with.

No but it was "paid for" by the student living with/spending significant time with the guru doing chores for them. I'd rather pay a few bucks per month to avoid that.

I'm not sure I'd call or accept that behaviour as being one Of 'guru'.

The difference is similar to parents who raise adults to remain children and subservient vs. parents who want to raise children to be adults.

The same can be said for "gurus". True gurus want to raise equals so the student surpasses the teacher.

agree.

It's a nice time to remember there are many types of meditation, and to know your goal of meditating, which can range from being more calm or peaceful, to enlightenment or connection with God. In terms of types of meditations, some are more active and dynamic. One of the easiest and most blissful is kirtan, which is chanting in a group, usually with some instruments/music. It can be helpful to perform a more active meditation first in order to settle the mind, after which a still meditation can be more fruitful.

Free iOS/Android app for “belly breathing”, looks like it was made for veterans: http://t2health.dcoe.mil/apps/breathe2relax

Are there good paid apps which do not collect data, track user behavior, or charge monthly subscription fees?

So, the article seems focused on apps that are claim to treat / address depression. There is a difference in practicing mindfulness for "general" stress management v/s trying to use meditation / mindfulness to treat psychological illnesses.

A quick google [1,2] suggests there is some research emerging indicating that such apps can work.

[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030645301...

[2] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10902-014-9589-1 (via the headspace website).

I do not disagree with the central thesis of the article, i.e., the claims that many (most) of these apps make must be validated with clinical trials before they are allowed to make such claims; especially on issues such as depression & anxiety --> in effect, they are targeting the (potentially) desperate people looking for a solution

But I think going from "these claims should be validated" to "none of these apps are useful; its all snakeoil. Take a book and do it on your own" is a bit of a leap.

Meditation & mindfulness are personal experiences. Even the best book or coach that works for others may not work for me. Calibrating my expectations and systematically trying different approaches (books, coaches, apps) is probably the only way I (or anyone) can find a method that fits one's personality / mindset.

> Brewer predicts that as more apps for behavioral treatments come to market—and as others surface that aren’t clinical apps but use medical language in their marketing—organizations like the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration, which provides guidelines for evidence-based treatments and a national registry of programs, could inherit a role in this wild west.

Why does it have to be US-based organisations to fact-check these claims?

I mean, I get that one answer that the appstore (and playstore) is pretty much US-dominated, but it's not like US healthcare is a glowing example to the rest of the world (or the EU, in particular). And perhaps more importantly, neither are the US' restrictions on misleading advertising regarding medical claims.

Since the play/appstore are in fact global (or multinational) things, their corporations multinationals, why not take advantage of the knowledge on other continents?

Sorry to say this, but other places still regularly place faith in pseudo sciences like Traditional Chinese Medicine, Ayurveda, acupuncture, etc. Sadly this is invading medicine, and I wish the push back was stronger.

While our health insurance system is a disaster, our dedication to the scientific method is still best, I believe (even with our Integrative Medicine-like foul ups).

Perhaps the healthcare insurance system is flawed, but not necessarily the quality of the healthcare

I have a mindfulness app based in science, proven to work.

The off button.

Even better, get a good case of Aphantasia.

"Be prepared to be bored"

That's actually a damn good ad for a mindfulness app.

Mindfulness strikes me as total BS pandering to westerners obsession and reverence for Buddhism and some orientalist kind of ideas.

Don’t kid yourself and buy into all the marketing.

Username checks out.

Science disagrees with you. The commercialization may be pandering, but mindfulness itself is not.

To the extent that the science says it is one way (and it’s legitimate science and you interpreted it correctly), I take your view. I still find it totally ybsatisfting as far as actually understanding the source of stress and dealing with it in a healthy and long term way.

Thanks for the jab. Makes me hate you a little.

I don't actually hate you <3

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