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by krageon 1613 days ago
> Mindfulness

Mindfulness is a product of an industry seeking to capitalise on the yoga pants (and later suits) demographic, to great success. Let's not legitimise it by using it as an example of healthy thinking, because it's not.

2 comments

Mindfulness is an English translation of the Buddhist word “sati” which Buddhists use to describe one particular quality of meditation. To dismiss it because some people have coopted it would be like, well, to dismiss the yoga tradition because of “yoga pants”.
Can we dismiss yoga for silliness anyway?
Just because something valuable can also be exploited by greedy capitalists does not stop it from being valuable.

There are some legitimate reasons to be wary of the push for mindfulness -- for example, when it is pushed by employers to try and increase employee satisfaction and retention, in lieu of actually improving their quality of life -- but that certainly doesn't mean the practice itself is bad.