A Mindfulness App for Depression and Anxiety
It seems like everywhere you turn nowadays, there is something about mindfulness — mindfulness apps, mindfulness for productivity, mindfulness for sleep, etc. Mindfulness seems like the new magic bullet for people with a personal growth or self-transformation interest. But what is it exactly? Mindfulness, as a modern-day concept, originated in Eastern contemplative traditions and comes from the word Sati which means “awareness.” Jon Kabat-Zinn, who trail-blazed mindfulness-based clinical applications in the West in the 1980s, described it as: “Mindfulness means paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally.” Starting with his program Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) — originally used for people with back pain — in the past 30 years there has been a huge outpouring of mindfulness-based therapies for everything from depression to addiction to eating disorders. There seems to be a mindfulness-based program for everything. Why is that? Well, for one, it works!