I recently created Google Alerts for the words “meditation” and “mindfulness,” and the headlines that now pop into my inbox every day are consistently, if unintentionally, amusing: “Can Mindfulness Raise Your Net Worth?”; “4 Ways Mindfulness Can Improve Your Relationship”; “Can Mindfulness Help Your Furniture Store?”
It was through these automated compilations of news stories and blog posts that I discovered that The Santa Barbara Independent newspaper had dubbed meditation “the new kale,” that the actress Michelle Rodriguez had posted a nude picture of herself meditating on Instagram, and that there is such a thing as a “mindful selfie.” (It’s unclear whether Ms. Rodriguez read this article.)
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