Biopolitics of Techno-Mindfulness: Anthropological Reflections on the Issue of Modern App-Based Training of Focused Attention

Abstract

With an emphasis on the adaptation and mediation of Buddhist meditation within Western societies, this study explores the transformative interaction of traditional contemplative practices and modern technologies. By means of an extensive ethnographic investigation carried out in multiple European locations, this study sheds light on the significant influence that digital devices—specifically, smartphone applications—have on the accessibility, practice, and conception of meditation. These digital tools become guides that not only democratize access to meditation but also fundamentally change its nature, making it more individualized, commodified, and integrated into the field of self-care and therapeutic modalities from a deeply philosophical and communal practice. This inquiry critically looks at the two outcomes of this shift: the good that meditation is now more widely available and the bad that it is losing its conventional discipline and philosophical profundity. This paper raises concerns about the integrity of spiritual practices in the digital age and their evolution under the influence of Western epistemologies by arguing that the digital facilitation of meditation practices parallels broader societal tendencies towards personalization and digitization.

1. Introduction

This article aims to be an anthropological and theoretical reflection on the evolution of the use of contemplative practices (mindfulness) in the Western world. The article will offer some theoretical reflections based on the analysis of ethnographic data collected from various research projects focused on the modern use of Buddhist meditation and mindfulness.

In recent years, we have witnessed a true transformation of mindfulness due to its increasing integration with technological and digital devices. This integration produces an inevitable effect: the transformation of meditation into what I defined “techno-mindfulness” (Divino, 2024a), a product increasingly focused on tracking personal data in order to create something that can be customized and adapted to the needs of each individual user. This article aims to expand studies on techno-mindfulness through an ethnographic analysis of what we will define as AIDMT (AI-Designed Meditative Technique). The relationship between techno-mindfulness and AIDMTs proves to be of fundamental importance not only for anthropological studies but more generally for the academic debate on issues related to topics such as humanism, transhumanism, or post-humanism, as well as the social and (bio)political issues raised by technologies in the future to come.

In the context of AIDMTs, the role of the trainer or meditation teacher is gradually fading until it is the algorithm itself that suggests the most suitable mindfulness path based on the user’s needs—and personal health data that has been collected.

This results in a symbiotic relationship between the user and the application (Roquet & Sas, 2018), in which the collection of personal health data becomes crucial in building the best customized product.

However, there is a downside: many authors have begun to criticize this integration between mindfulness and digital devices, as the risk, in their view, is that it fuels a true biopolitical apparatus that, through constant tracking of individuals’ health data, generates exercises that are not necessarily aimed at well-being, but rather at shaping docile subjectivities that are useful to the neoliberal system in which they are embedded (Ng, 2016). Some scholars have recently begun to reflect on the positive aspects of techno-mindfulness, specifically how Buddhist scholarship and practice might be positively supplemented by the use of AI tools (Hershock, 2025). Other authors advocate for AI that supports ethical cultivation, not AI that turns individuals into self-disciplining subjects. For instance, Hongladarom conceives mindfulness as an ethical and liberating practice, grounded in Buddhist ethics, that should counteract technological domination and surveillance, not reinforce it. He argues that “one needs to be mindful when one is online”, meaning one should know what one is doing as a “first line of defense against encroachments to one’s integrity of the self” (Hongladarom, 2020, p. 158).

In this paper I intend to provide a critical perspective, based on ethnographic data collected over several years, which suggests that there may potentially also be negative implications to this process of transformation.

We must not forget that mindfulness, even before its integration with AIDMTs, is a product of neoliberalism and not simply a Buddhist meditation technique transplanted to the West and left more or less unchanged from its original form. Many authors have pointed out this substantial transformation—from meditation to mindfulness (Purser, 2019)—where what occurs is the gradual stripping away of all spiritual and political aspects of meditation, in favor of shaping a product uninterested in such matters (Leggett, 2022), and one that is also modified in terms of the benefits it offers.

The goal of mindfulness seems focused more on the “here and now” (Purser, 2015), on achieving calm and inner peace, on adapting to the social context in which the individual lives.

Far from possessing the subversive aspect of the original Buddhist asceticism (Divino, 2025), mindfulness, having been “de-Buddhistized”, is focused on the “product” it aims to generate—a generalized and constant sense of well-being—while also producing another effect, which I call the “liquid effect”.

Liquid, as is well known, has the property of adapting to the container that holds it. Whether this metaphor truly describes the intent of traditional Buddhist meditation is debatable, but there is good reason to believe it does not—especially if by “container” we mean the dominant sociocultural structure, which was in fact strongly opposed by the ascetic movements at the time of the Buddha, including the Buddhism he founded (Olson, 2015; Divino, 2023a, 2025; Wiltshire, 1990; Olivelle, 2006b; Bronkhorst, 1998; Freiberger, 2006; Bailey & Mabbett, 2003; Chakravarti, 1996; Squarcini, 2008).

Contemporary mindfulness, rather, is criticized for its almost perfect adaptation to neoliberal politics, and thus its use in increasing productivity in the workplace (Wrenn, 2022), both for adults and already for younger generations, where mindfulness is seen as a useful tool to begin accustoming them to such practical demands (Reveley, 2016).

In this context, and following the criticisms these authors direct at mindfulness, this type of meditation becomes a biopolitical tool aimed at shaping subjectivities useful to neoliberal society (Jackson, 2020), while masking this process of subjectification behind the pursuit of well-being (Stingl & Weiss, 2014) and this almost pharmacological product—peace and calm—which, when translated into modern terms, means adopting a docile and passive attitude toward the dominant social model. This, in summary, is the criticism that some authors direct at mindfulness.

I asked myself whether the experiences of individual users could in some way confirm or refute this working hypothesis. Since the current situation necessarily includes the role of technology, which is increasingly merging with mindfulness, I focused the analyses of this paper on individuals who specifically used mindfulness through apps or other technologies designed to enhance meditative experience (in short, AIDMTs).

Since 2018, I have been conducting an ethnographic study of contemplative practices, with a particular focus on Buddhist meditation. This includes both traditional forms associated with Buddhist schools, centers, and temples frequented by monks and laypeople, as well as modern versions that have undergone the process of transculturation, with mindfulness being the most notable example. Initially, my research centered on the use of these practices for ‘therapeutic’ purposes, both clinical and in a broader sense of ‘self-care’. Following the initial findings presented in a monograph on medical anthropology (Divino, 2021), the ethnography shifted its focus to the issue of consciousness states experienced during contemplative practice. However, this paper does not intend to discuss either of these aspects but rather to illuminate an underlying element that is crucial in both contexts and has consistently been present throughout my ethnographies. This element, due to its significance and impact on how these anthropotechnics (Kazaryan, 2021) are practiced today, warrants a separate discussion, or at least, to be highlighted as a specific issue in a dedicated reflection.

I am referring to the growing importance of digital devices and AIDMTs in daily meditative practice (Zhu et al., 2017; Tiersen & Calvo, 2021; Berthon & Pitt, 2019; Mrazek et al., 2019). Regardless of the ‘school’ of meditation, these devices increasingly play a pivotal role as facilitators of contemplative exercise because they act as ‘guides’. My ethnography has gathered data across various parts of Europe, particularly in northern Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, and France, though the meditators were diverse, including English, French, Italians, and Germans, among others. Furthermore, most meditators encountered in Belgium were not Belgian but internationals. Nonetheless, all of them, even those who developed critically extreme positions, had used apps and digital devices at least once as meditation facilitators. Given the general similarity among these devices, I will not list all the names encountered but will instead describe their shared features:

• They are primarily smartphone applications that serve as ‘guides’ for the meditative journey.
• The main strategy is to provide the meditator with written instructions accompanied by a timed musical background to aid the meditation process, or directly through guided voices instructing the meditator on the steps to follow.
• Most of these apps can ‘adapt’ to the meditator’s needs creating specific AIDMTs: they collect data based on impressions the meditator inputs at the end of a meditation session and adjust the following session’s difficulty level, which is then notified. The meditation session can be scheduled at regular intervals, with the meditator receiving a notification when it is time.

The first time I encountered a similar dynamic was in 2015, unrelated to meditation. I had begun to develop sleep issues and was advised to install a sleep tracking app. This app would notify me when to go to sleep strictly, monitor my sleep by recording sounds (snoring, sleep talking, excessive movement), and provide a report the following morning, allowing me to listen to ‘critical moments’. Based on these data, it would make a ‘diagnosis’ on the quality of my sleep and notify me accordingly the next night, adjusting the exact time for sleep preparation and autonomously setting the alarm based on the quality of my sleep to avoid imbalances during the day.

I fell in love with this app, using it daily for nearly a year. Although it was not a meditation app (though it provided ‘extra options’ such as playing relaxing sounds to aid in falling asleep), the similarities to what I would later observe in this ethnography were striking. Today, we are enamored with the possibility of having a ‘personalized’, ‘tailored’ path that provides instructions or accompanies us step by step to ease life’s difficulties.

Nonetheless, meditation is anything but a simple technique: anyone who has studied the history of contemplative practice in India will realize it was not developed as a method for relaxation or stress reduction, but as a rigorous ascetic practice based on constant exercise and the development of a form of mindful attention that takes years to perform correctly, and is not without negative emotions, effort, and significant obstacles (Wiltshire, 1990; Divino, 2023a; McEvilley, 1981).

Like many, I initially had a view of meditation very similar to that promoted by modern mindfulness, conceiving it as a form of relaxation and tranquility (Mitchell, 2014), a respectable therapy but part of a conception that was completely overturned when I began attending meditation centers and, especially, learning to read Buddhist texts in Pāli to undertake an academic study on the history of meditative practices. Here, I came into contact with the severe rigor of Indian asceticism, and although it was not a form of excessive and mortifying anachoresis as seen in other more rigid ascetic disciplines, achieving the goals was anything but easy. Yet, Buddhism was born with the intent of providing a ‘cure’ for human maladies, but its ‘therapeutic’ conception, explicitly stated as such, is quite different from ours (Jones, 2017; Salguero, 2015; Teasdale & Kulananda, 2011). It is likely that with the introduction of these practices in the West, and their acculturation aimed at making them ‘digestible’ by our epistemological beliefs, they have been purged of all inconvenient elements and reshaped with a perspective that renders them de facto nothing more than devices perfectly integrated into our culture, bearing little of the Buddhist matrix they claim for promotional purposes, leveraging the perennial desire for the search of otherness, the alternative, the distant, and the exotic (Schlieter, 2017; Sun, 2014; Morgan, 2015).

This latest form, achieved with the advent of new technologies that also allow for constant monitoring of practitioners’ practice, is a clear example of this endogenization: the practice is seen as a form of medication, the modalities of which are diagnosed by a virtual doctor who adjusts them for each individual. However, since this practice is also “purged” of a whole series of philosophical, cultural, and historical elements concerning the essence of Buddhism (Sharf, 2015; Purser, 2018; Janes, 2002) and is instead repackaged as a universal methodology, vetted by our ethnocentric wisdom (the episteme of Western biomedicine that judges from its viewpoint the legitimate or otherwise elements of this practice for ‘therapeutic’ purposes, eliminating all those considered superfluous), we should also expect that this particular form of meditation, so focused on monitoring subjects, ends up assuming the characteristics of a biopolitical tool aimed at shaping docile and useful subjectivities.

Therefore, as this aspect continued to emerge in the course of my ethnographies, I began to keep a separate track, a parallel ethnographic diary that was updated with my considerations about what I encountered. The questions that accumulated were always the same: is mindfulness becoming a symptomatic tool of an increasingly neoliberal society? How does it change, if at all, the experience of other contemplative forms? How is the guidance or control exerted by these facilitating tools experienced by the meditators? How does the use of these tools fit into the context of modern Western society? How does this interact with the adoption of a practice, such as meditation, that is already affected by identity mechanisms involving the construction of exotic worlds and idealized properties?

This shift towards digital facilitation in meditation practices reflects broader societal and cultural dynamics, where the personalization and digital mediation of experiences are increasingly prevalent (Purser, 2015, 2018; Plaza et al., 2013; Li & Leshed, 2022). The appropriation and adaptation of Buddhist meditation practices into Western contexts, facilitated by digital technology, highlight a tension between traditional practices’ authentic experiences and the commodified (Hongladarom, 2020, pp. 147–148), individualized forms they take in contemporary settings. This digital mediation raises critical questions about the integrity of spiritual practices in the digital age, their transformation under the influence of Western epistemologies, and the implications for individuals’ engagement with these practices in their quest for well-being or spiritual fulfillment.

Given the markedly non-local nature of the ethnographic site underpinning this anthropological inquiry, I have elected to cater to a diverse audience. In deference to privacy concerns and in accordance with the preferences expressed by the majority of the participants, I shall refrain from making explicit references to aspects that could precipitate the identification of their sensitive information.

The “converging spaces” of this ethnography manifest a dichotomy, oscillating between digital and physical realms. Notwithstanding, the preponderance of this ethnographic endeavor was navigated through digital mediums, with participants elucidating their meditative progress and reflections on their virtual experiences. This methodological pivot was necessitated by the imperative to surmount geographical and temporal divides, given the participants’ constrained schedules or remote locations relative to my own. The legitimacy and efficacy of digitally mediated ethnography have been previously validated within the academic discourse, notably in the domain of social sciences, where it is now acknowledged as a cogent method for data elicitation, contingent upon rigorous execution (Kaur-Gill & Dutta, 2017; Murthy, 2008; Beneito-Montagut et al., 2017).

Lastly, this article aims to reflect on the possibility that mindfulness is not simply becoming an instrument of biopower, but that—with its most recent transformation into techno-mindfulness—it is in fact taking on the role of a surveillance device. Specifically, we encounter what Bruun calls a “psychological practice of inspection” (Bruun, 2025, p. 28).

2. Who Chooses Mindfulness?

Mindfulness emerges as a particularly divisive subject, a fact that became evident during the initial phase of my ethnographic research, even before my engagement with digital applications and, consequently, AIDMTs. The discourse surrounding mindfulness starkly polarizes its advocates from its detractors. The latter, primarily aligned with Buddhist schools perceived as ‘traditional’ by their own definition, see in the preservation of a certain authenticity of the Buddhist message an imperative neglected by mindfulness. They are, moreover, vehement opponents of the logics that subsequently led many mindfulness practitioners to also utilize applications. However, a third faction exists, more moderate and generally more open, though this openness sometimes indicates an opportunistic mindset. These individuals are typically indifferent to the philosophical underpinnings of Buddhist practice as well as to positivist arguments in favor of mindfulness, pursuing a path that oscillates between the two practices in an attempt to derive maximum benefit from both ‘mindfulness therapies’ and more traditional meditative techniques. They may align with specific spiritual movements of a New Age or syncretistic nature, or simply seek some therapeutic form for their own benefit.

In the form of mindfulness, Buddhist meditative practice has gained a measure of credibility within the biomedical community, earning the appellation of “therapy”. However, numerous doubts persist regarding the commonality of intents between mindfulness and Buddhist meditative practice, from which the former claims descent. This supposed lineage serves to credential mindfulness in the eyes of those seeking “alternative” healing practices to traditional medicine, while also lending an aura of antiquity that fascinates and attracts those who equate the rhetoric of a reliable “ancient practice”. Conversely, should these marketing strategies fail, mindfulness presents itself as the amended and perfected form of these practices. Herein lies a second level of discourse: technoscience, and by extension technomedicine, have acquired a capacity for truth-telling sufficient to credential a methodology based on its scientific merit. In other words, the narrative often promoted in the mindfulness community is that meditation, an ancient practice tied to Buddhist religiosity, contained therapeutic elements long before its cultural and religious context was rejected by biomedicine as capable of healing.

With the work of Kabat-Zinn, who applied a biological lens to this practice, it was “purged” of its superfluous religious elements and remodeled into a protocol that meets biomedical needs (Richmond et al., 2016; Siegel et al., 2009), thereafter administered as therapy. This is known as the process of “de-Buddhicisation” (Sun, 2014, p. 402). This process, describing the transculturation of the practice in question, merges with the commodification of the resultant product into a veritable commodity. In this context, not only traditional religions but also the broader category of “spirituality”, already instrumental to a logic of consumption, are framed within the product and “consumer good” schema: as “cultural goods” emerge, so too do so-called “spiritual” messages conceived as products that must “offer” something, in this case, answers to existential queries.

The promotion and sales of mindfulness leverage similar narratives: the exotic and “spiritual” practice from the distant past, originating from the so-called “oriental” world, offers an alternative for those whose “human” needs are unmet by other (commodified) therapeutic forms (Karelse, 2023b, 2023c; Putcha, 2022). Yet, this product is validated and certified by the biomedical apparatus, assuaging skeptics and thus embracing a wide potential audience. The success of meditation is not solely attributable to this.

Throughout my ethnographies, engaging with meditators linked to both traditional techniques and official mindfulness protocols, what emerged led me to define these subjects’ experiences as an attempt at “reappropriation of bodies”. For various reasons, many who turn to meditation view these healing practices as forms of “redemption” for a lost or beleaguered corporeality. This could be oppressed by invasive therapeutic forms or suffer from an indifference towards one’s subjectivity during the therapeutic process. From severe to mild forms, many subjects report a sense of “oppression” due to the general “indifference” of the medical apparatus: “I feel merely in passing”, quoting the words of a young yoga teacher, “it doesn’t matter who I am, there’s always a long line of people behind and in front of me, whether it’s for a cold or for my mother when she had more serious issues, it makes no difference: you enter, speak, take the prescription, and leave, then repeat, and so on… and somewhat also for psychotherapy, at least in my experience… they talk with me but I don’t feel they ever talk about me, while with meditation I recover a bit of myself, come back into contact”. This necessity to reclaim a dialogue with oneself, dissolved by the wear of modern life, has propelled me to define these experiences as “reappropriation of bodies”. Contrary to the often-held view of meditation as primarily a “mental” practice, those benefiting from it primarily perceive it as a means to recover and redeem a corporeality otherwise lost in the overwhelming routine, thus duly framing the motivations behind many individuals’ turn to meditation.

3. Who Chooses Digital Mindfulness?

Since the onset of the pandemic crisis, there has been a marked increase in the number of individuals who have discovered the convenience of engaging in self-directed meditation through applications or remote sessions. However, this convenience of app-based meditation has not translated into an allocation of more time for its practice. Rather, any time savings were immediately re-invested elsewhere, and thus, this new form of AIDMT emerges as a pragmatic ally, intervening as necessary, acting more as a brief recharge rather than a comprehensive remedy that demands an endemic and radical transformation of one’s lifestyle—a feat deemed impossible at present. Meditation originated within a Buddhist context where practitioners were ascetics, shunning urban life, eschewing social and caste hierarchies, presumed duties, and the burdens of laws and customs, in pursuit of a communal vision (saṅgha) outside the normative bounds of what we would today call the socio-cultural dimension.

It is evident that matters have become significantly more complex since then, not merely due to the challenge of living within an autonomous community today—realities that do exist but are inevitably in communication with the social dimension, from which they cannot entirely detach nor disregard its laws. The type of alienation resulting from the pandemic trauma has not rendered us modern-day hermits, for the segregation within one’s dwelling does not equate to a retreat into the contemplation of one’s inner self, nor has the free time gained been for everyone a solidified achievement that could actually permit an exclusive focus on self-discovery. On the contrary, we know that the pandemic has indeed been a considerable source of stress for freelancers who could not benefit from time at home as if it were paid vacation. Others simply continued to work from home, and the abolition of a clear boundary between work hours spent in a location separate from the home and private time within the domestic sphere has not favored the already compromised independence of the private dimension, often encroached upon by work ‘brought home’. With the pandemic, the notion that the home is a workplace has simply become normalized, and thus, the temporal boundaries that separated work from rest have been adversely affected. These scenarios, representing the darker aspects that contrast with the known benefits of telework, have inevitably also impacted the realm of self-care, typically relegated to private, non-working hours.

Naturally, the primary impetus for turning to these applications lies in health considerations; however, the issue becomes significantly more complex when we consider the environment conducive to their proliferation. Susie, who operates a yoga and meditation center in Brussels, shared her experiences with me, indicating a point of no return: the pandemic necessitated the adaptation of our center to facilitate home meditation.

“People arrive here, breathless and hurried, seeking a respite from the daily stress… this scenario extends to meditation retreats… where individuals take a week off to immerse in nature, hopeful for healing from months of stress at work and home. Yet, the journey is profoundly different… it’s untenable to rely solely on one or two evenings a week or a month-long retreat in the woods… a conviction we held even before COVID, and now, there’s a heightened demand for home-based solutions… for meditation has become a necessity, akin to a doctor-prescribed gym session. I embraced digital tools when necessary: incorporating soothing music during on-site sessions, and conducting online courses during the pandemic… yet, now, the majority prefer continuing online, or even inquire about possibilities to meditate while on the tram, or in the office, carving out 10 min amidst their commute…”

(Susie, June 2022)

I resonate with many insights Susie offered. Navigating the city, my schedule is relentlessly paced with accumulated tasks, pages to write, responses to dispatch, all piling up despite efforts to moderate their accumulation. In this era, time is ever scarcer, living amidst a constant disquiet that even overshadows those rare moments of pause or wait between connections. Carving out a sacred, self-care moment amidst this frenzy becomes yet another task, a commitment to uphold. During my previous ethnography, I observed exhausted workers rushing into yoga studios or meditation centers for their weekly dose of self-time, only to hurriedly return home to dinner preparations, children’s homework, or other commitments. Now, even this community moment, already a minimal and controlled sanctuary within the modern life’s turmoil, is increasingly dwindling. What remains of self-care in all this? Can we truly speak of it when the act of personal care becomes yet another item on our rigorously segmented daily activity list?

Observing these apps increasingly dominate the daily lives of meditators, I asked participants of this study who primarily use these tools to maintain a mini-diary of their reflections for me to review. Securing subjects willing to share their insights proved challenging, largely because they claim to have little time even for discussion. In 2021, Amazon’s decision to install “Mindful Practice Rooms”, slightly larger than phone booths and dubbed “AmaZen”, caused a stir. These booths were intended to offer stressed Amazon employees a brief respite for meditation (Sutton, 2025, p. 704). While the initiative is based on the documented benefits of even short meditative sessions, it has been criticized for suggesting that these practices should be used to enhance productivity. These “Zen Booths” also offer a range of computer programs for guided meditation, after which, presumably, the user exits the booth and returns to work (Carvalho & Grácio, 2022). This concept lingered in my mind and resurfaced when I noticed similar booths, “Mindful Nests”, installed in the library of my university town, Antwerp. These operated on the same principle, offering apps for guided meditation and LED lighting to foster a few moments of focus. The objective was identical. As the creator of “Zen Booths”, Leila Brown aimed to provide a space for mental health focus, Van den Bos, the creator of these “Nests” installed mainly in the Netherlands and Flanders, subtly suggests productivity as the core reason for these devices: “their impact on the well-being of students and staff shows that 85% of users report feeling more focused while studying after use” (University of Antwerp Press Releases and News, 2022).

Stationing myself for days outside these library booths, quietly observing and occasionally engaging users in conversation, sometimes even over coffee, I gathered their experiences. Mainly students, stressed by study schedules or current issues, reported benefits from using these systems. However, some comments left me perplexed:

“I always meditate with phone apps. They’re convenient because you can always have them with you, and I started meditating this way. I’ve set up notifications to have a consistent rhythm and meditate at the same moments. Initially, it’s a bit like having a virtual instructor. I tried attending meditation centers a few times but didn’t find them suitable; honestly, I prefer this system… it’s more personal”.

(Vincent, March 2022)

In another case, another subject who had meditated alone for years before directly transitioning to an app confessed, “I prefer them because they’re more practical… not everyone is suited for complex exercises… I had great difficulty concentrating and sometimes when I meditated… I mean without the app… I didn’t even feel that relaxed… but with these audio guides, it’s like having a human guide… and I need to let go, so to speak… of relaxation. It’s not under my control. It’s the app’s… and that relaxes me” (David, May 2023).

Over time, I’ve increasingly viewed these apps as a form of self-hacking. Their widespread popularity fully integrates these new techniques of the body into the landscape of globalized and interconnected contemporary societies. People seek the most rapid and effective solutions, and these apps provide them. Personally, I have attempted to use various apps over time, failing miserably to follow their guidance, which diverged significantly from my accustomed practices. From my ethnographic diary: “they attempt to command me, and they don’t even work”, “this mellifluous voice merely annoys me and distracts from the contemplative exercise, I don’t understand the appeal to others”.

It’s also essential to understand the reasons behind the usage of these devices. After all, some might argue that the traditional Buddhist path, with its prescribed stages within the framework of ascetic discipline and withdrawal from society, was designed for its historical context, reflecting specific contingent needs. Thus, excessive rigidity could prevent this practice from adapting to modern necessities, which are undeniably different from those of ancient India. Indeed, this is a crucial point. From an anthropological perspective, it’s critical not to be overly stringent regarding the legitimacy of one culture over another, which could risk transforming us into dangerous judges. The question here is not whether modern meditators who use apps as aids in their practice can be considered ‘legitimately’ meditating or not, but rather to what extent this modern practice, which factually claims inspiration from ancient traditions as a form of authorial legitimization, while intending to ‘purge’ them of elements deemed ‘unscientific’ and hence ‘useless’ by modern standards, constitutes cultural appropriation.

Thus, the hypothesis derived from my ethnographic experiences—including turning to various schools, DIY practices, and experimenting with modern AIDMTs, as well as years of interacting with individuals with similar experiences across a broad spectrum of opinions—reflects on issues such as the modern neoliberal intrusion into processes of cultural appropriation, or more aptly, epistemic colonization (Colombo, 2020), towards disciplines reformulated utilitarianly as biopolitical forms of social body discipline, then optimized for self-discipline and self-surveillance.

Simultaneously, it must also question modern discourses on utility and the exaltation of values such as attention and the present moment, arbitrarily attributed as values of meditation per se, now celebrated as facilitators of a practice not aimed at detachment from mundanity and the pursuit of transcendence from the ephemeral and impermanent, but rather sold as a ‘therapeutic’ product for the optimization of productivity and efficiency among social actors who, ‘thanks to mindfulness’, can improve work performance, reduce work-related stress (presumably to work better and more), and assist in coping, through adaptation and resilience (translated as uncritical and unconditional acceptance), with the wear and tear of modern life.

4. The Problem of the Epistemic Paradigm

The facet of this phenomenon that most engenders concern within me pertains to the issue of what is termed “epistemic violence” (Held, 2020; Teo, 2010). To invoke the words of an individual engaged in mindfulness practices who also availed themselves of these applications:

“the paramount consideration is that the scientific community has corroborated the validity of the MBSR protocol and all therapeutic interventions predicated upon mindfulness… hence, they possess a scientific foundation, and the applications frequently employ audio and instructions that adhere to those standards, which, even from a psychological standpoint, engenders trust and prompts me to recommend them… their execution may vary in quality, but they are underpinned by empirical data… by bona fide research on verified benefits”.

(Samuel, March 2022)

What has become particularly salient throughout the course of my ethnographic endeavor is the extent to which individuals rely on app-based meditation practices under the belief that these are efficacious by virtue of their vetting through the Western epistemic system, be it technoscience or biomedicine. This phenomenon ought to be interpreted as more than symptomatic of how this ‘transculturation’ has, in effect, manifested as a form of cultural appropriation. Such a process should not necessarily be construed as a voluntary neocolonial force (Karelse, 2023a), to the extent that the pursuit of this ‘colonization’ is nonetheless driven by the unconscious conviction that the Western epistemological system, under which mindfulness is validated as an ‘effective’ therapy, is superior, or at least capable of determining what is beneficial and what is not, thereby dictating what should be eliminated or retained in a process of scientificization.

“I have no need to follow the instructions of a monk or to read the texts… personally, I have never felt the need… I mean, if a practice is valid, we see it from the results… there are evidences that prove it… that’s why I undertook the training to become an MBSR instructor, and it is that practice that I intend to pursue, not religious Buddhism”.

(Elisabeth, April 2023)

From this conviction, namely the reinforcement that the Western epistemological system lends to mindfulness, follows a more casual reliance on apps. Only on this basis can fertile grounds be found for constructing other factors that drive social actors to rely on AIDMTs: their convenience, their tailored design for the ‘customer’, and thus the sense of efficacy they convey in promoting one’s health, saving time. In a word: optimization.

“After all, it’s not pseudoscience, is it? It’s still based on studies, etc… and I feel that I’m investing in my concentration. I come here [to the Mindful Nest] because I saw concrete results. At first, I was skeptical, but I gave it a try… and I found that after a couple of months I was able to concentrate better even in my studies… especially memory… and so I started practicing it at home too, with this app [shows me the phone]. Having that booth in the library is ultimately convenient… I always come here to study, and when I feel that I’m not there with my head… perhaps because concentration is starting to wane… I go into the booth and after a while, I return to studying… and I do this at least once a day… whereas before I would have gone home and wasted my day”.

(Pierre, February 2023)

The reflections I am able to construct from these ethnographic experiences are, naturally, circumscribed to the context we are delineating here, yet it is imperative to acknowledge their connection to a broader background concerning the previously mentioned narrative of mindfulness endogenization. This narrative is characterized by cultural appropriation with a colonial inflection, orientalism (Solomatina, 2025), and biased reflections and interpretations of these practices from a Western perspective (Sharf, 1995), positioning them conveniently to bolster various theories regarding the evolutionary stages of culture, or the purported pre-rational thought of Indian societies, to foster a specific narrative.

This narrative was not necessarily intended to denigrate but fell within a programmatic choice aimed at presenting that world in a certain light to advance a particular discourse. This holds true even when the intent was to promulgate a derogatory discourse, thereby placing the Western episteme at the pinnacle of the evolutionary ladder. India, and Indian thought, once described as the black cow on a night where all cows are black (Bhatawadekar, 2020), thus becomes one of the master keys that Western thinkers have favored to construct their discourses, rhetorics, and visions to benefit a specific conception.

Ethnographically, we can only account for the latter part of this transformation, which synchronically renders us witnesses to the integration of the already transculturated mindfulness, to the benefit of a medicalizing view of clinical psychotherapy (Morris, 2022; Shonin et al., 2013), with the growing and inexorable automating force represented by the technical power of digital technology, algorithms, and personalized therapies (AIDMTs). The therapist, the instructor, or even the spiritual guide fade and pale in comparison to the power of the automaton (Ioannou, 2023; Kermavnar & Desmet, 2024), which can serve hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands of users with the same formula, capable of adapting and transforming through predictive systems and input processing.

This service is not without costs, but the economic advantage offered by a premium subscription to one of these apps, in the long run, is significantly greater than the cost of psychotherapy, regular attendance at a meditation center, or undertaking a personal journey of study and analysis: simply put, books and courses cost money. And even where these costs are mitigated by the charitable spirit many meditation centers indeed exhibit, allowing free access and attendance to courses, these solutions, mostly offered by institutions marked by a ‘religious’ aura and thus not always appreciated, still incur costs from the meditator’s perspective: costs related to the time and effort that must be invested in a more ‘traditional’ meditative path that is not capable of providing immediate or short-term results.

The issue is how the Western epistemological discourse, by imposing itself on meditative anthropotechnics, has transformed it to the point of turning it into a biopolitical device. These aspects greatly concern scholars, not only for demonstrating the capabilities of a culturally hegemonic force to appropriate and whimsically transform other cultural practices it ‘possesses’, while retaining in them an aura of exoticism and alterity (a deliberate choice, for purely marketing and promotional purposes), but also because this overhaul, according to many, has led to an authentic inversion of the intentions of a practice, contemplation, which is de facto linked from the outset to a philosophical context particularly subversive to established power and epistemological normativism (Wiles, 2023). In contrast, mindfulness averts any risk of developing a potential for critical thought against the neoliberal system in which it thrives (Polinska, 2018). Since the different epistemological context encoded in centuries of Buddhist thought, viewing such reflections as the inseparable counterpart of the ‘practical’ contemplative aspect, is unacknowledged in contemporary mindfulness contexts, any potential subversive power is essentially neutralized. What is of primary interest in these contexts is fundamentally attributable to market logics.

Workplace and commercial applications of mindfulness are concerned only with specific strategic outcomes linked to productivity and persuasion. Moreover, many of the techniques employed at this level clearly fail to meet the autonomy criterion since they are directed at controlling and manipulating hearts and minds for ulterior purposes. On this account, the numerous mindfulness apps and products such as simplistic self-help and colouring books are—not simply ludicrous and exploitative mutations of mindfulness—but positively harmful to health in that they mislead people and construct obstacles to the sort of mindful transformation conducive to mind/body well-being.

(Hyland, 2017, pp. 11–12)

I wish to highlight herein that the process of endogenization of Buddhist contemplative practices within contemporary clinical mindfulness is a well-examined phenomenon within the social and historical sciences, primarily conceived in terms of an epistemic violence and culturalization (Kirmayer, 2015). This violence imposes a certain vision centered on the ideal of Western science as the repository of the only ‘true’ and ‘legitimate’ wisdom upon another system of thought, which is thus reforged. This notion feeds on a very straightforward concept: the “scientific nature” of Buddhism (Harrison, 2010), whose roots already sank into the early 20th century when Japan and India endeavored to utilize the notion of Buddhism as a “scientific religion” to legitimize themselves in the eyes of a dominant West that had long insisted on the more entangled nature of other cultural forms, distant from “science” as the ultimate pinnacle of achievable evolution (Lo Turco, 2006; McMahan, 2004, 2010; Snodgrass, 2012; Ketelaar, 1991; Davis, 1989).

Ethnography is also beginning to recognize the significance of the integration between mindfulness and digital apps, whose massive and frequent use leads to an authentic incorporation of these devices. They become appendages and extensions of our corporeality, contributing to shaping not only a daily routine but also, and most importantly, the perception of one’s self and the social disciplining that we impart to our bodies through this routine. This form of self-discipline is not devoid of issues, and ethnography has begun to unveil how, more specifically, technology addiction emerges (Jablonsky, 2022).

5. Ethnography and Autoethnography

The field of inquiry in question necessitates a reflection on the essence of ethnography and autoethnography alike. Despite dealing with a cultural phenomenon in every respect, the notion of ‘field’ herein is significantly altered. Unless our aims are, justifiably, the analysis of how such apps are received in countries like India, where this phenomenon truly becomes a form of ‘return’ of a transculturated product by the West, with the potential to also influence their perception of the practice or their daily lives, an ethnography intending to analyze the transformative experience entailed by the use of these apps must inherently start with the premise that the field is, in some way, digital, and the intersection between the digital and the corporeal. This is what seemed most evident from the autoethnographic data that accounted for a period of several months in which I attempted to personally use these apps.

The reflections that I repropose, following my autoethnographic experience, concern some fundamental aspects that I particularly noticed in comparison with the more ‘traditional’ meditative practice.

1. Interestingly, the body gains greater centrality in AIDMT. This does not imply that corporeality and the body are not important in ‘traditional’ meditation (this definition is to be taken with a grain of salt, here meaning simply meditation techniques inspired by certain Buddhist teachings), but the experience that meditation provides me as a subject, is that corporeality is fundamentally inseparable from thought, and that these two terms are imperfect forms to describe a unity. This is also evident to other meditators whom I have interviewed over the course of this multi-year ethnography, in focusing on the specific experiences of contemplative practice, with or without external guidance. The intervention of apps, though a daily dimension, but distributed in much shorter and more fragmented time packets (10, 20 min on average) and the almost exclusive concentration on aspects such as breathing, posture, or concentration, tend to significantly emphasize the aspect of corporeality as a physical given. As I wrote in my autoethnographic diary: “these meditations initially confer upon me a sense of lightness… something that I primarily experience with the body… it’s the aftermath that really makes a difference: I feel it in the way I move and in how I relate to the world”. However, it is equally true that this experience is relatively short-lived, temporary: “by 6 PM”, in this context I meditated at 3 PM, “I already feel the effects of this lightness fading”.

2. Ethnography must necessarily adapt in such a way as to encompass the digital dimension, which, whether we like it or not, is absorbed by that corporeality during the practice. Fortuitously, the confluence of ethnography and the digital dimension represents a pathway that is already being explored (Favero, 2023). To enhance the expressiveness of the subjects under study, especially considering that the use of applications entails a factual integration with the digital device, I have discerned that elicitation through digitality itself significantly aids the subjects. This phenomenon is partially indicative of a problem of digital acculturation that such integration engenders; however, from the ethnographer’s perspective, it is imperative to take this into account. Practically, this translates, for instance, into allowing subjects to share their reflections through an updated diary of which the ethnographer is apprised via smartphones. This markedly facilitates their ability to articulate somatic sensations and primarily involves affects that are recollected only as long as they are active and exert an influence on us: discussing these with the ethnographer subsequently, perhaps hours or days after contemplation, does not yield the same outcomes.

6. Techno-Mindfulness as a Surveillance Device

In this section I will analyze ethnographic data related to another issue concerning the practice of mindfulness as well as the emerging phenomenon of techno-mindfulness, namely that regarding the effectively biopolitical implications of techno-mindfulness as a surveillance dispositive, thus part of what has been defined “surveillance capitalism” (Zuboff, 2019a, 2019b). More precisely, techno-mindfulness can be conceived as a dispositive that proposes a new and more efficient form of surveillance, one that no longer requires an external controller to be enacted (Zuboff & Rose, 2021; Granjon, 2021), but rather delegates to the surveilled themselves the role of self-surveillants, through the learning of technologies of the self aimed at self-disciplining and at internalizing the normative order of the surveillant. In this sense, the old model of the panopticon (Pène, 2023) changes from an external all-surveilling eye into an all-surveillant inner eye. This order is conveyed as something valuable for self-improvement and is therefore positively embraced by practitioners, who thus unwittingly become controllers of themselves.

Before proceeding to the examination of the interviews, however, it is necessary to ask what has brought us to this point.

On the one hand, there is the nature of techno-mindfulness as a dispositive that lends itself well to functioning as a DIY practice (Barker, 2014), effectively eliminating the need for a guiding figure. This in a context in which DIY practices for so-called biohacking have gained surprising popularity (Lakhan, 2025). This is an important aspect reflected in the ethnographies. Many individuals told me about their desire to improve themselves in terms of performance—not so much a matter of personal growth and self-acceptance, but rather of refinement within the logics of productivity.

“I switched to meditation apps because of how easy they are to access. These exercises are available at any moment, and in fact I may need them at any moment… what helps me the most is knowing I can access my data, and I can clearly see my progress, or where I need to improve. Above all, I’m satisfied because if I need to step away from the office for ten minutes—because my nerves are shot and I can’t work properly—this meditation allows me to recharge and get back on track quickly and effectively”.

(Steve, December 2023)

I believe it is necessary to focus on two fundamental aspects: speed and performativity. On the one hand, techno-mindfulness is effective because it is rapid and immediately accessible—“ten minutes” and done—and on the other hand it is useful because it increases work performance, another point confirmed by other meditators:

“I started meditating this way because I didn’t like my life. Every day was the same routine, and I was tired, I was depressed, I didn’t like my job, I didn’t like anything. But I couldn’t change things and I felt trapped… it’s incredible how a quarter of an hour of meditation a day, or half an hour split into two sessions of fifteen minutes, has helped me enormously over the course of a year. Now I face life with great positivity, I always go to work after meditating, it gives me a great sense of calm and the ability to face all difficulties”.

(Marisa, January 2023)

Here too, one should notice the terminology adopted: on one hand, the contrast between ideas such as “facing” life’s problems or the workday, compared to the dispositive of “calm”. Michelle meditates and manages to “face all difficulties”. Interesting is the use of a warlike term within the context of calm and inner peace.

The mindfulness exercise is therefore spread throughout the day, spaced out and administered in small doses—the “mindful minutes” (Bruun, 2025, p. 31)—brief moments that an individual takes for themselves to practice their re-education, bringing their attention back to the here and now.

In recent years much reflection has focused on the possibility that mindfulness can in fact be treated as a “technology of the self” in Foucauldian terms (Kelly, 2013; Shusterman, 2008), which would nullify the potential for an actual critical value of subjectivity and identity—something that, instead, is attributed to traditional meditation (Samuel, 2015).

If Buddhist meditation tends to be based on the principle of non-self, and thus on the deconstruction of the socio-cultural dynamics that give rise to a sense of identity, on the other hand, the epistemic acculturation of meditation in its transformation into mindfulness has resulted in a new epistemological system being superimposed on the previous one. This new system belongs both to the logics of what anthropology calls biomedicine (Lock & Nguyen, 2018; Dilger et al., 2015) and to broader socio-cultural dynamics.

Specifically, it is well known that the epistemological system assumed by mindfulness in becoming a clinical dispositive is that of cognitive-behavioral psychology (Herbert & Forman, 2011; Troy et al., 2013; Baldini et al., 2014), with the not insignificant consequence that the sense of self has become a central element to be safeguarded, rather than something to be deconstructed.

It must also be said that the transculturation of mindfulness has placed it at the very center of neoliberal culture (Chachignon et al., 2024; Walsh, 2018; Singh et al., 2008), so much so that today people speak not only of cultural appropriation (Rogers, 2006) but more properly of “white mindfulness” (Karelse, 2023a).

In this context—emphasized by the previously mentioned discourse of the will to scientize Buddhism (assuming, though not conceding, that this is even possible)—mindfulness has itself become a product of neoliberalism (Sercekman & Ceviker, 2024). But this goes well beyond the simple discourse that sees it as internal to market logics and akin to a commodity. Mindfulness actively contributes to the new biopolitics of subjectivation. By the term “biopolitics”, I will refer in this paper specifically to a set of instruments aimed at monitoring and shaping the members of a sociocultural collective, steering their behaviors, attitudes, and even beliefs in a direction aligned with the dominant social model. This is achieved through gradual processes of adaptation that lead individuals to internalize the desired norms in the least conflictual way possible—ideally, to the point where they themselves integrate these norms, behaviors, and tendencies into their own lifestyles, managing their bodies in a manner consistent with the apparatus that influences them toward a specific direction.

This perception finds broad confirmation in ethnographic accounts of meditators, which consistently record a certain enthusiasm for the use of techno-mindfulness, especially in its form of app-based mindfulness that produce an AIDMT. This enthusiasm stems from the fact that technology reprocesses the data it collects in order to provide feedback that feels concrete, practical, and scientific (Solomatina, 2025; Sharf, 1995; Harrison, 2010; Lo Turco, 2006; McMahan, 2004, 2008), and therefore more trustworthy.

Speaking about the mindfulness exercises that his app designs specifically for his profile, Luke stated (July 2023): “I feel like I have the situation under control”. This is at the heart of the entire debate and possible criticism regarding the nature of techno-mindfulness. It is seen as a practical and incredibly useful technique, but at the same time it is undeniable that the way it collects and processes biometric data can certainly configure it as a form of techno-surveillance.

According to Bruun, a possible explanation for the perception of practicality associated with these technologies may lie in the simplicity with which they visually reproduce the users’ health conditions:

Part of the appeal that digital health monitoring has for many people lies in the technologies’ visual representation of the users’ interiority, and their power to explain a range of apparently indiscernible psychological and biological “functions” that are seen to make up who we are.

(Bruun, 2025, p. 37)

This is also what I observed in my own ethnography, with examples varying according to the participants but all referring to similar experiences.

“I was looking for a kind of reprogramming of my head, a rewriting, you know? Then I discovered meditation, I tried it for a few years and I felt I was getting results… it’s like an exercise for the mind… there’s no shortcut: you have to work hard, you have to commit… fewer words and more practice… the brain is like a muscle, and if I want to climb a mountain I have to be trained, if you see what I mean. Mindfulness gives me that sense of mental exercise, it gives me the feeling of making progress, of achieving something”.

(Bryan, February 2021)

All this contributes to conveying a sense of reliability that leads individuals to willingly hand over their biometric data to techno-mindfulness devices in order to obtain more effective feedback for their training. This makes techno-mindfulness a true method of “participatory surveillance” (Castagnino, 2018, p. 11), in which individuals voluntarily provide their biometric data to the app, considering it useful for therapeutic purposes. It is worth mentioning that most meditators who use devices for collecting biometric data during meditation have employed a specific technology that involves purchasing and using a particular headband placed on the forehead, which collects data similar to an EEG—although in a more simplified form than a laboratory device.

Nonetheless, the data collected are processed by the app and made available to the meditators, giving them a sense of the “tangibility” of their progress. Moreover, the app can generate audio cues to support meditation or provide personalized and specific AIDMTs based on the biometric data collected.

As already mentioned, all this generates a great sense of trust among participants, who feel they are receiving positive feedback on their practice and are thus more motivated to continue it—with all that this entails. As another participant stated during the ethnographic study:

“It’s like seeing an X-ray… first you have a pain, something that’s not right, but you can’t quite identify it… then you get the medical report, you have something you can visualize, touch… even if you don’t understand much of it, it’s still reliable, you know it is—it’s the tangible result of your discomfort”.

(Silvia, June 2023)

And again, returning to Bryan’s response, which here connects with Silvia’s experience: “What I like most is knowing that my efforts are being monitored. I can consult them constantly, they’re always at my fingertips. It feels like I can see the concrete outcome of my practice” (Bryan, April 2023).

The central theme of these experiences is the idea of control, as Luke also stated: “I feel like I have the situation under control… if something goes wrong, I know the nature of the problem” (Luke, July 2023).

Participants exhibit recurring themes, all connected to the issue of biometric data surveillance: being monitored and being able to constantly consult one’s data (Bryan); the feeling of having everything under control and of being able to visualize it concretely (Silvia); or the idea of being able to visualize the nature of the problem as if that made it clearer (Luke).

All of this contributes to what Bruun defines as the visual and sensory aspect of these applications, which constitutes a genuine anchor for the perception of their effectiveness: “Self-tracking devices display a range of colourful diagrams, statistical graphs, and other visual representations, based on the user’s ‘health data’” (Bruun, 2025, p. 29).

Given that biopolitics is closely linked to neoliberal logics (Peters, 2007), mindfulness too, especially in its new form of techno-mindfulness, seems to be actively involved in shaping subjectivities that comply with this order. In doing so, it follows the same dynamics that characterize surveillance diapositives, but it does so in an innovative way: by merging the role of the surveillant with that of the surveilled.

It has already been suggested that mindfulness was transforming into a self-monitoring dispositive (Bruun, 2025), and with the advent of AIDMTs this new form of contemplative practice has now fully assumed the characteristics of a surveillance technology.

On the one hand, mindfulness is already fully inscribed within the logics of the technology of the self (Carvalho, 2017), just as the broader environment of mindful fitness is (Markula, 2004). On the other hand, through its long history of transformation as it became endogenized within Western epistemology (McMahan, 2023; Solanki, 2025), and through its popularization by the modernist Buddhist movement (McMahan, 2008), mindfulness has been disseminated as a device of well-being. This has facilitated its current integration with technological devices and artificial intelligence. Mindfulness has long been integrated with brain-sensing devices for health monitoring purposes (Crivelli et al., 2019), and technologies of various kinds are used to assist practitioners in their progress (Mitsea et al., 2023) or to reduce stress (Huberty et al., 2019). Moreover, the outbreak of the pandemic in 2019 further accelerated the spread of mindfulness applications (Behan, 2020; Conversano et al., 2020; Antonini Philippe et al., 2021), and their convenience, given their constant accessibility and availability. This, in turn, can also be linked to the onset of a shift in biopolitical trends beginning with the pandemic period (Vasilieva et al., 2023). Techno-mindfulness is thus fully part of this process of transformation and, we might say, of updating biopolitical structures.

Martin is a meditator who has always placed great trust in the benefits of contemplative practice, but at first he began with the more structured form of mindfulness, taking part in meetings and group sessions: “right from the start I experienced enormous benefits from the practice, and what I liked most was having tangible results, directly in my daily life—it was the quality of my days that gradually improved”. When I asked him to clarify what he meant by quality of the days, Martin replied: “it’s mainly a matter of endurance… I don’t know how to explain it, before they felt heavy, sometimes even unbearable… I confess that I was very unhappy with my life, but in the end it was enough to change inside for the way of seeing things outside to change as well” (Martin, February 2024).

This narrative, where the responsibility for one’s own happiness rests solely on one’s beliefs and the level of one’s determination or acceptance of circumstances, is a rhetoric that in some respects has been forcibly attached to Buddhist thought and is in fact closer to the neoliberal logics of the self-made man. Martin goes on to explain that the transition to techno-mindfulness was for him a natural one, made easier by the benefits provided by the device: “I immediately loved the way this app gives you every detail of your progress: everything is accessible in a clear way and explained through charts or concrete data… it helps me better visualize my progress, and I want to maintain a certain standard… with this app I can access the exercises at any time, take some time for myself and choose the path that best suits me… in short, it works better, it’s more practical and it’s convenient”.

Here too, I wanted to select some testimonies that focus more on aspects of surveillance and monitoring: the app collects health data and processes it to propose customized pathways. This convenience is always praised in terms of obtaining a more immediate benefit. It is an efficiency-driven approach that meets the desire for increased productivity, as Martin himself explains when he speaks of an unhappy life that was improved by adopting a different perspective. It is not my intention here to deny the benefits that this kind of practice can have. Practitioners themselves are the first to defend the sense of satisfaction they have gained. However, it is worth reflecting on a fundamental fact: all subjects speak of conditions of unhappiness due to a certain quality of life which, in practice, is not modified by mindfulness. A problem such as work-related stress is not addressed at the root, so much so that meditators still have to carve out those ten minutes or at most that quarter of an hour—an extremely narrow time frame—to practice mindfulness. This clashes with other experiences I’ve had with meditation in entirely different contexts tied to a more traditional adherence to practice (Divino, 2021), where contemplative exercise requires hours or even whole days to be carried out properly. By contrast, the logic of mindfulness does not change the hectic context that characterizes all our days, but rather adapts to environments dominated by work realities that absorb all the attention and efforts of individuals, offering targeted remedies within the little time available.

In this sense, Tinne provided me with a testimony that caught me off guard: “I live with a constant sense of being overwhelmed… I don’t know if that’s the right word, but it’s as if I constantly feel suffocated… that’s why with the app I set notifications for sessions scattered throughout the day… I take small breaks and those are like my therapy moments… I catch my breath and really feel reborn… you know, sometimes my days are just about anxiously waiting for the next mindfulness session, and when I get there, I feel like I can unload all the weight, only for it to start accumulating again” (Tinne, January 2023).

Since the practice does nothing to change the conditions that generate Tinne’s state of anguish or heaviness, it is clear that it can only provide a palliative, temporary relief. In this context, mindfulness lacks the further dimension of Buddhist meditation—namely, the ascetic nature of the movement, the abandonment of society and its polemical stance against traditional institutions, as well as the rejection of any role or social hierarchy by Buddhist monks (Olivelle, 2006a).

By contrast, this new Westernized and biopoliticized form displays all the characteristics of a form of self-surveillance. Tinne herself tells us: “I constantly bring my attention back to myself… when I feel overwhelmed I still try to apply the mindful precepts, I try to remind myself to live in the present moment, I bring my attention back to this, and in this way I fight the overwhelm… I have completely internalized this, so I can activate it at any time”.

Here too the use of warlike language is interesting, when she speaks of “fighting the overwhelm”, as well as the quasi-technological terminology, when she evokes the idea of having to “activate attention” to the present moment.

This idea that the miraculous cure consists in bringing one’s attention back to the here and now is something I have encountered in many circumstances. Such is the case with Caroline, who uses very similar words: “for me it’s about living in the moment, being constantly alert and attentive… not being swept away by events but remembering that I am the subject who lives… once you acquire this awareness, you can apply it at any time… the present follows you everywhere, it’s a form of constant attention”.

Both Tinne and Caroline speak of being constantly accompanied by this form of attentiveness, which raises many interesting questions. As both make explicit, it is about “internalizing” a certain practice, which in fact is focused on self-control, on self-surveillance. It is thus fascinating how the internalization of the norms and precepts of mindfulness also leads to adopting a worldview based on adapting to circumstances—the very philosophy of the liquid and the container that I mentioned earlier. Caroline too began practicing mindfulness because she was dissatisfied with an aspect of her life, specifically her personal fulfillment. As she explained to me: “I would have liked to achieve more in life, and I was unhappy because I had made the wrong choices and now found myself living a life I did not want… mindfulness saved me in this sense, it allowed me to accept what I had and to be grateful for what I had, and that’s why I keep meditating” (Caroline, August 2022).

Here again, no so-called subversive impulse arises in the mindful subject’s mind. On the contrary, the guiding thread of the practice seems not only to neutralize the will to change, but also to subject one to vigilant and constant “control”. Perseverance in practice certainly ensures the continuation of the sense of acceptance of what was once unacceptable, but at the same time it fully inscribes the subject within the logics of a biopower that has no interest whatsoever in seeing communities reflect on conditions of unhappiness or excessive stress as unacceptable elements of their lives. In this sense, the characteristic of being a device of self-surveillance is even more important than that of being a device of pacification or docility.

For instance, Bryan mentioned his intention to “reprogramming” his head. This desire for reprogramming seems to be in line with the epistemic framework of cognitive-behavioral psychology, which is the system within which mindfulness has been incorporated. The idea is precisely that meditation should serve as a tool for re-adaptation or forced engineering of the self. This intention is deliberately pursued by practitioners, as they are actively involved in a social model that requires them to strive for such adaptation—a model whose only possible alternative is social exclusion. As Martin will say, echoing the statements of many other interviewees, “I was very unhappy with my life”. This unhappiness stems precisely from the sense of exclusion generated by the inability to adapt to the dominant social model; therefore, a technique capable of providing this adaptation is instead seen as a means to achieve happiness. However, if we were to question how much this aligns with the aims of Buddhist meditation, we would find a deep underlying dissonance.

One of the reasons why modern mindfulness is accused of not being Buddhist lies precisely in its egolatric nature, which places it in perfect antithesis to the Buddhist philosophy of non-self (anattā) (Samuel, 2015). This form of ego-centrality is not explicitly stated, but it emerges in practice—through ethnographic research on mindfulness practitioners, and in the way the centrality of one’s own identity is implicitly assumed as the pivot of the entire process. This derives from the adoption of mindfulness by a different epistemological system. Specifically, cognitive-behavioral psychology is strongly centered on the importance of a healthy, strong ego (Herbert & Forman, 2011; Troy et al., 2013; Singh et al., 2008; Kudesia & Nyima, 2015). This also leads to apparent contradictions when mindfulness instructors strongly advise against pursuing deeper forms of contemplation, which would lead to the dissolution of the sense of self. Nonetheless, this fact is also partly implicit in the very monitoring nature of mindfulness: “Self-monitoring necessarily reifies ‘the self’ as an object of observation” (Bruun, 2025, p. 30).

In line with this, mindfulness practitioners who enter such deeper states—and experience the loss of self—almost always describe it as distressing and disorienting. This has given rise to the literature on MRAEs (Mindfulness-Related Adverse Events) (Aizik-Reebs et al., 2021), which acknowledges the possibility of negative or undesirable effects of mindfulness (Farias et al., 2020; Lambert et al., 2023; Taylor et al., 2022; Goldberg et al., 2022; Britton et al., 2021). These episodes, known in the psychological literature as the fading of the boundaries of self-representation (Chiarella et al., 2024), can be anthropologically defined as “crises of presence” (Divino, 2023b), and have also been studied ethnographically and compared with similar experiences among practitioners of “traditional” meditation (Divino, 2024b). The latter, however, did not experience access to deeper contemplative absorption as a crisis or a distressing experience, but rather as a prelude to a further condition of access to profound states of consciousness.

The fact that clinical mindfulness—unlike Buddhist meditation—proposes a reinforcement and protection of the psychological ego, or the sense of “presence” (Baldini et al., 2014; Childs, 2007), is not only testimony to its epistemological inversion, but also helps us understand its current role in the socio-cultural context of which it is part.

7. Concluding Remarks: An Emerging Field

This final aspect of the history of meditation in our modern era represents merely the commencement of a new chapter that warrants exhaustive examination. In this paper, I have confined myself to presenting a few reflections on the significance of this potential emerging field, with the hope that more time and resources will be allocated in the future towards the qualitative investigation of these experiences. Beyond the realms of psychology and sociology, which have already begun to engage with digital meditation, scant attention has been paid within anthropology to give voice to the subjects—the quintessential social actors—who embody and subjectively live through this transformative experience.

“Honestly, it’s the most convenient thing for me… the beauty of meditating with [name of the app] is that it’s just practical, it follows me daily… whether I’m on the tram or at home… but it’s the convenience, you know? I don’t always have time to go to a park to meditate or to create the ideal environment around me… instead, I just take out my phone and everything is with me, whenever I want, if I need it… and I assure you, I often need my 10 min of serenity”.

(Vincent, December 2023)

The body is necessarily at the heart of this investigation because it is the focal point of the meditators’ concern, as well as what factually experiences meditation and progressively embodies the digital device as more than a mere adjunct to anthropotechnics. The smartphone is necessarily engulfed, internalized: it shapes our routine, monitors our experiences, becomes a repository of our memories, and interacts with us.

Especially insofar as these techniques are utilized to specifically and customarily modify one’s biological rhythms, they become of paramount importance to ethnographers interested in health practices. This can be readily identified as the aspect that, in nearly six years of ethnography on meditation, has presented itself as predominant in relation to the use of app-based meditations: “I don’t meditate for any particular spiritual calling… I mainly use the app to manage to sleep… if I use the specific meditation, which is guided, I focus on the voice, relax my muscles, and get so bored that I fall asleep”, (Sophie). When this individual was asked to perform a different meditative exercise, inspired by Vipassana techniques, they encountered significant difficulty: “it’s definitely worse than I thought… is this meditation? It doesn’t help me sleep or relax… it was like going to the gym… honestly, I don’t know if I could do it for a long time”. These, among the numerous testimonials I could have selected, are just some of the most evocative examples of the dichotomy that exists today within the realm of contemplative practices.

In conclusion, this exploration of the intersection between digital technology and contemplative practices, compel us to acknowledge the profound transformation meditation has undergone in the Western context. This transformation, significantly propelled by the advent of new digital tools, represents not merely a shift in how meditation is practiced but it also underscores a broader cultural and societal pivot towards the ‘customization’ and digitization of experiences through the embodiment of these digital tools. The digital mediation of meditation, as illuminated through ethnographic investigation, accentuates the complexities and nuances of adapting ancient practices into the fabric of modern Western life. This adaptation, while offering unprecedented accessibility and customization, concurrently raises critical considerations regarding the essence and integrity of these practices.

The findings of this research reveal a double-edged sword. On one hand, digital devices as facilitators of meditation practices democratize access to what was once esoteric, requiring dedicated pursuit and often a guide in the form of a teacher or a community. They offer a semblance of the original intent of meditation—to serve as a path toward enlightenment and inner peace—reshaped to fit the contours of contemporary life. On the other hand, however, this facilitation risks distilling the practice to its most palatable elements, stripping away the philosophical depth and rigor that define its essence. This process not only alters the practice itself but also reflects a broader trend of commodification and superficial engagement with spiritual traditions.

Mindfulness today stands as a practice seamlessly integrated into the cultural fabric of the Western world and an authentic billion dollar industry (Giraldi, 2019; Titmuss, 2016). In the United States alone, it has garnered increasing popularity within the workforce, and mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) are being fully incorporated into workplace environments (Kachan et al., 2017; Caring-Lobel, 2016). Concurrently, this integration, which we have hypothesized to be a form of endogenization (the incorporation of an exogenous practice into an epistemological system that envelops it) followed by transculturation (the transformation of the integrated practice into something else, acceptable and conforming to the canons of the dominating culture), also entails the rising use, duly recorded and monitored, of mindfulness-based mobile applications (MBMAs) as a facilitative tool for contemplative practice (Plaza et al., 2013). This increasing popularity of such digital instruments certifies not only the successful assimilation and transculturation of this anthropotechnic, but also its employment as a potential instrument of biopolitical steering, functional to the quintessentially Western interests of utilizing health and health control as a mechanism for shaping subjectivities through the education of social bodies (Divino, 2024a).

Moreover, the implications of this shift are not confined to the realm of individual practice but extend into the broader discourse on spirituality, identity, and the biopolitics of health and well-being. The use of digital tools in meditation practices, as this research has shown, can be seen as symptomatic of a neoliberal society that valorizes self-care and personal optimization, often at the expense of communal well-being and a deeper engagement with spiritual traditions. This instrumentalization of meditation as a tool for self-improvement and stress management, facilitated by digital technology, raises questions about the future of contemplative practices and their role in society.

As we consider the future of meditation in the digital age, it is crucial to engage critically with these developments, examining not only their immediate benefits but also their long-term implications for the practice and its practitioners. The challenge lies in navigating the delicate balance between making these practices accessible and maintaining their integrity and depth. This requires a concerted effort from practitioners, technologists, and scholars to foster a dialogue that respects the origins and essence of meditation while acknowledging the realities of contemporary life.