What is mobile meditation?

On-the-go meditation is the core idea at the heart of buddhify. It means being able to meditate wherever you are and whatever you are doing.

Our research shows that the number one barrier people interested in meditation face is finding the time to practice. The reason so many people believe meditation requires dedicated time is because they think of meditation as a formal activity, one where you sit silently in a cross-legged lotus position, with your hands resting on your lap, and your eyes closed shut. If you do a Google Image search for meditation, the images returned all show formal meditation. For various reasons, this is the dominant cultural idea of what meditation is.

The buddhify approach advocates for starting with mobile meditation and then building in your formal practice over time, rather than the other way around. 

In an increasingly busy world, it can definitely feel like quiet time by ourselves is one of the scarcest resources. That is why buddhify emphasises on-the-go or mobile meditation as the solution. Having access to meditation techniques, which you can listen to and/or use alongside your everyday activities, you can overcome the challenge of incorporating meditation into your life.  

The truth is that mobile meditation has always been part of the mindfulness tradition. If you go back to early Buddhist teachings on mindfulness meditation, there is a clear emphasis that one should look to practice no matter where you are and what you are doing. Mobile meditation is often placed front and centre in certain traditions such as Zen. But the insight meditation tradition, from which most of modern pop mindfulness stems, has in the last several decades prioritised formal practice.

If you go back to early Buddhist teachings on mindfulness meditation, there’s a clear emphasis that one should look to practice no matter where you are and what you’re doing.

The buddhify approach believes that while formal meditation is very important, a well-rounded meditator should balance both formal and mobile practice. We also know that it is easier to find time for formal meditation once we’ve already got a bit of a taste for it and trust the process. So for sustainability, we advocate starting with mobile and then building in your formal practice over time, rather than the other way around.

The two different types of mobile meditation

At buddhify, we think of there being two different types of mobile meditation — what we call real-time practice and developmental practice.

• Real-time meditations are best suited for the heat of the moment type situations. When you’re going through an intense time and looking solve a particular issue, you can use a real-time meditation to help take the edge off and work through it. These are the kind of meditations you’ll find in categories such as Stress & Difficult Emotions, Pain & Illness, and so on.
• Developmental meditations are different in that they assume you’re doing reasonably okay in that moment. The main objective of these meditations is help you turn whatever situation you’re in into an opportunity for developing a positive quality, such as kindness or self-awareness.

Ultimately, the beauty of meditation is that it works on both of these timeframes — benefiting you in the moment and in the future.

Avoiding compartmentalisation

One of the dangers of only doing formal meditation is it can lead to compartmentalisation. This means that we think of meditation as a special activity that we do in a special place at a special time. Then anything that intrudes upon that — be that noise, being busy, or just real life — becomes the enemy of our meditation.

The big advantage of mobile mindfulness is that it is by definition integrated into your life, since that is where it takes place. And over time, as you become more used to using the techniques in different activities, something magical might happen. Instead of you having to remember to do the techniques, they’ve become so familiar that they’ve become your default way of being. This is what is known as natural mindfulness, and we wish you many adventures on your way there.