Executive Order: Mindfulness Canceled

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By Mo Edjlali, Founder and CEO, Mindful Leader; Author, Open MBSR

Imagine waking up to the news that a sweeping executive order has shut down all government-funded mindfulness programs. Schools, federal agencies, the military, and public health institutions must immediately cease mindfulness initiatives. No more resilience programs for veterans. No more meditation training in workplaces. No more research funding for mindfulness in clinical settings.

Sounds dystopian, right? Like the plot of some bizarre Nicolas Cage political thriller where meditation has been deemed a threat to national security.

Well, it hasn't quite happened...yet.  But something happened to us at Mindful Leader recently, and it's got me wondering if we're closer to this scenario than we'd like to admit.

Picture this: After a year-long application process with a federal agency, a process so bureaucratically mind-numbing it could qualify as its own form of torturous concentration practice, our application was finally approaching approval. We'd endured countless revisions (some seemingly designed by Kafka himself), and jumped through hoops that kept moving.

Then, just as we thought we'd reached the finish line, we received a terse one-line response along the lines of: "Application rejected. Executive Order 718."  Wait, what?

After some frantic calls and emails (during which I practiced mindful panic), we discovered that our application had been caught in the crossfire of this Executive Order 718. Our services, classified under a particular SIN code (that's "Standard Industrial Classification," not the moral transgression variety), had been swept up in political mandates that had nothing to do with mindfulness itself.

The irony wasn't lost on me. Here we were, teaching practices that help people respond rather than react, and I was ready to throw my meditation cushion across the room. I was pissed—mindfully pissed, but pissed nonetheless.

The kicker? Part of me saw this coming. Not this specific executive order, but the vulnerability of how we've presented mindfulness. I'd had this nagging intuition that we would sooner then later have to face a political and ideological shift and the challenges that come with it. 

Yet as any good mindfulness teacher will tell you (usually right after you've stubbed your toe and are mid-expletive), every setback gives us an opportunity. Instead of screaming F@&^! And punching my meditation cushion like it was the face of the guy responsible for this order (though I reserve the right to do a bit of both), let's look at what we can learn from this experience. 

And just to be clear there is no Executive Order 718, I’m intentionally not going into the details of this order, this easily can become a political piece and that is not the purpose of this article (for reasons we will explore).

What Happened? Recognizing Systemic Vulnerabilities

This has been a concern of mind for the last few years, one that I’ve explore in article like, Is mindfulness bridging the political divide or widening it? and Mindfulness: A Tool for Polarization or America's Political Healer?. After over a decade running Mindful Leader, where we’ve helped teach MBSR to thousands of practitioners across dozens of countries, certified hundreds of workplace mindfulness facilitators, created communities where thousands meditate together weekly, and hosted hundreds of thought leaders at our Summit, I've witnessed both the profound impact of mindfulness and the systemic issues that limit its potential. The issues that make us vulnerable to shifting political ideologies, religious beliefs, and power dynamics (exemplified by the impact of this executive order) aren't accidental, they're baked into the foundation.

Let's be brutally honest about some of the problems.

Polarity and Inclusivity 

Like so many others, I was drawn to mindfulness by its revolutionary promise: a scientifically validated path to greater awareness, free from religious dogma and open to everyone regardless of belief or affiliation. Yet we've watched mindfulness get increasingly entangled with particular political perspectives and social agendas.

This isn't about which politics – it's about mindfulness becoming a partisan football at all. When practices designed to develop awareness get sucked into culture wars, they become easy targets when political winds shift. When we don't stay apolitical, non-partisan, and maintain neutrality, not only do we put this work at risk, I believe we miss the possibility of this work bridging those divides.

Buddhist Entanglement and Intellectual Honesty

Many mindfulness programs insist they are secular while simultaneously drawing heavily from Buddhist traditions. When Buddhist teachers teach Buddhism on Saturday, take off their robes and teach mindfulness on Sunday by just recontextualizing words, we're going to have a problem. 

I've heard the argument that "you cannot decouple mindfulness from Buddhism." Why not? "Because then people will become assassins and robber barons; they need the moral framework." But what if people already have a moral framework? A Christian one, a Muslim one, a Jewish one, or a humanist one? People with existing religious beliefs and moral frameworks aren't looking for a replacement. Many participants may feel alienated or misled if we present Buddhism as mindfulness. This isn't just about terminology it's about honesty and integrity.

Community Ownership and Elite Control

We've built a house of cards. When programs depend exclusively on government funding, wealthy donors, corporate sponsorship, or executive sponsorship, they become vulnerable to shifting priorities and ideological changes.

I'm not against institutional support – Mindful Leader has partnered with major organizations. But I've learned that programs without grassroots community infrastructure collapse overnight when funding sources change priorities. The mindfulness field would benefit from building from both directions – leveraging institutional resources while developing community ownership that can weather political storms. Our future should not be at the mercy of those in power or the elite. 

An Opportunity to Strengthen the Foundation

Instead of simply complaining about this executive order and whatever future ones may come, I see it as a wake-up call. Not just in this simple example of an executive order, but in a much deeper sense. If programs can be eliminated with the stroke of a powerful person’s pen, we need to reimagine our approach fundamentally. 

This is our moment to ask:

• What does mindfulness look like when it transcends political identification?
• How do we create a field that maintains legitimacy across diverse belief systems?
• How do we leverage institutional resources while developing community resilience?
• And… how can we make this work immoral and viral? (in my best Nosferatu voice) 

If we continue as we have, we will only set ourselves up for more disillusionment. The world is changing, and the mindfulness movement must change with it. We are not going back in time. We must accept reality as it is and take ownership of where we go from here, especially as we enter the Age of AI. 

How do we do it?  I believe through community. Community has always been at the core of what Mindful Leader does and I believe its the secret sauce to overcome whatever challenges come our way. The future is ours to shape. 

And hey, this is just the beginning of the conversation. I dive deeper into all this in my book coming out August 9, 2025 which you can preorder now:  "Open MBSR: Reimagining the Future of Mindfulness." Because if there's one thing I know for sure, it's that the future of mindfulness isn't going to look anything like its past.