Mindfulness Is Not Mental Health Care
AI Generated Article Audio
By Mo Edjlali, Founder and CEO, Mindful Leader; Author, Open MBSR
May is Mental Health Awareness Month—a perfect time to confront the question we've been avoiding:
What is mindfulness actually for, and where does it truly belong?
Headspace recently launched therapy services. Calm has been creeping toward clinical offerings for years. These platforms that once sold simple guided meditations now position themselves as mental health providers.
The evolution makes business sense. Therapy is regulated, reimbursable, and easier to market. Mindfulness? Not so straightforward.
But here's the uncomfortable truth: Mindfulness isn't therapy. And it was never designed to be.
The Silent Migration
I've witnessed a troubling pattern: skilled mindfulness teachers quietly becoming licensed therapists—not because they wanted to change careers, but because they were being forced into therapeutic roles without proper training.
These practitioners found themselves:
- Expected to treat trauma
- Holding space for people in crisis
- Managing clinical issues beyond their scope
- Working without appropriate supervision or boundaries
Why this shift? Because organizations found mindfulness cheaper and more scalable than actual mental health support. Because it fits neatly into wellness initiatives. Because funding a meditation app costs less than addressing toxic work cultures, chronic overwork, or investing in comprehensive mental health services.
Drawing Essential Boundaries
Let's be clear: Mindfulness can support mental wellbeing—but it is not mental health care.
Mindfulness excels at:
- Cultivating present-moment awareness
- Developing a healthier relationship with experience
- Reducing stress responses
- Building attention skills
What it is not designed to do:
- Diagnose psychological conditions
- Treat clinical disorders
- Process complex trauma
- Replace therapeutic interventions
When we blur these lines, we create danger—not just disappointment—for both practitioners and participants.
Finding Its Rightful Place
If mindfulness isn't therapy, then what is it? Where does it belong?
Should it be categorized within:
- Leadership development?
- Emotional intelligence training?
- Secular contemplative education?
- Personal growth practices?
- Organizational culture initiatives?
Or perhaps we need to ask the more pragmatic question: What classification system accurately captures mindfulness?
The challenge is that we haven't defined these boundaries ourselves. So the marketplace is doing it for us—reshaping mindfulness to fit whatever business model generates profit.
Reclaiming Authentic Practice
This identity crisis prompted me to write Open MBSR: Reimagining the Future of Mindfulness. The book explores how mindfulness becomes distorted when absorbed by the very systems it aims to transform—whether capitalism, therapy culture, or spiritual marketplaces.
Open MBSR calls for a return to clarity. To ground mindfulness in practice rather than product. To create space where it can serve authentically without being misappropriated.
Your Voice Matters
If you work in this field as a teacher, therapist, coach, or organizational leader, I want to hear your perspective:
- Where do you believe mindfulness should be situated?
- Does it belong primarily in leadership, education, wellbeing, or spiritual contexts?
- Should it have its own distinct classification?
- What risks come with leaving it undefined?
- What environment would allow mindfulness to truly flourish?
If we don't make these defining decisions as a community of practitioners, others—venture-backed apps, HR departments, content marketers—will continue making them for us.
The time has come to stop letting mindfulness drift. Let's collectively determine what it is, what it isn't, and where it goes from here.
This is part of our Wackfulness Series: a thoughtful critique of the mindfulness field.
16 comments
This is an excellent article. I would love to see this published to reach a broader audience.
Thanks Pam! Its published here :) and on average we get thousands of reads - on par with what we would see in any major publication. And on top of that were would you suggest? I have found the editorial process and quality of mindfulness and meditation focused publications wanting. They all suffer the same problems that have plagued our field.
I am a clinical therapist and an MBSR Facilitator. I have noticed that since mindfulness has become so mainstream that there is a blurred line between mental health services and mindfulness practices. While we definitely know that mindfulness promotes well-being both physically and mentally, it is a supplement to mental health services and not a replacement for a therapist trained to diagnose and treat mental health disorders. Professionally, my two practices are kept separate intentionally to provide clarity for clients and avoid a dual relationship which is considered unethical. It is up to us as professionals to maintain that clarity because the public does not understand the difference .
Thanks for sharing your thoughts Vikki in how you have approached this balance. I think what you are doing is thoughtful and professional. However, when you say its up to us to maintain clarity what does that look like? Because in the "us" are good actors and bad actors. Leaving things alone and trusting individuals to do what is right will fail, it has failed. If us means we come together, unite, and get clear, provide the public standards and understanding, then we are in alignment, that is what Open MBSR will do.
As a yoga and mindfulness practioner in a behavioral health and addictions setting as well as corporate and private I see mindfulness as part of therapy not replacing the therapy. I am part of a program not the whole program. I see its role in theraputic settings both for the therapists and the patients. It gives them the body or mind body piece of the puzzle and allows healing from both ends. I also think it is a good fit in corporate settings although i see very few corporations truly committed to taking time during the workday for the practices. I agree with you that is has been very capatalized and over promised. The truth is you have to practice daily to get the benefit and it really has helped me navigate a difficult world. We also need to address the many teacher training programs being offered. There are so many mindfulness teachers , all trying to make a living(including me) as I therapist you can charge much more so I see the migration. Again these programs are another way for people to make money. Thanks for listening.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts and experience Jaci.
As a social worker, I find mindfulness is a powerful tool to manage stress and gain insight into thought patterns. I believe mindfulness has a place in therapy as a helpful skill set, resource, or practice to go along with many other tools. Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) and Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) are two great examples of integrating mindfulness into a much larger and complex therapeutic program.
Like exercise for the body, mindfulness for the mind supports mental health but cannot replace it.
Thanks for your comments Dawn and for pointing out areas where mindfulness can be incorporated in therapy and in all sorts of things. The question I have been asking for a decade is who should steward the mindfulness field? Should it be under the purview of therapy? Or someplace else? Should mindfulness teachers adhere to and be subject to professional therapeutic standards? Other standards? No standards? Buddist standards? I'm not arguing that mindfulness should not be applied in various ways and settings. What I'm asking is, where do mindfulness professionals fit? Where does our field fit?
Thank you for this article and critical questions. I think about this a lot as an ICF coach and recently wrapped up my MBSR level one instructor program at Brown. I came to meditation out of a place of a lot of pain. I started practicing and found that there was a way out of this pain that I was holding on to. This led me to Vipassana and learning the foundations of where these practices come from.
As the coaching industry evolves I’m very cautious in how I market myself and what I provide. I don’t use language like “trauma informed coaching” because I don’t think I’m qualified to handle this matter also I’m not sure what this actually means. I’ve taken the route of framing my services through the lens of leadership and performance coaching. I focus a lot on the aspect of burnout, habit creation and how to quiet the stress response as you described in the article.
Ultimately, I believe that mindfulness is tool for growth and for serving people in a way that helps them create more choice in how they grow. I believe that there is space for mindfulness in all industries. However, with the society that we live in these practices get tainted due to business and the only thing that I believe can honor this work is paying respect to where it comes from. A teacher always reminds me that mindfulness can’t really be categorized only embodied.
Thanks for your thoughtful comments, Bryant. The term embodiment gets thrown around a lot, and frankly, it’s a pet peeve of mine. The idea that someone’s professional merit hinges on how they feel to be around? Isn’t this a performative, unconscious bias prone way to evaluate a teacher vs. substance, credientials and experiece? Embodiment can be faked, and there’s a staggering amount of fake embodiment in our field.
As for “no path as the path”—which is essentially where you’re heading with the idea that mindfulness can’t be categorized—this is another case of one-dimensional thinking dressed up as wisdom. It sounds profound, but in practice, it often avoids nuance and accountability. Mindfulness is being categorized, whether we like it or not. The real question is: do we proactively shape that categorization, or let others do it for us?
Very thought provoking article -I'm in the UK and I imagine this could well happen here.
Thanks for your comments Yvonne, I appreciate the UK perspective.
I have thought about this topic many times. The challenge, I believe, is defining mindfulness, is it a tool, is it a discipline, or is it a science? Too often, it’s portrayed merely as a tool for something else, rather than as a discipline or science that can be practiced, studied and researched bringing its own intrinsic value. I believe it’s time for leading mindfulness organizations to unite, forming a coalition that ensures mindfulness doesn’t drift into dilution, but is clearly defined, protected, and elevated. We need a shared vision for what mindfulness is, what it isn’t, and where it belongs next.
First, it is a great article. Thank you. I have thought about this topic many times. And, I think the challenge is defining mindfulness, is it a tool, is it a discipline, or is it a science? Too often, it is portrayed as a tool to serve something else, rather than a discipline or science on its own right that can be practiced, studied and researched, bringing its own intrinsic value. I believe it’s time for leading mindfulness organizations to unite, forming a coalition that ensures mindfulness doesn’t drift into dilution, but is clearly defined, protected, and elevated. We need a shared vision for what mindfulness is, what it isn’t, and where it belongs next. I can't wait for something like this to happen to support and join the movement.
Thanks for your comments Juan! I agree - however I have also come to the conclusion that to unite, to form a coalition we need a foundational framework with ethics and principles. Not everyone will belong to the coalition I want to be part of. If you sell spirituality, if you believe mindfulness is stealth Buddhism, if you are a one-dimensional thinker, if you are about celebrity gurus and centralized oligarchic power - I would rather not be associated with you. Not everyone will belong in this coalition, but those who are part of it will have conviction in the shared beliefs, uniting principles, and authentic alignment. A strong, resilient coalition that knows what it stands for and what it stands against. Open MBSR is the shared vision I am proposing, I hope you join us and help grow and shape the future of mindfulness.
A thought-provoking article. I practice mindful meditation and introduce it as a tool in the leadership workshops I conduct in my corporate role. Leaders want to know the data, research and ROI investing in meditation sessions for employees. I also heard neurotheology for the first time today that might be worth exploring. Perhaps a multi-disciplinary approach is something that can be considered?
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