Instant Karma

Upscale Meditation Studios Are Bringing Mindfulness to the Masses. Are They Also Diluting the Practice?

- Kate Siber

BEFORE YOU MEDITATE, you must surrender your iPhone. At least that’s what a couple of serene young women tell me when I walk into Unplug Meditation, an airy Los Angeles studio with inspirational slogans on the walls. (Keep Going! Live the Life You Love!)

I’m here for a 45-minute class called Inner Peace, which promises to teach me the basics of deep mindfulness, making me calmer, more productive, more focused, and more joyful. After passing through the gift shop, which peddles crystals, aromatherapy eye pillows, and Bad Spirit Remover candles, I settle into a black faux-leather floor seat. Violet lights beam down on a couple of dozen people, from spandexed millennials to graying businessmen. It’s like a yoga studio without the yoga.

“Thoughts can make us sick or they can empower us,” says Sherly Sulaiman, a hypnotherapist with an Australian accent, who sits on a dais. “We want them to empower us, right?”

She instructs us to lift an index finger every time a thought arises. “Remember, you are not the thought. You are aware of your thoughts.” Spa music wafts from the speakers as index fingers tap out a frantic Morse code. A truck horn blares. Eventually, a bell rings. “I’ll be outside,” says Sulaiman, “if you want to ask a question or share—or if you just want a healing hug.”