Zen : Your Way

I built up about 10,000 minutes on Headspace. I was on it early, around 2013, and I ended up looping the same few tracks over and over while poking at other apps without much guidance. Just shopping around for something that would work for me.

For a long stretch after that I mostly used the Timer on my iPhone. I abandoned meditation apps & just went back to meditating by myself. Looking back, that should have been the clue.

What broke

I got sick of the commercialism, and of the huge library that never really helped. Too much choice.

Libraries need you to come back and consume more: more tracks, more themes, more “value.” I kept browsing. The practice did not deepen. I was collecting minutes without a path, and when a sit went bad there was no one telling me that was ok.

Then I sat with a Soto Zen teacher in real life. Bare, terse, without pretension. I saw a beauty there that apps rarely touch: no streak waiting to break, just form and time and return to being present. Also, and this is big: no upsell. Just sit. That’s enough.

After a while, all that shopping around becomes counter-productive. You need someone to tell you that it’s ok to Just sit.

Just Sit

Just Sit clicked for me in those sessions, not as branding, but as a way to stop punishing myself. Stop seeking.

Your practice will undulate. Some weeks you sit more. Some sits scatter. Over time it still adds up. Just Sit means stop over-complicating, and forgive yourself when you do not.

I live with PTSD. I have learned to live with it. More than ten years ago, in the period I clasped for apps, it was very disruptive. It had been lingering longer than that. I just did not know what it was. I knew I was weird in certain ways, and that my brain felt off sometimes.

Classical CBT helped. So did one piece I pulled from meditation: returning to the present, returning to the breath. That is daily life for me now, dozens of times a day. It helps with flashbacks. It helps me come back when I dissociate. That return is not a side trick. It is how I get through ordinary days.

I also want to say this plainly: meditation can be dangerous. It is not all roses. Some techniques can pull you further into dissociative states. Long sessions, isolation on retreats, expecting an altered state of mind can actually induce dissociative & psychotic episodes. That’s why guidance is a good idea.

What I am building

I’m building a meditation app. I want it to be true to meditation: quiet, not loud. No upsells. Maybe just a timer. Maybe very gentle guidance. If guided, then definitely not a huge library of sessions that over-promised and under-deliver. True. Honest. No streak religion. Guidance should be like a companion when bare sitting gets too hard.

And the pattern that worked for me: bring things I learned in meditation into daily life. Like breath-focus to deal with panic attacks. Being present to the senses to stop dissociation. All while saying that you probably shouldn’t rely solely on meditation to deal with serious issues. More like, try this, if it’s useful, repeat, if not, stop.

And in terms of teaching meditation I think there should be plenty of invitations to turn off the guidance and Just Sit …

Who this is for

Someone who tried meditation and could not make it stick. That is ok. It is hard. Do not beat yourself up. Sit today, even if it is only a minute. And if you cannot sit today, try to be present for a few breaths. Not all meditation happens on the cushion.

I am not building this for the person who wants a new library every season. I am building it for the person who already has a dozen meditation apps installed and still does not sit. Someone who needs to hear that it’s ok to just sit and follow along with a companion, no need to shop around anymore.