The Daily Telegraph - Features
I can’t argue with Paltrow. Being mindful has changed my life
Oh Gwynnie, Gwynnie, what esoteric, verging-on-bonkers nonsense are you flogging us now? A coffee enema?
Oh, I see you did that a while ago. My bad. It’s honestly hard to know what’s next. We’ve smelled your vagina candle and endured the eight-day goat-milk cleanse. We’ve sprinkled ourselves with sex dust and shielded our auras with your psychic vampire repellent spray.
So forgive me for assuming the worst when I saw that Gwyneth Paltrow, 51, the Oscar-winning actress, was launching a new way of connecting us to our higher selves; I assumed that once you shelled out for a Goop silk toothbrush you couldn’t get any higher. But it turns out her latest wheeze is a mindfulness app which aims to teach eyes-open meditation. At this point, dear readers, you will no doubt expect me to hoot with derision. But no.
Ready for a deep dive into the very nerve centre of Woods Towers? I do transcendental meditation, almost every day. I know, right? Imagine what I’d be like without it! My husband certainly can’t.
The Beatles learnt it from its creator, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, in 1967. I too was taught by one of the best: charismatic American practitioner, author and broadcaster Bob Roth. The Babe Ruth of meditation, if you will. He’s taught Oprah and Tom Hanks, Katy Perry and Michael J Fox.
I’ll be honest: I was cynical, but transcendental meditation is the very opposite of woo woo. You don’t have to subscribe to any sort of religion or spiritual belief; you just learn how to do it and it works its magic. No, not magic – I mean, neuroscience. It calms yet energises. It increases positivity and resilience. The only tiny downside is that I always (always) nod off, because it’s done with the eyes closed – but that makes it a fabulous way of getting to sleep.
I’m not entirely sure of the Venn diagram between meditation and mindfulness, but anything that gives us pause in a stressful world is to be welcomed. Counterintuitively,
the more we relax, the more we achieve.
Paltrow’s new app, Moments of Space, was developed in collaboration with, among others, Julian Murphy, a former Apple director who helped to launch the iPhone and the App Store.
His aim was to “challenge the misconception that meditation requires long stretches of time, stillness, and silence with closed eyes”. As a result, this is that meditation that entails maintaining a gentle and relaxed gaze without fixating on any specific object.
Paltrow finds that meditating eyes-open connects her to her highest self, stops her overreacting and allows her to “keep [her] ego out” of tricky situations where there is risk of conflict. “Once you learn how to do eyes-open meditation – something you can literally incorporate at any time – you can be engaged with the world but still very connected to yourself. I rely on it to feel more whole.”
Will Gwynnie’s gentle tones guiding your meditation help you to reach new heights? I couldn’t say but, at £15 a month, it’s cheaper than a $199 Goop Champagne sabre and a lot less messy than a coffee enema…