Meditation: The Next Big Thing?

From the TI archives — originally published September 2014, adapted for republication.

In 2014, Dan Harris — the ABC news anchor who built a career on covering wars and disasters — became an unlikely evangelist for meditation. His TED talk that year, "All of us are a bit mentally ill," carried a line that stuck: if you had told someone in the 1940s that you went running, they'd have asked, "What are you running from?" Exercise was strange before it was universal. Harris's bet was that meditation would follow the same arc — weird now, toothbrush-routine later.

The science he cited was early but suggestive. A 2011 study from Harvard and Massachusetts General Hospital found that an eight-week mindfulness program was associated with increased gray-matter density in the hippocampus (a learning and memory region) and in areas linked to self-awareness and compassion. Meditation, in Harris's telling, is training for the mind the way running is training for the body — practice at returning attention to the present moment instead of letting the inner monologue run the show.

You don't have to sit cross-legged for an hour to start. Harris's advice for skeptics was pragmatic: meditate for a few minutes a day, or simply practice the habit of noticing when your mind has drifted and bringing it back to the task in front of you. The promise wasn't enlightenment — the subtitle of his 2014 book was 10% Happier, and the modesty was the point.

A decade on, the prediction held up better than most. Meditation apps, workplace mindfulness programs, and an entire industry grew up around exactly the shift Harris described. The skeptics' question changed from "What are you meditating for?" to "Which app do you use?" — which may be the most 1940s-running of all possible outcomes.

Originally written by Suchitra Sharma.

General information only, not medical advice.