“Open your eyes,” Gwyneth Paltrow tells me. I am sitting in my kitchen listening to her new AI-powered meditation app, Moments of Space, which encourages users to keep their eyes open while meditating.
“Observe all the objects in your surroundings,” she instructs. I see a pile of washing up from last night. I shift my focus in the direction of the fridge, and notice an overdue council tax bill reminder pinned to the door. Perhaps looking out of the window will prove less distracting. I spot my next-door neighbour’s sweet kitten … using my garden as a litter box. Maybe “eyes-open meditation” is a little easier in a sprawling Montecito “sanctuary” than my east London flat.
Although the Moments app has been around since 2021, last week its founders, Kim Little and Julian Murphy, unveiled Paltrow as a new co-owner and global community director. “As a trailblazer in the wellness space, Gwyneth has built an empire by challenging convention and bringing new ideas to the mainstream,” the company said in a press release.
Open-eye mediation isn’t new. Some Buddhists practise an ancient form called zazen. But while the Goop founder is known for her often weird and sometimes potentially dangerous suggestions – see vagina candles and yoni eggs – there are plenty of science-backed studies showing that meditation can reduce everything from anxiety to gut issues.
Unlike closed-eye meditation, open-eye meditation encourages the practitioner to maintain a gentle gaze while meditating to help achieve deeper mindfulness. In his book Eyes Wide Open, the author Will Johnson says it helps “to literally see things as they are, not just how we perceive them to be”. But even if the practice has centuries of history behind it, the idea of Paltrow neatly rebranding it feels a little grim. It also fuels the idea that wellness is something that can be bought.
Paltrow isn’t the first celebrity to delve into mindfulness. When Calm released a 30-minute sleep story narrated by Harry Styles in 2020, demand caused the meditation app to crash. Dream With Me remains one of the most listened-to stories to date. In February, the Grammy award-winning rapper Lil Jon released a 10-track Total Meditation album. The 53-year-old artist best known for high-energy tracks such as Turn Down for What explained in an intro track: “I’m all for partying and having a good time but I’m also for relaxation, restoration and finding peace within.”
Back to Moments – it is free to use for one week, after which it costs up to £29.99 a year. The sound and aesthetic – all gentle white tones and soft, grey fonts – feels very Goop-y. Paltrow narrates a couple of the shorter meditations, including Awareness of Sound, in which she speaks extremely slowly, pausing, between, each, word, for, effect. The wider menu, offering everything from a 19-minute TYSM gratitude practice to something called Mindful Cleaning, is just as painful. “How would it feel to clean with less haste and more space. More grace even, perhaps?” asks someone with a voice like a bot.
At a preview of the app, Paltrow told journalists she is constantly meditating. From loading the dishwasher to walking down a hallway, Paltrow says she finds “all day, every day, I can just steal a few minutes here and there”.
“So are you actually meditating now?” asked the celebrity photographer Greg Williams as he filmed Paltrow getting her makeup professionally done for a promotional shoot. “I was until you started talking to me,” she replied. “I just catch moments all day long. It’s just really fantastic.”
That’s the thing with Paltrow and her wealthy ilk. Just when us normies think we’ve finally caught up with them by downing a morning ginger shot, they move the wellness goalposts even further away. I’m sure meditating with your eyes open is a little easier with a personal team spanning housekeepers, drivers and chefs. For many of us, just trying to keep our eyes open on the commute is challenging enough. In fact, sometimes it’s really nice to just get some shut-eye.
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