Latest / StartUp Health NOW Podcast / Meditation Together, Virtually: the App Helping Meditation Beginners During COVID-19

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Meditation Together, Virtually: the App Helping Meditation Beginners During COVID-19 · StartUp Health NOW Podcast

• 0:00
  [instrumental music] Welcome to StartUp Health NOW. I'm Maxim Owen. I lead the investment team at StartUp Health. For the last three weeks, the team here has been ramping up our coverage of stories about the coronavirus.
• 0:19
  In particular, stories about the innovators and entrepreneurs who have emerged as leaders on the front lines of the world's efforts to stop the spread of this disease.
• 0:30
  You can find stories on our blog at healthtransformer.co. Last week, we launched a new series of interviews featuring health innovators from around the world that are working to solve for COVID-19.
• 0:45
  You can check out those interviews on our YouTube channel and in this new Pandemic Response series on our podcast. This week, I'm talking to Stephen Sokoler, founder and CEO of Journey Meditation.
• 1:00
  Journey is a rapidly growing New York City-based startup that is building the world's largest community for mental wellbeing, both online and off.
• 1:11
  Through live instructor-led classes, think Peloton for meditation, Journey is on a mission to help all people live happier, healthier, and less stressful lives through the power of group meditation.
• 1:26
  If, like me, you are one of the two point six billion people currently on pandemic-induced self-isolation, you'll already be familiar with the challenge of maintaining mental wellbeing during this difficult period.
• 1:39
  To help ease that struggle, Stephen and the team at Journey have made their meditation platform free to use during the outbreak. Perhaps you've been meditation curious for a while but not known where to start.
• 1:52
  Perhaps you're struggling to fight back stress or anxiety. Or maybe you just need an excuse to carve out fifteen minutes of quiet time away from your toddlers.
• 2:02
  Whatever the reason, now feels like the right time to take the plunge into what will hopefully become a lifelong journey of mental growth.
• 2:12
  My conversation with Stephen will cover his background, the history of meditation, the founding of Journey, and the company's role in a post-pandemic world.
• 2:22
  But first, let's start with what is fast becoming a loaded question. Stephen, how are you? [laughs] I am good. I am holding up, uh, quite well in New York City.
• 2:33
  So contrary to what the news is, is showing, uh, there is the, the sky is blue, and the sun is shining, and, and, you know, so some things are, are still pretty good. And have you been in New York City the whole time?
• 2:47
  Uh, I have. Yep. Yep. I've been here, uh...
• 2:51
  I live in the West Village with my girlfriend, and, uh, we're fortunate in that, uh, we have enough food and water, and we try to take a walk, uh, next to the water, uh, every day just to get a little bit of fresh air.
• 3:04
  But, but other than that, been, been holed up in the, in the apartment. That's great. Yeah, I mean, fresh air has obviously been an essential part of everyone's day, I think, those who are able to get outside.
• 3:15
  On, on that topic, I think it seems like everybody is crowdsourcing coping mechanisms of some sort.
• 3:21
  Aside from meditation, which we'll obviously get into, do you have any other tips or hacks for listeners on how to make self-isolation more bearable? Yeah. I think having a routine is very, very helpful.
• 3:32
  So, uh, for me personally, I wake up, I meditate, I do a little bit of movement. So whether that's push-ups and sit-ups or squats or, uh, doing a yoga class, doing, doing something just to move the body.
• 3:42
  Um, and then getting into my routine with work, you know. As we'll obviously talk about,
• 3:48
  work for us has been extremely busy, uh, given that, you know, the, the nature of the work we're doing is particularly relevant and helpful at times like this.
• 3:57
  Uh, so do work, then I take a, a break at some point to cook, uh, my first meal, which is, which is, I guess, technically lunch since it's around one o'clock.
• 4:05
  I eat with my girlfriend and then get back to work and then, uh, you know, put the computer down for dinner and then hop back on, uh, a little bit later at night for, for a little bit more work.
• 4:14
  But I think the routine so that, you know, Monday through Friday feels different than Saturday and Sunday has been very helpful for me versus that, that, you know, kind of every day is blending together sort of feeling that I know some people like, uh, perhaps my mom might be, might be feeling.
• 4:32
  Yeah. When the weekdays bled into the week- weekends, you know you've got to sort of mix up that routine. Um- Exactly. So, I mean, t-turning to Journey, um, I guess let's start with the, the very beginning.
• 4:44
  Tell us a bit about your background. Have you always been involved in mental health? No, not at all. Uh, I have always been entrepreneurial, so started a whole... a host of sort of random businesses over the years.
• 4:55
  But it was in two thousand eleven, uh, when I was living in Australia, uh, I had moved there to open an office for my previous company and, uh, was very fortunate to find a book on Buddhism that really spoke to me.
• 5:06
  And I, I've always been interested in how to live a better life, but that, that was not necessarily through the lens of, of mental health per se.
• 5:13
  Uh, but Buddhism was really helpful for me, uh, personally and professionally.
• 5:18
  And then a few years later, moved back to New York, sold the company that I was running, and, uh, thought there was a real opportunity, uh, in the mental wellbeing space to both help people and build a, a big business.
• 5:31
  And so both of those things were really interesting and important for me. So how long would you say you've been on your meditation journey, so to speak?
• 5:41
  Well, I, I started meditating in, in twenty eleven, so I guess that's going on ten years. But I, I would say the journey started, uh, much earlier than that, uh, because, uh, probably earlier than I could even remember.
• 5:53
  But I, I, I specifically remember in college, uh, being able to, um, read books like Dale Carnegie and a whole host of other things, uh, on how to just live a better, better life, how to, you know, be kinder to yourself...
• 6:08
  uh, be kinder to others, uh, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People was another one, and then from there it evolved into some of the new age things like the Eckhart Tolle kind of stuff.
• 6:19
  Uh, but Buddhism was really a, a tipping point for me because it was just so practical in terms of how to view the world and how to work with the world. Th- th- th- that's awesome.
• 6:30
  Um, a- at Startup Health we, as you're familiar and as many listeners may be familiar, we like to speak in terms of moonshots. Um- Yeah... health moonshots inform everything that we do.
• 6:40
  Um, so turning to you and Journey, what's, what's your health moonshot? What's the health challenge that you're addressing at Journey? Yeah.
• 6:48
  So, uh, we actually have a new, uh, team member that started yesterday, and so we went over the... I did the training, the, the initial first day training.
• 6:54
  And, and one thing in there is this big, hairy, audacious goal, this BHAG, this Jim Collins concept that was, you know, basically the, the same thing as a, a moonshot.
• 7:04
  So it was a 10 to 30 year vision like put a man on the moon. Uh, put a person on the moon is probably the better way of saying it. And, uh, for us, and we had set this...
• 7:14
  Journey now is five years old, uh, and we set this vision five years ago of creating the conditions so that by 2030 everyone in the world could meditate.
• 7:25
  And so now we're less than 10 years away, and it's becoming more and more real, right?
• 7:31
  How do we continue to do work that allows us to bring these practices, not just to folks that are living on the coast or folks that know these practices are for them, but how do we serve the middle of the country?
• 7:43
  How do we serve communities all over the world that wouldn't know about these practices, or if they did know about them, wouldn't think it was for them?
• 7:51
  Uh, so for us, we, we really aspire to s- to, to build a different world so that, you know, uh, I think we have this big, big board up in the office, uh, called The World We Want, and, uh, different team members have written up what is it that inspires them about this?
• 8:08
  What is the world that they wanna create, whether that's for their kids or grandkids? And I think one of the common threads is that the world would look very, very different if everyone had a meditation practice.
• 8:21
  If everyone had the ability and the time and the know-how to self-reflect and turn inwards, I think we'd have a much kinder, gentler, uh, more compassionate and connected world.
• 8:33
  And so that's what, uh, inspires me personally and inspires us at Journey. Yeah.
• 8:39
  Hearing you speak about that 25 to 30 year vision is kind of taking me back to when we first started talking probably a few months ago now, um, and I think that definitely struck a chord, um, with me and with our team, 'cause obviously of that shared, that shared long-term thinking of how is the world going to look in 25 years' time, and how can we impact it?
• 9:00
  So I think we're absolutely on the same page, which is probably why, you know, our partnership works so well. Um, so- Yeah... te- tell us about Journey itself. G- let us know, um, you know, w- what is it? Yeah.
• 9:13
  So we are building the world's largest, most supportive, inclusive community for mental wellbeing. And I use the term mental wellbeing as opposed to mental health.
• 9:22
  They say one in five people have a mental health, uh, disorder, and there's lots of great organizations doing that, that work.
• 9:29
  What we're looking to do is help support the four in five people, the 80% of us that wanna wake up and feel healthy and happy and connected and balanced.
• 9:37
  And so the way we think of Journey is your one membership, your one community for living a healthy, balanced, connected life. And so, uh, we have a number of different products.
• 9:50
  So where we started five years ago was on the corporate side, on the B2B side.
• 9:54
  Uh, so we work with organizations ranging from Nike, Disney, Facebook, but also Harlem Children's Zone, which is a, a charter school here, uh, the Anti-Defamation League.
• 10:05
  And so we run programs that have onsite classes, although obviously currently, given the current situation, those classes are all taught virtually. But they're always live, and they're always groups.
• 10:16
  So it's people coming together to connect, to learn a practice, to practice, uh, and then share.
• 10:23
  And so we, we teach with all different types of organizations there, and we have teachers in 20 cities around the world doing that, and again, uh, do that virtually.
• 10:32
  So that's what we started with, and then, uh, less than a year ago, we launched Journey Live, which was, uh, the first live group meditation app.
• 10:43
  So live classes, live teachers, the ability to interact, the ability to ask questions, so a much different digital experience.
• 10:50
  You know, for thousands of years, meditation has been practiced in communities with a teacher, with fellow meditators, with support, and for the last five years, something that we do by ourselves on our phone.
• 11:01
  So we thought, "What if we could, uh, replicate what takes place, uh, offline, online? What, what's happened for thousands of years, what if we could build something like that?"
• 11:10
  And so when people check out Journey Live, one of the things they always say is, "It feels really warm. It feels really human." And that was a big, uh, part of it for us.
• 11:19
  So, um, that's what we're doing, and I don't know if now's the appropriate time to, to mention this, but, uh, at the moment, we're offering it for free.
• 11:26
  Given everything that's going on in the, in the world, we thought it was the right thing to do.
• 11:32
  Uh, so I don't know if there's a way to share, uh, the link and the code, but, uh, you know, we thought giving people both meditation and group support and group connection would be the right thing to do.
• 11:43
  And you obviously... Well, not obviously. You preempted my question, my next question, which was gonna be, how are you helping to solve for COVID-19?
• 11:50
  And obviously, that is by providing the platform, uh, free for the next, uh, few weeks un- until this outbreak is, is through the worst period.
• 11:57
  I, I was really, um, I guess, caught when we were first speaking those months ago, um, about that community, um, aspect of Journey, and m- I guess, of meditation more broadly.
• 12:07
  I didn't know that it used to be a community practice, or I should say has been for thousands of years. W- wherein lies the benefit of doing it with other people?Yeah, it's a great question.
• 12:18
  I, I think one of the, one of the questions that I would get so often when I first went out to raise money back in twenty eighteen was people would say, "Well, but you're just sitting with your eyes closed.
• 12:28
  Like, why would I need anything else?" Well, having a teacher is obviously really helpful, right? For a number of reasons. Uh, the first is that meditation is not simply one thing, right?
• 12:38
  If you think about exercise, there's lots of different things that fall into the category of exercise. Same with meditation.
• 12:44
  There's a variety of practices and so, you know, what might be right for you might be different from someone else, or what might be right for you today might be different, uh, for you, you know, six months from now.
• 12:56
  So for me personally, I do a variety of practices, and so having different teachers who have, uh, you know, who are deeply studied in each one of those makes a huge difference. So that's, that's one.
• 13:07
  When it comes to the community part, uh, you know, you think of behavior change or habit formation, uh, and so many people try to do things and they fall off.
• 13:18
  So, you know, weight loss is a great example, going to the gym and getting in shape or quitting smoking. Uh, behavior change and habit formation is really hard to do on your own.
• 13:30
  However, having group support, having group accountability, every study has shown that it makes a huge difference in terms of the efficacy of these programs when you have the support of peers and, and colleagues.
• 13:43
  And so, uh, like I, I personally lost eighty-five pounds, and people always ask, "What was the diet?" Like, what did I eat? Mm-hmm. It actually had very little to do with the diet itself.
• 13:52
  It was all about the support and community and connection that kept me coming back long enough for it to work. And so it's the same thing with meditation.
• 14:01
  You know, you'll talk to people and they'll say, "I tried meditation.
• 14:05
  I didn't know if it was working," or, you know, "It just was boring," or, "I couldn't do it, my mind was racing," or, you know, "I did it for a few weeks and then I fell off."
• 14:15
  And that's where having a teacher and having community can make a huge difference to say, "You know what? Actually, all of our minds race, right? That's part of the practice. That's why we call this a practice."
• 14:24
  Or, "Hey, you are doing it correctly. So long as you're bringing your, you know, awareness back to, let's say, the breath, for example, you are doing it correctly." "Ah, okay, so if my mind races, that's okay."
• 14:35
  You know, or just to check in with you just to say, you know, "Hey, haven't seen you in a few days. Come on back in."
• 14:41
  Um, so community makes a huge difference with, with any type of behavior change, and I think with meditation, something that's, uh, still fairly misunderstood, uh, you know, in, in, in modern society, I think it's even, even more important to have a teacher and have that community.
• 14:57
  Yeah, absolutely, and I, I can certainly vouch for that. You know, having taken one of the classes this morning, for example, I'm sat there and
• 15:05
  mind obviously wanders pretty quickly unless you've been meditating for a while, and just having the teacher calmly remind you to count the breath or just focus on the breath was just incredibly helpful to, to my own attempts at trying to stay with it.
• 15:20
  Um, so I... I mean, you don't have to convince me of the sort of value or the benefit of having a teacher there. It's, it's...
• 15:26
  Once you sort of experience it, I think it becomes immediately apparent why that is, you know, if not the best, the only way to sort of learn a practice such as meditation. Yeah, exactly.
• 15:38
  And for us, we think of it, you know, even bigger than meditation. Uh, so we started with meditation, but there's a whole host of modalities that serve our mission of helping people live happier, healthier lives.
• 15:50
  So that might be guided journaling. Um, it might be, uh, having a, a coach to be able to ask questions to. It could be sound therapy or hypnotherapy.
• 15:59
  And so we're excited, uh, for Journey live to continue to showcase some of these other things. So the bulk of the offerings are meditation.
• 16:07
  But, uh, over the last few months, we've started testing a whole host of other things, and those are really resonating, uh, with the students and users that we have.
• 16:15
  So, uh, we'll continue to share other things so that when people say, "Oh, meditation is not for me," rather than trying to say, "Oh, yes, it is," and, and convince them, we'll say, "Great. How about this?"
• 16:24
  You know, I think it's really important to meet people where they are, uh, emotionally, uh, psychologically, spiritually, financially, of course. Uh, so, you know, we're...
• 16:35
  that's, that's kind of the next evolution of what we're doing. Yeah. And hence, I suppose your focus on well-being more broadly versus just singularly meditation, right? Exactly, yeah.
• 16:46
  It's much more about being a community for mental well-being than it is very specific to this one modality, even though that's the one that, that obviously changed my life and, and, and continues to. Mm-hmm. Um,
• 17:00
  post, uh, global pandemic, is there... are there plans to do, um, in-person meditation classes in, in New York and beyond? Is, is that as part of the strategy? Yeah. Well, that was our bread and butter for, for years.
• 17:14
  I mean, we, we were up to, you know, three or four weeks ago hosting, uh, I don't know how many, but, but dozens, maybe, maybe even over a hundred, uh, live classes around the world a week, uh, in real life, you know?
• 17:27
  Um, so that, that's definitely something that we will continue to do. Uh, in addition to the work that we were doing at businesses, we were also hosting, uh, free community events in New York.
• 17:39
  So we'd have a partnership like, uh, with WeWork who would give us space, or Sweetgreen would provide food, and we'd host these classes, and they would just be completely for free.
• 17:48
  Anyone could come, you know, come one, come all, and, you know, we'd have fifty, seventy-five, a hundred people coming and connecting and meditating and sitting together.
• 17:56
  So, uh, we'll continue to do that once, uh, human beings are able to interact in real life again, whenever that may be. Yeah.
• 18:04
  I, I love that, and I'm, I'm expecting a, a deluge of demand for [chuckles] physical human connection and contact. So that'll be, I'm sure, an oversubscribed offering. Um,
• 18:14
  moving the discussion, I guess, more towards the pandemic currentlyUm, at StartUp Health, our, kind of our whole ethos is, is the idea that no silver bullet, um, will fix this health crisis or indeed any health crisis.
• 18:27
  Um, rather it will take a global army of what we call health transformers, uh, in other words, top innovators and entrepreneurs solving the world's biggest health and wellbeing challenges. Um,
• 18:38
  it feels to me that the future that those people are building towards is obviously currently in, in pretty much total flux. Um, at this point the lasting ramifications of the virus are really anyone's guess.
• 18:50
  Um, we still don't even know how long it will take to overcome in, in terms of weeks or months or perhaps year, um, or what that end state looks like and when we can go back to building a, a, a new normal together.
• 19:01
  So to, to that end, we believe that it's important to start the conversation now about where we want to end up, um, and b- following the pandemic and where and how we want to invest our time, energy and resources.
• 19:16
  Um, the classic StartUp Health interview question is how will the world be different 25 years from now because Journey existed? Um, and you touched on that at the top of the call.
• 19:26
  Um, but I think with this new lens of sort of post-coronavirus, w- what does that world look like for you and, and for Journey? Yeah.
• 19:36
  I think my most honest answer is, you know, I don't even know what the world is gonna look like in, uh, you know, 25 minutes or 25 days- Yeah... let alone 25 years.
• 19:45
  Uh, but I can tell you that, um, I'm generally an optimist and, and that's served me well, and I really hope that, uh, we'll continue to see companies like ours, uh, coming out there, you know?
• 19:59
  There's, there's obviously lots of different, uh, companies that are working in the mental health and mental wellbeing space, uh, and it's so great to see people, uh, speaking about it more and sharing, and, uh, this becoming something that, that's much more acceptable, uh, to talk about.
• 20:16
  So my hope is that, uh, we live in a world where, uh, mental wellbeing, uh, i- is as ubiquitous as physical wellbeing. You know?
• 20:25
  Like we have this term physical fitness, and we all know whether we exercise or not, we all know it's good for us.
• 20:31
  It's something that, you know, is, is societally accepted, and I'd love to see, uh, a world where, uh, everyone knows the same is true for mental wellbeing, and these practices are really prioritized and people are spending, uh, more time, uh, prioritizing themselves.
• 20:48
  You know, there's, there's more self-care, there's more self-love. You know the old saying of, you know, put your oxygen mask on first before you so you can, you know, take care of others.
• 20:58
  I'd love to see that, uh, come to fruition- Mm-hmm... you know, in the next, uh, you know, five, 10 years.
• 21:03
  Uh, and, and I think that would, that would serve us well to, to leave our children, uh, and our children's children with a, a much better society. Yeah.
• 21:13
  And, and for better or worse, I think being stuck in, in one's apartment for weeks on end has really accelerated that focus on the [laughs] importance of mental health anyway. Yeah, absolutely. Um, um,
• 21:26
  w- we've seen some, some I guess silver linings in terms of human, human behavior from, from this pandemic.
• 21:31
  What are some that you've sort of observed or seen or, or witnessed that, that you hope kind of stay on, uh, even after the pandemic? Well, I, I think I'll, I'll answer that I guess two ways. One is I- Yeah...
• 21:42
  I've seen people really caring for their neighbors in ways that they, they haven't before. Um, you know, people are connecting to each other in, in different ways.
• 21:52
  You know, I get texts from friends that I haven't heard from in a while, or people are video chatting in ways that, that they haven't before.
• 21:59
  So seeing people really recognize the importance of authentic human connection is great.
• 22:05
  You know, it's so easy to be distracted by a video game or Instagram or what did this influencer do, and to fill up your whole day with that sort of stuff.
• 22:14
  But seeing people get back to, you know, I'm spending a half hour chatting with my relative across the country. And of course technology's amazing, so you can actually see them.
• 22:23
  Um, seeing a lot of the things that are coming out of it, that, that's exciting. I think, uh...
• 22:28
  I was, I was on a call yesterday and, uh, one of the, one of the folks was saying, "You know, what, what are people gonna say when they look back on this 20 years from now?"
• 22:37
  And one person said, "You know, there'll be a whole generation of kids that will say, 'That was a great time because I got to spend time with my mom and dad.
• 22:47
  We got to, you know, put together puzzles, and we got to, uh, you know, build Legos-" Mm-hmm... and do all types of things that we never had the chance to do before.'" Now of course that's obviously, you know...
• 23:00
  Those are, those are the fortunate ones, right? There's a lot of people who are struggling, there's a lot of people who don't have, uh, access to food or access to, uh, you know... People are losing their jobs.
• 23:10
  So for me it's this really interesting balance personally of I'm well at the moment and so are my, uh, closest friends and family, and at the same time I recognize that a lot of people in, you know, the hospitality industry and, and other industries are deeply affected, uh, by this.
• 23:28
  So it's, it's a little bit of a, a, a delicate balance for me, but I think overall at the, at the end of the day I, I think there may be a few, like you said, silver linings that, that come out of this. Mm-hmm.
• 23:41
  And hearing you speak reminds me that I owe my 89-year-old grandmother a phone call, so I'll be calling her after this in, in short order. Um- Good... in, in that same spirit of optimism, um, and to sort of wrap this up,
• 23:53
  can you share a quote with us or a note of encouragement that you've heard recently or something that you live by that we can take away?
• 24:01
  Well, the one that I really like is, it's so simple but I think it's so profound, which is know thyself.
• 24:07
  And, you know, I think we're so often looking for advice and looking to see what this guru said or that guru said, and I think, you know, whether that's Oprah or Tony Robbins or, you know, our SoulCycle teacher, and I've found great inspiration from, well, all those and others.
• 24:25
  But I think the key is to always put things through the lens of how well do I know myself or is this appropriate for me, or if this is appropriate, in what way?
• 24:37
  Um, and so I, I, I try to live by that and I try to, you know, be very aware of who I am, my proclivities, my habits, uh, and really kind of structure my life around that.
• 24:50
  And that can be, you know, even as simple as just, you know, from a work standpoint, when do I do my most creative work? So for me it's the mornings. I block out that time, uh, to be able to do that.
• 25:00
  But it's also, you know, the food that I keep in the house, the people that I spend time with, the things I read, et cetera. It's really knowing myself and knowing the, the impact different things will have on me.
• 25:11
  So that, that's one piece of advice that I, I, I come back to a lot. Thank you for joining us on StartUp Health NOW. I hope you enjoyed the conversation.
• 25:20
  As Stephen mentioned, they are making Journey available for free during the outbreak. You'll find a download link in the episode notes of this show.
• 25:29
  Failing that, you can find Journey on Twitter @JourneyMeditate, Stephen @StephenSokoler, and I am @MaximEoin. Either of us will be happy to help you get access.
• 25:41
  With that said, on behalf of everyone at Journey and at StartUp Health, we hope you're able to find some peace during this time. Stay safe and be well. [outro music]