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Netflix’s ‘Guide to Meditation’ aims to alleviate the stress of 2020

After a turbulent year, Netflix is helping subscribers to breath, unwind, and reset for 2021 with an original series dubbed ‘Headspace: Guide to Meditation.’

When it comes to evoking a sense of FOMO, 2020 has been the ultimate adversary chiefly because, thanks to the pandemic, everyone has been missing out all year round.

Confined to our homes, now in a third lockdown (in the UK), both work and play have been crammed into the space between our four walls. Family stresses and economic stresses are compounded by the fact social distancing regulations have forced us all on Zoom to maintain any semblance of a social life, and speaking from experience, it can feel as though there’s no place to genuinely unwind other than local parks.

Not a great solution during a rainy December.

On a serious note, mental health disorders like anxiety and depression have tripled in the height of lockdown, while feelings of loneliness are also at record levels approaching Christmas time. People are turning to emotional support centres and charities in increasing frequency, and just like hospitals in autumn, they’re being overwhelmed by the number of those seeking help.

It’s for this reason that meditation apps are absolutely booming of late. Again turning to technology to provide a guise for normality, people are adopting everyday programs like Calm and Headspace to try and quell feelings of uneasiness and stress, and to alleviate problems with insomnia and overthinking.

Essentially, once 2020 is over and done with, we all want to have the tools to wash our hands of it for good.


Headspace: Guide to Meditation

Responsible for one of the aforementioned meditation apps, mental health innovator Headspace is determined to help people do just that, and right on the turn of the year too.

Joining up with Netflix, Headspace is releasing a three season series exploring the foundation of meditation and how it can assist us in becoming more present and less distracted in our daily lives. Something that, granted, would’ve sounded really farfetched a mere few months back.

The first season titled Guide to Meditation, arriving on Jan 1, is comprised of eight 20-minute episodes, in which a former Buddhist monk Andy Puddicombe will guide watchers through techniques to cope with stresses. Whilst absorbing these practices, pleasant androgynous blobs demonstrate physical movements on screen and presumably stimulate our brains in a positive way.

Each episode focuses on acquiring a different set of skills, from managing anxiety, to embracing gratitude (something I’ll have no trouble doing after 2020), and concludes with a guided meditation to allow your learning to come to fruition.

The following two parts, Headspace: Guide to Sleep and Headspace: An Interactive Experience, will arrive later in the year by which point (hopefully) we’ll all be masters of our own minds. Just like part 1, the follow up seasons will be subtitled and dubbed in 30 different languages, so subscribers the world over can reap the benefits.

I don’t know about you, but frankly 2020 has felt like such a taxing year that I’m diving head first into season one straight after dinner on New Year’s Day. There’s only so many times you can watch IT Crowd on repeat, after all.

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