Headspace (digital health platform)

Headspace

Type	Privately held company
Industry	Healthcare
Founded	2010 (London, UK)
Founder	Andy Puddicombe Rich Pierson
Headquarters	Los Angeles
Area served	Worldwide
Products	Mobile App, Books, Website
Number of employees	50+
Website	www.headspace.com

Headspace is an award-winning digital health platform,^[1] providing guided meditation sessions and mindfulness training. With hundreds of hours of content, it is acknowledged as one of the most comprehensive^[2] secular programmes for meditation and mindfulness. The content can be accessed online, or via the Headspace mobile app, used by more than 2 million people, in 150 countries.^[3]

History

Headspace was founded in May 2010, by Andy Puddicombe and Rich Pierson.^[4] Puddicombe is a former Buddhist monk and Pierson is a creative developer with a background in marketing and new brand development.^[5][6]

Originally from Bristol, Puddicombe cut short his university studies in Sports Science at the age of 22, and travelled to Asia to become a Buddhist monk.^[7][8] Over the course of ten years, his meditation training took him to Nepal, India, Burma, Thailand, Australia and Russia – culminating with full ordination at a Tibetan Monastery in the Himalayas.^[9] He returned to the UK in 2004, with a single aim: to make meditation accessible, relevant and beneficial to as many people as possible.^[10] Whilst working in London as a meditation consultant, Puddicombe met Rich Pierson, which in turn led to the creation of Headspace:

Rich Pierson & Andy Puddicombe, co-founders of Headspace, in 2014

“We both thought, how could we present meditation in a way that our friends would genuinely give it a try? Rich had all these creative skills, and I had the experience as a monk. I think that was the light bulb moment with Headspace, the coming together of those two backgrounds”.^[11]

Headspace began as an events company, introducing meditation and mindfulness to large groups in and around London.^[12] Demand from attendees for a way to share these techniques with others necessitated the development of the Headspace app, which launched in 2012.^[13] Headspace now employs over 30 staff, working between the company HQ in Los Angeles and the EMEA office in London, UK.^[14]

Product

Headspace provides guided meditation resources online; accessible to users through the company’s website and via a mobile app on the iPhone and Android platforms. Users can access ten days of free content, after which they have the option to take out a monthly or annual subscription or continue with the free trial material.^[15] The Headspace programme offers 365 sessions of audio content designed to be completed in sequential order over the course of a year. The techniques taught through the programme combine elements of both calming and insight meditation to bring about greater calm, clarity and improved feelings of wellbeing and happiness.^[16] In June 2014, Headspace launched version 2 of their platform. In the first 6 months since release the company signed up twice as many users as it did in the previous two and a half years, and served them 125 million minutes of meditation practice.^[17] Content in the new app is clustered into new four areas once you have completed the Foundation stage - health, performance, relationships and Headspace Pro.^[18]

Users

There are over 2 million users of the Headspace app,^[19] in more than 150 countries. High profile users of the app include actresses Gwyneth Paltrow and Emma Watson, Twitter founder Evan Williams, BBC Radio 1 presenter Fearne Cotton, Huffington Post founder Arianna Huffington and gold-medal winning Olympian Etienne Stott.

Research

Digital content delivery makes Headspace an effective tool for studying the effects of meditation and it is now widely used in such trials, as an alternative to more labour-intensive and costly in-person research programs. In one such study, researchers from UCL,^[20] funded by the British Heart Foundation, examined the impact of mindfulness on workplace stress in two major multi-national corporations, using the Headspace app as the intervention. The study found a significant increase in wellbeing, reductions in anxiety and depressive symptoms, significant reductions in diastolic blood pressures, significant increases in perceived job control, as well as a significant reduction in sleeping problems.

Research examining the benefits of mindfulness has increased dramatically in recent years and there are now over 2000 scientific studies that have found mindfulness training to have significant benefits.^[21] These studies have examined everything from reducing stress, anxiety and depression, to improving sleep^[22] and levels of empathy.^[23] They have also examined physiological benefits, such as enhanced immunity,^[24] increased weight loss^[25] and improved heart health.^[26] Increasingly, these studies are also examining aspects of cognitive function, such as attention,^[27] memory^[28] and decision-making.^[29] Whilst many of these findings require further research, there is a growing body of scientific evidence attesting to the efficacy of meditation and mindfulness.^[30]

Publications

Get Some Headspace (2011)

Two books by Headspace founder Andy Puddicombe - ‘Get Some Headspace’ and ‘The Headspace Diet’ - are published by Hodder & Stoughton.^[31]

• Get Some Headspace (2011), comprises an in-depth introduction to the Headspace techniques, interwoven with Puddicombe’s personal experience.^[32] It lays out the science behind mindfulness and its physical and mental health benefits; from productivity and focus, to stress and anxiety relief.
• The Headspace Diet (2013) teaches readers how to use mindfulness rather than fad-diets to reach their ideal personal weight. Described as ‘the anti-diet book’, it focuses on teaching readers about creating a healthy relationship with food.^[33]

TV and Radio

Headspace has been featured on both UK and US television, appearing on The Today Show,^[34] BBC Breakfast News, ABC News and Dr Oz. It was also featured on the BBC 2 science documentary “Horizon”, which tested the efficacy of mindfulness using the Headspace app over an 8-week period.^[35] In laboratory experiments, the presenter, Dr Michael Mosley, was found to have significantly reduced negative outlook. He also reported overcoming a decade-long battle with insomnia.^[36]
Headspace is regularly featured on BBC Radio, where it serves as an authority on the secularisation of meditation and mindfulness.^[37] It has also been featured on NPR and shows such as Martha Stewart in the US.

TED Talk

In November 2012, Headspace founder Andy Puddicombe gave a TED Talk, entitled ‘All It Takes Is 10 Mindful Minutes’,^[38] outlining the benefits of taking time out each day to practise mindfulness. To date it has accrued over 4 million views, and was one of the very first TED Talks to be featured on Netflix.

Charitable Partners

The Headspace vision is “to improve the health and happiness of the world” and as part of that commitment, they have partnered with charities, foundations and NGOs around the world.

These partnerships are increasingly focused on their Get Some/Give Some initiative, where for every Headspace subscription purchased, one subscription is donated to someone in need, who may not be able to afford or have access to it otherwise. This is done via charitable partners. The charitable partners are sometimes the recipients themselves, but more often they provide the means for identifying those in need and the mechanism for distributing the subscriptions.^[39]

Commercial Partners

Headspace silence room at Selfridges, London

Bespoke content is available to travellers on all Virgin Atlantic flights through a dedicated Headspace channel in the in-flight entertainment system.^[40]

Headspace also provides bespoke content for business and leisure travellers in all Westin hotel rooms. The global partnership, in association with the Starwood Group, seeks to help guests feel well, before, during and after their stay. The partnership launched in March 2014, and is a component of the Westin Wellbeing Movement.^[41]
At the beginning of 2013, Headspace ran a ‘No Noise’ partnership with leading UK department store Selfridges. This included the creation of a silent meditation room and Headspace pods being placed around the store to enable shoppers to get some Headspace.^[42]

See also

Andy Puddicombe
Mindfulness
Meditation

External links

• Official website
• Twitter
• Facebook
• Instagram

References