Sitting in front of her laptop inside her Beijing apartment, Fang Yingqi is in a state of focused tranquility. Eyes closed and back straight, she takes deep breaths according to the soft guidance of the tutor’s voice floating through her computer’s speakers: “Inhale and exhale…feel the temperature difference when the air comes in…and out.”

In fact, “Mindfulness training may be more applicable [than formal medical treatment] to enhance an individual’s well-being in Chinese culture,” Liu told Life Times in a 2019 interview, emphasizing the Buddhist roots of modern mindfulness practice which have been linked to Chinese culture for centuries.

But, as in other countries, many in China are taking up mindfulness in response to modern anxieties, stresses, or even depressive tendencies. In 2019, the World Health Organization estimated that 54 million people in China suffer from depression, and about 41 million suffer from anxiety disorders. But China has a shortage of certified mental health professionals—just 1.7 psychiatrists per 100,000 people compared with 12 per 100,000 in the US—so mindfulness courses are attractive for their accessibility online and low cost compared with private therapy.

“Unlike psychoanalysis that relies heavily on the professional level and experience of counselors, or cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) that requires personal discipline and monitoring, mindfulness-based stress reduction can be standardized into a ‘product’ that can be used by different people at the same time,” says Wang Sisi, a researcher at Pause Lab, an online mental health service provider with over 60,000 paid users that includes mindfulness courses in its products.

Wang, who holds a PhD in psychology from Peking University, helped design a 21-day online “Emotion Action Camp” for Pause Lab that guides beginners in mindfulness-based training, with the aim of reducing their stress and improving sleep quality.

In the camp, around 300 to 400 people (mainly women aged 25 to 35) pay around 600 yuan to receive recorded guidance and reading materials about recognizing and controlling their emotions. They keep diaries for the duration of the course, and also enter a group chat with tutors who answer their questions and encourage them to finish their daily practices.

A survey by the company last year found that most customers joined to raise their concentration levels, cope with pressure, ease negative emotions, and improve their acceptance of themselves. “Many live in first- and second-tier cities, are well-educated, and are in a period of career development but face pressure from themselves, interpersonal relationships, and their family,” says Pause Lab’s founder, Guo Tingting. “[They] want some tools for stress relief and self-growth.”

Song Xiaobo, a 28-year-old scriptwriter in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, joined a mindfulness class two months ago intending to become “satisfied with myself, more efficient at work, and to stop blaming myself for procrastination.”

Like Fang Yingqi, Song first learned about mindfulness on social media, via China’s popular social media app Xiaohongshu, on which there are as many as 340,000 posts related to “mindfulness and meditation.”

“The vlogger I followed told her story of finding inner peace and improving her life by practicing mindfulness for four weeks,” Song tells TWOC. After the vlogger’s mindfulness experience, “I saw that she went to the gym regularly, studied painting, and kept her own journal, all while accomplishing everything she wanted in her life and work.”

Song paid 2,000 yuan for an online course, but failed to see benefits at first: “The other night I quarreled with my parents and I yelled. I was aware I should stop and focus on my breathing like the mindfulness tutor told me to, but I couldn’t.”

Song also found herself distracted during meditation, even conjuring uncomfortable childhood memories as she sat still in prolonged silence. Her struggles made her frustrated with the course and she even blamed it for increasing her anxiety.

Fang, whose course was developed by Liu Xinghua, the professor at Peking University, found that after more than five weeks of training, although the course had increased her awareness of her emotions, it also “led me to spend more time fixating on those problems and maybe caused further anxiety.” When she asked her tutor for advice “she gave me a five-step solution that I found too theoretical and not practical.”

Zhou Jiaqi, another mindfulness tutor at Peking University (who wished to use a pseudonym), admits “there are many people who quit [courses] as they did not see the changes they expected.” But, when told of Song’s case, she says many people experience the same difficulties, and with persistent practice Song could see improved results. Zhou also suggests Song may have had overly high hopes for her course. “It’s likely she set the wrong expectation or was misled by advertisements for mindfulness-based therapy,” she tells TWOC.

Overhype and mixed messages plague much of the marketing around mindfulness. Courses often boast about a wide range of benefits from stress reduction to better parent-child relationships, weight loss and even the ability to make better investment decisions. On video platform Bilibili, scores of videos, most less than 10 minutes long, make claims to “take you on a journey,” “relax your body,” or “prevent anxiety.” One video with 40,000 views is titled: “It’s Cured 40 Million People’s Breathing: Effective After One Try.”

Professor Liu tells TWOC that scientific studies have verified the effects of mindfulness meditation to improve an individual’s ability to deal with negative emotions and stress. A study by researchers from Georgetown University Medical Center published in November 2022, showed that an eight-week mindfulness course was just as effective against anxiety disorders as antidepressant medication. In the study, 102 subjects participated in ”mindfulness-based stress reduction” which included 45 minutes of daily home practice and 150 minutes of offline meditation classes every week. They reported a 30 percent drop in anxiety levels after two months.

But many who take online mindfulness courses in China, or those who just occasionally watch mindfulness videos, do not have professional teachers guiding them; many sessions are just a few minutes long, and online courses often last far less than eight weeks. The Pause Lab course that Wang Sisi helped design, for example, lasts only 21 days. Furthermore, in the absence of scientific studies, it’s difficult to compare or prove the effectiveness of commercial online courses, and there are no industry standards.

Liu suggests consumers should look for coaches with psychology degrees from well-known universities. However, beyond academic credentials there is no standardized system for certifying or confirming the skills of mindfulness tutors in China. Often consumers must rely on reviews from previous clients to evaluate the credibility of courses.

Wang believes people can’t just rely on mindfulness to solve their issues: “For example, if I want to use mindfulness to solve my sleep problems, I may also need to learn about sleep more generally and other methods to cure insomnia.”

However, it seems likely the industry will continue to grow. Despite a slow start, Song eventually noticed some benefits from her course. At work recently, she argued with her manager in a meeting: “I suddenly realized: I was fighting to protect my idea and to verify it, because I felt that if my idea was proved wrong, then…it would be like I didn’t exist.”

By trying to let go of her emotions, as she learned in her course, she began to gain new acceptance of herself. “A thought is just a thought. It is not the center of my world…It doesn’t affect my self-identity,” she says. “At that moment, I was free.”