Headspace Offers Free Subscriptions to 36.5 Million Unemployed Americans

Santa Monica, CA - In an unprecedented move, Headspace, the best meditation app around, is offering a one-year free subscription to all unemployed Americans.

Rich Pierson, Headspace CEO and Co-Founder framed it this way. “While meditation and mindfulness can’t change our circumstances in life, it can help us change our perspective on those circumstances. And, now more than ever, that’s an incredibly powerful skill to learn. As a company dedicated to improving the health and happiness of the world, we take our responsibility to help support people’s mental health very seriously. It’s our promise today and for whatever tomorrow brings.”

With U.S. unemployment numbers blasting to 36.5 million, there are more people than ever that find themselves unmoored from their traditional routine and now have to figure out how to make ends meet.

What Can Meditation Do?

But losing your job is more than just loss of income. It can destroy your feeling of efficacy and make you feel out of control of your own life. If you've never had to deal with unemployment it's a terrifying trip into the unknown that can strip away mental health benefits right when you need them most.

Learning how to meditate, taking a few minutes every day to recenter yourself and find ways to deal with this new anxiety can help you keep your head above water and move forward.

Dr. Megan Jones Bell, Headspace's Chief Science Officer said, “As a company committed to advancing the field of mindfulness and meditation through clinically-validated research, we know that Headspace meditations have been shown to have favorable outcomes of interventions on key measures like reduced stress, reduced irritability, decreased aggression, and increased resilience [links provided by Headspace]. These are really powerful markers in demonstrating how we can support the mental health of those experiencing job loss.”

How to Sign Up

Starting today, unemployed Americans (all unemployed or furloughed Americans, not just those affected by the current COVID-19 pandemic) can register for a free Headspace Plus subscription here.

Once you do, you'll have access to over 1,200 hours of meditation and mindfulness content. This includes their incredible sleep meditations, movement exercises, The Wake Up, and meditation just for kids (who are also greatly impacted by the stresses of their parents' unemployment).

In addition, on May 18, Headspace is launching a new collection of guided meditations called “Living through unemployment” containing six focused meditations including: “Adapting to sudden change,” “Sadness and loss,” “Recovering confidence,” and “Finding purpose.”

All of this is accessible from the Headspace app. If you have an Apple Watch, you’ll be pleased to know there’s a Watch app that offers daily meditations, walking and running meditations, breath exercises, and emergency “recovery” meditations for when you’re feeling overwhelmed.

Keep in mind this offer is for new members or those with limited free memberships. If you have a current membership you can contact Headspace directly to work things out.

This is an absolutely unprecedented offer and makes me respect the company even more than I already did. In the short term, they'll lose revenue from the free subscriptions, but in the long term they'll gain lifetime subscribers.

Once people see what just a few minutes of mediation each day can do for their mental well-being, they'll be hooked. And even if those with free subscriptions don't end up continuing their membership, the goal of helping ease the minds of those experiencing a difficult period in their lives is a noble one. Well done.