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I’M SITTING ON MY BED, laptop open, with a Zoom call in progress on my screen. So far, so normal, except the person on screen isn’t someone from my office telling me I’m on mute, it’s Gwyneth Paltrow. All glossy, golden highlights, Malibu-kissed bronzed skin and large black-rimmed specs, the wellness guru is at home in LA (her artful Zoom-scape perfected so we see just a well-kept pot plant in one corner and a dancing palm tree through the window in the other).
I have been granted an audience with Paltrow to learn about the launch of Moments of Space, her new meditation app, which is all about keeping your eyes open – making the act of meditation itself more accessible as part of our busy lives. For Paltrow, this means finding time while she’s ‘making a bowl of guacamole’, for example, to meditate, instead of ring-fencing time to be alone with her eyes closed. ‘I have this discussion a lot with friends who say, “I just can’t do it. I just can’t sit there, I keep looking at the clock.” And I say, “Well, you should try eyes open because it’s much more accessible.” I think people don’t know that they can meditate with their eyes open.’
During our call, Paltrow leads us in a special meditation, resulting in the most relaxed three minutes of my week – maybe she’s on to something. I sign up for the Moments of Space app, which offers a variety of eyes-open meditation sessions, some as short as just two minutes. One can set paths of intention, such as learning how to recognise thoughts and then learning how to reframe them. Paltrow herself leads several short meditations. (Present Moment Awareness is my favourite, a one-minute reset in which she calmly reassures you there is actually no past and no future, ‘all there ever will be is the present, an ever-evolving now’). I am now a meditation convert, thanks to Paltrow – and I’m unlikely to be the only one.
This latest endeavour is yet another string to Paltrow’s wellness bow, which has until now been focused on the actor’s Goop empire (rumoured to be valued at $250 million), where she has revolutionised how we talk about wellness – not to mention sold a lot of Yoni eggs. Meditation is something Paltrow has been doing for years, but she says it came into its own for her during the pandemic. ‘I learned to meditate with a transcendental meditation teacher about 12 years ago,’ she says. ‘I really lapsed for a long time. And then during Covid is actually when my husband [ producer Brad Falchuk] said to me, you know, I’d really love to learn how to meditate because I was doing it sporadically. And so I would say
