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Launch HN: Chorus Meditation (YC W21) – Meditation for Non-Meditators

103 points by aliabramovitz 6y ago

Hey everyone! I’m Ali and, together with my co-founders MK, Alex, and Warren, I’m building Chorus Meditation (https://chorusmeditation.com/ https://chorusmeditation.com/). We provide online group meditation classes led by trained instructors. MK and I met after we both had found the benefits of a traditional meditation practice, but only after much difficulty getting started because it took over 30 days to feel the benefits and it can often feel isolating and like nothing is “working.” At the time, MK was a top SoulCycle instructor. She is a master at creating community and motivating people to be their best through a perfect balance of humor, approachability, vulnerability, and acceptance. I was an avid SoulCycle rider and we bonded over our shared love for meditation and separately, our love for the instantly gratifying and social experience that SoulCycle had created. She and I decided that if we could create an experience for the mind that mirrored what SoulCycle had done for the body, we could help millions of people just like us. So, we spent months, combining different mindfulness techniques into a new method, testing out various versions on our living floors. We tried starting the class with a 3 minute traditional meditation before moving into the breathing pattern - no dice - we had promised people non-traditional meditation so when we hit them with exactly traditional meditation right at the start, it turned people off. Next we tried getting into the breathing pattern right off the bat -- still no dice. But we kept at it, and 16 major iterations later, we landed on what is now our Chorus class. Traditional meditation can be life-changing for those who stick with it, but the unfortunate truth is that for most people it’s hard to sustain the discipline to stick with it long enough to unlock the ah-ha moment. Once you cross that threshold you feel its power, but with Chorus we are trying to help people who struggle with that onboarding phase cross the threshold more easily. We've found that one of the main barriers many people run into with traditional meditation is that they're doing it alone, and they often feel like nothing is happening. So, we made Chorus 1) social, with warm, personable teachers and fellow class attendees, 2) fun, with new and popular music, and 3) designed to give motivating results in the first session and on-going. For example, the breathing pattern we use brings more oxygen into the body than normal inhales and exhales, which causes a tingling sensation, giving users a quick and satisfying feeling even in the first session. You can think of the tingles like endorphins in exercise - they feel good and tell you that something is working - so you are satisfied and want to come back for more. Everything in Chorus is designed to motivate you to keep going. Our members pay $40-a-month to have access to live and pre-recorded classes set to the beat of popular music like Beyonce, Odesza, Bon Iver, etc, that help them start their day with a positive mindset or unwind at night before bed. If you want to give it a try, we just launched a new class specifically designed to help you sleep — https://chorusmeditation.com/#book-a-class https://chorusmeditation.com/#book-a-class One of our users, a mother of young twins, shared: “my first experience unlocked something in me. Something visceral, and I thought - ‘this is so worth exploring.’” This is exactly the kind of reaction we’re going for. I want to emphasize that we’re in no way trying to replace traditional meditation. We, ourselves, are reverent students of traditional practices. And we're well aware that we don't have anything to teach the millennia-old traditions of India and China. What we are trying to do is bridge the gap for people who find traditional techniques challenging so that they can avoid the discouraging feeling of “I’m doing this wrong” and empower them to develop their own mindfulness practice. Another thing we do to support our users in the early stages of practice is provide a community in which they can share their experiences and get encouragement to keep going. This is one of the more satisfying aspects for us, because people report their positive experiences as well as their challenges. We hear from users who report feeling more calm and focused, or sleeping better, all the way up to "Chorus has truly transformed my life...I didn’t think I would ever have a relationship with my mom again, and now because of Chorus, I do.” We are building Chorus for our collective community, so I’d really love to hear this community’s feedback. We'd love to hear from everybody, whether you're a complete meditation skeptic, someone who's found meditation challenging, or a seasoned meditator who has achieved total equanimity! We're eager to hear your experiences and thoughts and feedback! Over to you, HN!

beaconstudios 6y ago
There's an interesting tension in your proposition - mindfulness meditation is at least partially about growing your self-awareness (awareness of your internal processes), but social situations tend to make some people self-conscious (aware of their external presentation). Combine that with up-tempo music and I would've thought that kind of environment would make it difficult to attain present awareness. Have you run into this as a real (rather than theoretical, like in my head!) issue, and if so how do you avoid/address it? Sounds like a great proposition though - anything that bring more people into the meditation fold sounds like a positive to me.
- aliabramovitz 6y ago
  That is such a thoughtful question - thank you! What we have seen is that the upbeat music, because it comes with a very strong BEAT give the mind something EVEN more concrete to focus on (the beat, the breathing pattern, and the teachers voice all serve as the object of attention, like a mantra) - so it does in fact make it easier to cultivate presence for people who find traditional objects of focus (e.g. "following the feeling of the breath") hard to anchor attention on. Regarding the social aspect - what we have found is that going through the class allows you to connect first to yourself more deeply, and then being in that headspace after class opens you up to be more connected to the others in the class. For more extroverted people that can manifest as sharing with the group about their experience - but even for some self proclaimed introverted customers we have talked with, they say knowing that they are sharing the experience with others and just listening to what others say at the end makes them feel less alone in the world.
  - beaconstudios 6y ago
    Thanks for your response! That's interesting - I suppose the beat can form an external point of focus, like trataka/fixed-point meditation, investing your focus into one thing so that the route to self-awareness is noticing when your attention gets pulled off of that subject and onto to something internal like a thought or emotion. I wish you the best of luck!

103 points by aliabramovitz 6y ago

beaconstudios 6y ago

There's an interesting tension in your proposition - mindfulness meditation is at least partially about growing your self-awareness (awareness of your internal processes), but social situations tend to make some people self-conscious (aware of their external presentation). Combine that with up-tempo music and I would've thought that kind of environment would make it difficult to attain present awareness. Have you run into this as a real (rather than theoretical, like in my head!) issue, and if so how do you avoid/address it? Sounds like a great proposition though - anything that bring more people into the meditation fold sounds like a positive to me.

aliabramovitz 6y ago
That is such a thoughtful question - thank you! What we have seen is that the upbeat music, because it comes with a very strong BEAT give the mind something EVEN more concrete to focus on (the beat, the breathing pattern, and the teachers voice all serve as the object of attention, like a mantra) - so it does in fact make it easier to cultivate presence for people who find traditional objects of focus (e.g. "following the feeling of the breath") hard to anchor attention on. Regarding the social aspect - what we have found is that going through the class allows you to connect first to yourself more deeply, and then being in that headspace after class opens you up to be more connected to the others in the class. For more extroverted people that can manifest as sharing with the group about their experience - but even for some self proclaimed introverted customers we have talked with, they say knowing that they are sharing the experience with others and just listening to what others say at the end makes them feel less alone in the world.
- beaconstudios 6y ago
  Thanks for your response! That's interesting - I suppose the beat can form an external point of focus, like trataka/fixed-point meditation, investing your focus into one thing so that the route to self-awareness is noticing when your attention gets pulled off of that subject and onto to something internal like a thought or emotion. I wish you the best of luck!