“Mindfulness, the practice of sitting still and focusing on your breath and thoughts, has surged in popularity over the last few years, with a boom in apps, online courses, books and articles extolling its virtues.”
This is as close to the final stage of commodification as it gets. The “practice of sitting still” is now something that has to be mediated by a service provider. The history of commodification is well researched and I can assume you are familiar with it. If not, read Life, Inc, by Douglas Rushkoff or Sacred Economics by Charles Eisenstein.
The commodification of everything is the systemic pressure to express all value in monetary terms dictated by the economic operating system. People are led to believe that no other kind of value can exist, no kind of value that resists convertibility into a global currency. This push to universal convertibility of value is a symptom of the robust absolutism that is the logical consequence of the apparent relativism of our time. It also means that the impossibility to translate monetary value into any other kind of value is brought to light. Its origins, or rather its lack of an origin, is made explicit. Thus the highest value falls, because it was dependent for its relevance on that obscurity.
All this is obvious. I felt the need to comment on the opening quote about mindfulness because its irony is so delightful.