Unsurprisingly, with the maturity of the technology industry and the appetite for a healthier way of dealing with digital overload, the mindfulness and meditation movements are undergoing a significant revival of interest. It feels as opposite to that state of restless online anxiety as it is possible to feel. And though you don’t have to look far to find the hippy culture these practices have become known for, these thousand-year-old disciplines are far bigger than that. Certainly the corporate world is taking it seriously, and they might be expected to show little tolerance for anything that doesn’t pay its way towards the bottom line.

Mindfulness is also a business in itself, of course, which means there is already a swath of meditation apps, expensive retreats and the inevitable conference, Wisdom 2.0. The event can claim not-unimpressive alumni including Twitter co-founders Evan Williams and Biz Stone, Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and Huffington Post creator Arianna Huffington. Williams told the New York Times that the tech industry had previously dismissed the bad “hand wavy” branding of meditation, but that it enables him “to think more clearly and not feel so swept up”.

Sceptics could point out that wealthy Americans and their bubbly tech businesses can afford to indulge the luxury of meditation classes. Google hosted the celebrated mindfulness practitioner and zen master Thich Nhat Hanh in 2011, and runs regular over-subscribed courses on energy, neural re-programming and “mindful lunches”. Elsewhere Williams’s new company, Medium, runs guided meditations twice weekly, Facebook organises regular office sessions offering mindfulness and meditation practice and General Mills, the American Cheerios manufacturer, has become the unlikely inspiration for many corporate mindfulness programmes, with 700 practising staff.

Hippy hype aside, the unwillingness for many to explore this kind of psychological exercise speaks to our ancient hangups over mental health. Physical exercise we accept, but psychological health we are too scared to embrace. What’s the equivalent of a fitness bootcamp for your mind?

“We are humans, not robots,” Asana co-founder Justin Rosenstein told Fast Company recently. “We’re engaged in a creative endeavour that requires a lot of energy, and so if you’re constantly involved in the output – in the exhale – then you’ll run out of breath.” The nub for his company, which runs a project management service, is that balance is about the wellbeing of his staff, and means more than just productivity. Mindfulness is seen as an enquiry for objectivity, a way to claw back some of the equilibrium of how we exist in the real world, rather than the hyper-mediated place we create for parts of ourselves online.

Real world productivity for mere mortals outside Silicon Valley is more likely to be incentivised with cheap cakes and bad coffee. But in this ongoing battle to regain some control over the demands technology makes of us, mindfulness is a powerful tool in creating an invaluable bit of space and perspective.