The Koru Story

The Koru Mindfulness program was developed over the course of a decade by psychiatrists Holly Rogers, MD & Margaret Maytan, MD to bring the benefits of mindfulness to the college students they worked with at Duke University’s student counseling center. Today Koru is flourishing and is now taught in more than 200 universities (including Harvard, Johns Hopkins, and MIT) and in 11 countries around the world. While originally designed for "twenty-somethings," the curriculum is suitable for adults of any age.   

What makes Koru different from other mindfulness based courses?

It turns out that while there are many benefits to learning mindfulness (backed up by hard-nosed research) it is not that easy to get started with a practice that can become routine and sustainable. As a result people often feel reluctant to give it a try, convinced that it will be too difficult, boring, irritating, time consuming etc.

Koru is designed to address all of these concerns right from the start. It is accessible, understandable and most importantly do-able, so many people who feel ‘mindfulness is not for me’ quickly come to experience the benefits first hand and find that they are encouraged to stick with it.

Each week, students learn new stress management strategies and meditation practices.  Between classes, students practice for 10 minutes every day and privately log their experience for the teacher to review via the Koru App. The teacher responds privately to each individual’s logs between classes providing coaching and encouragement as the students begin to experience the benefits of developing a daily mindfulness practice.  There is a textbook which follows the Koru course curriculum and supports students when they come across barriers to practice. The app helps maintain motivation to support the development of the practice habit and allows students to track their progress.