“It’s not enough to purchase the right product to be mindful,” said Dan Harris, an ABC news anchor who chronicled his grudging embrace of meditation in a book, “10 Percent Happier.” “Mindfulness is a practice, and it’s worth doing.”

That is, you can’t simply buy mindfulness. In its historical context, mindfulness is just one aspect of a lifelong journey to become more accepting, less judgmental and kinder to oneself and others. Even in its modern incarnation, mindfulness is best understood as a skill, one acquired through hours of sometimes uncomfortable contemplation.

Alas, that may be asking too much in an age of crash diets and instant abs.

When considering the fate of mindfulness in the American marketplace, it’s instructive to look at the evolution of yoga. Like mindfulness, yoga has its roots in the spiritual traditions of India, and was practiced for decades by enthusiasts before it went mainstream. But as yoga grew more popular, it mutated in strange ways. Today there is naked yoga, paddleboard yoga, and doga — that is, yoga done while holding your dog. Yoga also became a multibillion-dollar business, spawning apparel companies like Lululemon, a vast cottage industry of studios and teacher trainings, and a kaleidoscope of yogi bric-a-brac.

Kaitlin Quistgaard chronicled yoga’s often bizarre ascendance as the former editor of Yoga Journal. She said that while purists sometimes wrung their hands about its commercialization, their lamentations were in vain. Let loose in the American marketplace, yoga took on a life of its own. Now, she said, the same thing is happening with mindfulness.

“No one gets to decide who can sell mindfulness, or use mindfulness to sell a product,” said Ms. Quistgaard.

Though this may result in less signal and more noise, it doesn’t mean mindfulness can’t still be beneficial. Yoga may have changed over the years, but plenty of authentic teachers and ashrams can still be found. The same dynamic will most likely play out with mindfulness, too. Strange variations on mindfulness will proliferate, while pockets of traditional teachings endure.

Even seemingly superficial interventions can be useful, or at least benign. Joe Burton, chief executive of Whil, which offers a popular meditation app, is adamant that just because mindfulness is streaming online at ever-higher price points, that doesn’t make it ineffective or inauthentic. “No one can come do our training being a greedy, selfish jerk and expect to become a better greedy, selfish jerk,” he said.