I tried a 'Star Wars'-themed mindfulness app to help me deal with the pressures of a new job – but the voices of Chewbacca, Yoda, and droids just filled me with existential dread.

• Mindfulness app Headspace launched a "Star Wars" feature to celebrate Star Wars Day.
• These apps have exploded in recent years, but there are questions over their efficacy.

The metaphor of "The Force" in Star Wars and its applications in mindfulness, an Eastern practice that has pierced the capitalist zeitgeist, are so obvious it seems remarkable that it has taken this long to turn into a commodified feature of the Headspace app.

Yet as I breathe along with Chewbacca and simulate a journey through the Tatooine night as part of the company's Star Wars Day partnership, a big part of me wishes it had gone untouched.

The use of mindfulness as a way of managing stress has soared in popularity in recent years, accelerated by the pandemic and the wave of anxiety and burnout left in its wake.

Early studies suggest there is some benefit to be gained from daily mindfulness meditation, even if it's used on a smartphone. Others warn that it can have a dark side as well, causing people to suppress feelings of guilt, and impact their personal relationships.

Daytime meditations

I used Headspace consistently during the early days of the pandemic. It helped me focus on the present amid massive uncertainty and I think it helped ward off anxiety-driven downturns. I had been planning to revisit it as I took on a stressful new job.

Nevertheless, I approached the latest Star Wars feature with a healthy amount of skepticism. Putting in my earbuds, I thought: I have a bad feeling about this.

Following a day of breathing exercises that included the existential dread of listening to BB8 whirring back and forth from the microphone with an out of tempo mechanical rhythm, as well as an indiscernible Chewbacca and R2-D2, I tried to shake off the stress of deadlines with a sleepcast before bed.

Nighttime sleepcasts

There are three "Star Wars"-themed sleepcasts, including an X-wing voyage and a Tatooine sunset. My Irish roots though, forced me to go with a trip round the Islands of Anch-To. These sleepcasts felt like the area in which Headspace invested the most time.

"The sun has just begun to set along the rocky coast of Anch-To," a dreamy voice hums. "Home of the first Jedi temple. The gentle rain falls down through the patchy clouds, glimmering off the fields of wild grass that cover the cliff side."

The voice continues: "Along the edge of the island, a collection of large boulders stand upright, seeming to defy gravity."

The Porgs make an entrance soon after, as do the island's caretakers, while I receive a lesson in Star Wars history and geography which I personally found too informative to allow me to switch off. By the time Yoda made a cameo, I was lost in a sea of fan fiction from which I could not return. Inevitably, I struggled to relax through the 45 minute session – even after completing the included breathing exercise – and can't imagine Star Wars fans would break any mindfulness barrier either.

Ultimately, the app didn't succeed in helping me relax, nor did it instantly improve my focus. While it may be worth a longer experiment, I can't imagine finding inner peace by having Chewbacca and Co. breathing in my ear. In fact, the experiment caused me to fall asleep later than normal, and I felt lethargic and jittery the next day as a result.

It speaks to a wider issue with mindfulness apps.

The real benefit of mindfulness apps like Headspace — and tools like Arianna Huffington's Thrive Reset — is that they give us permission to slow down and remind us to take breaks, said Katie Phillips, a business consultant who specializes in burnout.

However, it's often a distraction from, rather than a cure for, the external stressors that can lead to fatigue and exhaustion, she explained.

From an employment perspective, this can be problematic if firms start to rely on mindfulness apps and subscriptions as sole a fix for wider cultural problems like long hours, unmanageable workloads and toxic managers, Cary Cooper, a professor of organizational psychology and health at Alliance Manchester Business School, told Insider.

Personally, I always struggled with thematic mindfulness promoted by the app. More often than not it felt like a gimmick, with background noises designed to help me sleep leaving me more anxious and distracted than when I started.

The "Star Wars" theme did little to quell those worries, even if I found small moments of clarity within the hours of content. But it hasn't put me off mindfulness, or Headspace, for good.