ADHD-Friendly Mindfulness with Beverly Atkins

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Misophonia and ADHD are highly comorbid — Beverly spent years not knowing the two were connected, and how understanding both changed how she built Pauseture.
Why novelty is essential for ADHD regulation: repeating the same lesson loses its power. The brain needs unpredictability, exploration, and just enough challenge to stay engaged.
Movement as an attention training tool: it's not the physical movement that rewires the brain — it's the quality of attention during the movement that strengthens new neural pathways.

Beverly Atkins

Guild Certified Feldenkrais® Practitioner - Founder, Pauseture

In this episode I talk about building the freemium model as a deliberate nod to the ADHD community — no urgency, no pressure, no forgotten subscription to cancel. I was proud of that reasoning. I was also wrong.

What we found was that without a deadline, users with ADHD downloaded the app, did one lesson, and never came back. When I asked why, the answer was consistent: there was no urgency. As one person put it — "I need a deadline." Obvious in hindsight. Painful in the moment.

We changed to a 7-day free trial. Some people felt that was a bait and switch and sent emails to tell me so. If you're familiar with Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria, you'll understand what happened next. Those emails didn't just sting — they flattened me. I stopped pitching podcasts for more than six months. I was afraid of making another mistake before I fully understood what I was doing.

What took longer to learn was that the anger in those emails wasn't really a reflection of my integrity — it was a reflection of how many times people with ADHD have been let down before. That reframe was what finally let me move forward.

What pulled me out of it was the same thing Feldenkrais taught me: slow down, notice what's actually happening, and make a small adjustment. The freemium model was the mistake. The emails were signal, not verdict. And the pause — as uncomfortable as it was — gave me time to understand the product well enough to talk about it honestly.

Being your own scientist means your experiments don't always work. This one didn't. But the feedback did.