Keep calm and carry on: The best meditation apps for your peace of mind
Release the tension
If you’re tossing and turning in your sleep, experiencing throbbing headaches, or feeling overwhelmed by the world around you, here’s a useful (and doable) tip to getting your well-being under control: Close your eyes, and take a moment to breathe.
In case you need help with guiding your focus, here are some of the best meditation and mindfulness apps out there to help you find inner peace during challenging times. Only calmer days for you from here on out.
Insight Timer
With over 12 million users and growing, Insight Timer is the world’s most active (and free) meditation app in the world. With over 35 000 guided meditation classes, music and lectures from established yogis and gurus, users can access its extensive meditation libraries. Their classes are also entirely customisable to your own preferences such as the duration of your classes and preferred benefits (body image, creativity, body scan). This is also great for meditators who lead busy lives but still wish to squeeze a couple of meditation minutes into their tight schedules.
Sattva
Sattva is a free meditation app for those who are interested in the history and origins behind meditation. It is a much more spiritual-driven app based on the ancient Vedic principles. Beginners can opt for achievable six-minute guided meditations to help with improving their concentration. For more seasoned meditators, the app offers calm sounds, chants, mantras and music by Sanskrit scholars to incorporate into your daily lives. Sattva also has an in-depth progress tab to track your meditation journey and an option to host livestreams and meditate with friends.
Inscape
This meditation app was created as the digital version of a luxurious meditation center in New York City by the same name. While it does offer an array of classes such as journey visualisation and soundscaping, its primary focus is to reduce stress and anxiety as well as better your sleeping experience. If you find it difficult to fall asleep or are currently experiencing high-stress levels, Inscape is a great app to look into—especially with its aesthetically pleasing (and calming) app interface.
10 Per Cent Happier
Like Inspace, this app focuses on reducing anxiety and enhancing your sleeping experience. Creator Dan Harris encourages fidgety skeptics and those who wish to dip their toes into meditation but don’t know where to start to immerse themselves in this app. It provides new content every week in the form of informative videos and podcasts, and is a great way to grasp the basics—all guided carefully by experts. Psst: this app is also celeb-approved with the likes of Patrick Dempsey and Tom Bergeron as fans.
Headspace
Think of headspace as the personal trainer for your mind. Created by Andy Puddicombe, a mediation and mindfulness expert, Headspace seeks to make everyone live a happier, healthier, and more enjoyable life. You can use Headspace’s guided and non-guided exercises to focus on specific aspects of your life such as health, performance, and relationships.
Calm
This beautiful and simple app allows you to take short meditation breaks throughout the day. Choose from two minutes to 20 minutes of meditation to take a short and effective break when your stress level starts to increase and feel renewed after. The unique feature of this app is that it allows you to choose from 25 different gorgeous landscapes and sounds that are sure to induce a slower heart rate and peace of mind.
The Mindfulness App
The Mindfulness App offers guided, silent, and personalised meditations. Used have testified that they felt less stress, slept better, felt more satisfaction, and experienced better focus after using this app. The Mindfulness App is also a library of different meditations from some of the world’s most renowned meditation teachers suck as Eckart Tolle and Tara Brach.
Aura
Dubbed the ‘Spotify of mindfulness’, Aura curates daily meditation tracks and wellness guides for you. Based on the results of your questionnaire and preferences, its AI matches you to content from a library containing thousands of tracks by coaches, therapists, and storytellers. You’re also able to build your own playlists, from sleep tracks to guided meditation courses.
Shine
Staying on track with your intentions is easier said than done. With this in mind, the Shine app makes it easy for you to create and maintain a daily self-care ritual. Check back every weekday for a new mediation, reflect on your emotional well-being with the gratitude journal feature, as well as connect with Shine’s inclusive community.
This list has been updated in September 2021 to reflect newer meditation apps on the market.
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