
Need More Zen? Try These Meditation Apps
Meditation has the potential to help both your mental and physical health and wellness. In stressful times such as the world we’re currently living in, finding a way to calm the noise and centre your thoughts can be incredibly powerful.
Benefits of meditation for your mental health can include offering you better focus and concentration, improving your self-awareness and self-esteem, lowering your levels of stress and anxiety, and helping to foster kindness and empathy. Meditation can also benefit your physical health, helping to improve your tolerance for pain and offering clarity to help fight substance addiction.
Implementing a new routine can seem daunting, and being consistent isn’t always as easy as it sounds. Thankfully, there’s an app for just about everything — including meditation.
Here are 3 apps to explore if you’re considering implementing some meditation into your daily life:
Balance touts itself as the world’s first personalized meditation app. Each day that you log into the app, you are guided to answer questions about your goals and current challenges. The app then personalizes a daily meditation for you based on your needs. It’s super easy to get started, and your first full year with the app is FREE! After that, subscriptions start at $11.99/month or $69.99/year.
Calm boasts being the #1 app for meditation and sleep. It has won multiple awards over the years, and has received over 1.5 million 5-star reviews and over 100 million downloads. One of the unique qualities of Calm is that the app offers various audio programs taught by world-renowned mindfulness experts, as well as free mindfulness resources like “Mindful Living Monthly Calendars”, Intention Cards, Guidebooks, and Daily Gratitude Journal templates. There is a limited free version of the Calm app; or you can opt for a free 7-day trial of the premium version, which will then cost about $70 for an annual subscription.
If you tend to lean towards the quirky and unique things in life, then Headspace could be for you. There are fun cartoons implemented into each lesson, and the guide’s voice has a unique accent that helps keep you grounded. You can try Headspace and learn the essentials of meditation and mindfulness with their free Basics course. If you decided to subscribe (around $70/year with a free 7-day trial), you’ll have bite-sized minis for when you’re short on time, exercises to add extra mindfulness to your day, and hundreds of meditations on everything from stress to sleep.
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