By Jennifer Landis - Elizabeth Herman | Posted : September 28, 2020
Meditation is the act of relaxing the mind and finding stillness. Meditation can improve mental health and help you sleep better. Although starting a meditation practice may seem like a bit of a mystery, it's actually easy to get started.
But how do you get started? Is it better to use meditation apps or attend in-person meditation classes with trained instructors? Well, to guide you through, here are some app reviews and tips to help you.
Whether you haven’t yet listened to guided meditations or you're a bona fide meditation veteran, meditation apps can be a useful tool in your daily meditation practice. To introduce yourself to practices of mindfulness and meditation, apps can help you start to track your progress. If you're well into your meditation practice, apps can be useful if you want to expand your knowledge and experiment with guided tracks you've never heard before.
It's never too late or too early to start using an app. With so many to choose from, you can test out a few, reflect carefully on how you react to them, and choose whichever platform works best for you, or choose not to use one at all. Here is a brief review of 12 of the best wellness and meditation apps; try them out!
1. Art of Living Journey
Art of Living Journey app, is built on the idea that transformation is a journey not a destination. As the name suggests, the app hand-holds you and takes you step-by-step forward and deeper on the journey to the self. It’s your one point guide to support and facilitate your journey. Though primarily meant for the SKY Breath Meditation graduates for their further progress, this app offers a lot of useful content for absolute beginners too. If you are a newbie, it can guide you how you can learn meditation with trained and experienced instructors, or with guided tracks, and once you learn and graduate with the signature program, it even offers SKY meetups so you can interact and stay in touch with other graduates and share your practice together. Plus, you can personalize your experience to meet your own needs.
This app is all you need if you want to be systematically guided for your quest to learn and master the art of meditation. The Art of Living Journey app has some very useful guided meditations from 5-20 minutes duration to improve focus, reduce stress, manage anger, get better sleep, build self-esteem, acceptance, gratitude, and so on. It also has bedtime talks on various subjects like love, dropping worries, causes of misery, discipline, etc. The highlight and uniqueness of the app is the collection of wisdom talk videos by Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar on ancient scriptures like yoga sutras and also various topics that bring more value and meaning to your life. The guided meditations and videos can fit into your break time when you need to breathe on a hectic day. The stunning user interface is intuitive, responsive, and beautiful.
You can download the app for free on your smartphone from the Google Playstore (Android) or Apple Store (i-phones). Enjoy the free content with a 14-day trial or subscribe to the digital membership plan at $5.95 per month to access the wonderful content as mentioned above. If you have done the SKY program, the digital membership will also include weekly online or in-person SKY meetups (follow-ups). Or choose the JourneyPlus membership for $34.95 a month for a 12-month subscription and receive $400 off one Silent Retreat per year.
In short, this is probably the only meditation app that offers a solo experience and at the same time a platform to be fully supported by a larger meditation community and guidance from trained instructors, too. So it’s an ideal mix of a digital interface as well as human connection.
If you are a newbie and would like to learn more about the SKY Breath Meditation, you can join Beyond Breath - A FREE online introductory session with a live instructor.
2. Headspace
Headspace is a structured, course-based meditation app. When you give the app information, the app will recommend specific courses to guide you on your path. While this app is $12.99 monthly, many users find it worth the price.
Headspace offers guided meditation courses. Instead of pouring ambient music on the fire of anxiety, guided sessions address the core of the problem, turning embers into a happy glow. The goal is mindfulness and perfect equilibrium. Each beginner’s session is about 10 minutes long. Headspace uses gamification to encourage mastering every level of meditation before moving on.
Headspace offers a free trial period (two weeks). A yearly family plan (up to six subscriptions) or student plans are available for $9.99 a year.
3. Calm
The Calm app offers guided tracks, unguided sessions, and stories. Many features are free; a full subscription is $12.99 monthly. For a sleep app that specifically guides you in calming, sleep-based meditation, this could be all you need.
This popular meditation app combines beautiful scenery with calming sounds of nature, along with guided meditations in varying lengths. Meditations are divided by purpose as well as length- de-stressing, relationships, focus, or falling asleep. You can meditate with breathing exercises and bedtime stories.
Calm has 7-day programs tailored to solve a problem in a week - calming anxiety, managing stress, better sleep, etc.
4. Relax Melodies
This app is a Swiss army knife of wellness apps, with sounds and melodies for unguided meditation, relaxation, or sleep. Unlike other apps, Relax Melodies allows you to add any sound from their vast catalog to create your unique mix. This feature can be used to select breaking waves, crickets, and firewood crackling to create camping on the beach for a romantic evening.
You can choose a thunderstorm, wolves howling, and owls crying for Halloween. Choose from natural sounds, animal sounds (cat’s purring is my fave for anxiety relief), musical instruments, and environments (for example, rain in the city).
Moreover, it also has binaural noises to help you relax, fall asleep, or concentrate on work, ASMR sounds, guided meditation programs, narrated bedtime story samples, and mindfulness programs. Play around on the website before downloading the app. Most sounds are free; however, for stories and guided meditation, you buy the full version.
5. Shine
Unwinding and deep sleep are fine, but how about self-care? Shine takes a holistic approach to your wellbeing. On top of choosing a story and short meditation that help you sleep, you can boost self-confidence and improve your mood with daily affirmations, mindfulness exercises, and positive self-talk. With daily check-ins, you can calm down and put your priorities in order.
The app has well-researched materials (articles and audios) to help you take care of yourself. Shine is a great app for anxiety and depression.
The app has free core features and free trials with the possibility of in-app purchases and special bargains.
6. Happify
Happify builds on a substantial body of scientific research about mental health. The app’s main goal is to provide you with tools to handle stress and control how you feel.
Happify uses cognitive behavioral therapy, positive psychology, and mindfulness to help you reframe negative thoughts and build resilience. It uses quizzes, games, engaging activities, and easy exercises that rewire your brain to see more positive aspects of daily life.
I recommend Happify to people who want to handle and channel stress. The app’s evidence-based approach helps if more spiritual-leaning wellness apps didn’t work for you or if you're one of many fidgety skeptics. Also, you can measure your happiness score.
7. HabitMinder
This app will help you build healthy habits. It uses gamification to make you keep your promise to yourself. If you love lists and ticking something off as “done,” HabitMminder will use it against you - to a good end! Just choose one of the healthy habits. Whatever simple habit it is - drinking water, meditating, deep breathing, or better food choices - you can track it.
With its clean interface and intuitive controls, HabitMinder combines several health-tracker features with those of mindfulness apps.
Recommended to people who ditch their New Year’s resolutions after the first week of January, the app has free or upgraded versions.
8. Insight Timer
Insight Timer is an app with a timer feature as well as over 45,000 guided tracks for free. Sort tracks by time or by purpose. Insight Timer offers music, guided tracks, sleep meditations, and various talks and courses. Find what's right for you day by day, or pick courses that take you on more of a trajectory. Insight Timer lets you make it your own, while still offering learning and guidance.
9. Sattva
Drawing from ancient Vedic principles, Sattva is a meditation app on the roots and practices of meditation. Offering guided tracks, chants, mantras, and music, Sattva is a great option for the spiritual side of your meditation practice. This app is free to download with additional content available with an affordable annual subscription. It is customizable, and great for both beginners and experienced practitioners.
10. Smiling Mind
Smiling Mind is a completely free app with meditations for a variety of purposes. With specific tracks for kids of all ages, Smiling Mind is great for family meditation practices as well as individualized ones. With courses that focus on work, sleep, relationships, and other areas, this app is great for personal development.
11. 10% Happier
Associated with the sensational book and podcast, 10% Happier is a meditation app designed to improve happiness, sleep, and stress levels. Made for skeptics, this app provides practical approaches with the goal of making you 10% happier, as the title implies.
12. Reflectly
While this app isn't used for meditation in the traditional sense, it can still offer extensive benefits. Reflectly is a journaling app where you dig deeper into yourself, set intentions, and practice gratitude. Journaling augments a traditional meditation practice and can help you tangibly manage thoughts and feelings, opening up your newfound mindfulness practice.
Meditation with an app or without—a good dilemma to have!
There are advantages and disadvantages to learning meditation on an app. Meditation is primarily meant to be learned under the guidance of an expert. From time immemorial, people have been practicing meditation without any apps. But in this digital era, there’s an app for almost everything, including meditation. Though technology brings immense benefits, it can have its limitations too when attempting to give you a grand meditation experience. For instance, cell phones and other devices can distract you and add to your feelings of loneliness, anxiety, or depression. The vast majority of mental wellness apps, as shown in a study by the American Psychiatric Association (APA) haven’t received professional evaluations. So we recommend you be careful in choosing an app. You may want to get advice from a meditation specialist if needed, particularly if you’re a beginner.
Sometimes, it's nice to seek support from others in your meditation practice—be it from apps or instructors. Apps may not be an ideal solution to learn meditation in the first place, but guided meditation on apps can help you along the way in your journey. If you aren’t yet ready for in-person meditation courses, meditation apps will be a great place to start. Shop around and get your zen on!
Jointly reviewed and authored by:
Elizabeth Herman is a long time meditator and a PhD in English, with concentrations in Rhetoric and Composition, and Literature. She offers writing support to clients, teaches locally, and volunteers for a better world.
Jennifer Landis is a mom, writer, and blogger. She enjoys tea and tacos, but not often at the same time. Find more from Jennifer at her blog, Mindfulness Mama.
