4 of Our Favourite Meditation Apps

WBC

A burgeoning array of smartphone apps that aim to undo the anxieties of the smartphone age may well be a paradox. However, there is no right or wrong way to meditate, and the following apps have provided a welcome service to many. These WBC favourites, each with different focal points and capacities, can be used by beginners or alongside established meditation practices.

Smiling Mind

The app of this Australian, not-for-profit meditation programme is enjoyable to use with an intuitive touch designed to appeal to many age groups. It has a strong youth mental health reputation and focus, offering hundreds of meditations and structured programmes on themes such as Mindful Foundations, Sleep, Digital Detox, and Stress Management. Users can easily jump from one to the next or begin at any chosen point.

Insight Timer

Also operating out of Australia, Insight Timer has more than 15 million users worldwide. When opening Insight Timer, the user can see how many other people are meditating at the same time and as such this app has become known as a community. There are more than 45K free meditations offered and this is a significant aspect, since one of the biggest complaints about other apps is the lack of free content. If you are a beginner in the practice of meditation, try their seven-day free course on how to meditate on a beginner level.

Headspace

Headspace’s guided meditation app has users in 190 countries providing tools to assist in finding calmness, wellness and balance and was created in London by a former Buddhist monk ‘dedicated to demystifying meditation and bringing it to as many people as possible’. It features solution-based meditations that are designed around themes such as anxiety, patience, self-esteem and grief. Even though the app is free, the Sleepcast subscription feature is recommended for those finding sleep elusive.

Calm

The app from San Fransisco based Calm offers science-based mindfulness and provides guided sessions ranging in length from 3 to 25 minutes. You will find daily meditations, daily progress tracking, a seven-day and 21-day program for beginners and more. The audio bedtime stories, and soothing audio suite included in this app can help you establish mental guided imagery as well as engage multiple senses at the same time so that you can mentally separate yourself from your current environment.

By Nazia Ibrahimi