Your shoulders are making their way up toward your ears. Your back is curled tighter than a snail shell. Your breathing is ragged and your head hurts. Clearly, you’re stressed out. Instead of losing your cool with your coworkers, try one of these easy meditation apps to find an oasis in the middle of your cube farm.
1. Get a Little Headspace
Use Headspace to get started with mindful meditation and the service claims that you will not only feel better during the day, but also get more rest at night. The team suggests that you start with a 10-minute program to help train your brain to meditate. They have series on health, performance and relationships, too. If you’re having a near-meltdown, you can use one of their SOS Sessions to help talk your brain down off the ceiling. They also donate memberships to people in need, when you purchase a paid subscription. While Headspace is a pay-to-play service, it does offer a free 10-day trial to test it out.
2. Try to Get Calm
Easy to remember, Calm.com is a resource that’s accessible online or via a mobile app that allows you to tap into some mellow. If you’ve got a chaotic workplace full of distracting noise, use one of their free looping environmental sounds on their meditation page to hear evening crickets, ocean waves, a light rainstorm, etc. Or use their guided meditation sessions like “commuting” or “breaking habits” to get some help finding your chill. They have free options, as well as ones you can unlock for a small fee. At home, you can use one of their “sleep stories” to quietly shut your brain down and fall asleep — just like when you were a kid!
3. Time Your Insights
Try Insight Timer and you’ll be able to set up a quick meditation session on your own, complete with soothing bowl bell to start and end. Or try a guided meditation session with over 1,400 teachers for whatever is vexing you. There are also online meditation discussion groups you can join, some of which offer local meetups — plus, the whole thing is free.
4. See Your Aura
With the Aura app, you can dial in how you’re feeling and track what might be triggering your stress (and learn how to combat it). It claims to learn from you with AI technology, so the more you use it, the more it can anticipate your moods and suggest meditations that might help you feel better — in just three minutes a day. The app is free, with a premium membership upgrade option (starting at $7.99/month). It also offers an Apple Watch app option as well.
5. Make a Simple Habit
Launched in 2016 to much acclaim, Simple Habit boasts help for your stressed out life with just five minutes per day — perfect for busy folks like you who might not have even 10 or 20 minutes to spend trying to relax. It offers over 100 meditation sessions on the app, with more if you become a premium member, which opens up helpful meditation sessions like “before meeting,” “meditation for engineers” and “meditations for entrepreneurs,” all of which sound pretty helpful.
Tell Us What You Think
What meditation app do you use? We want to hear from you! Leave a comment or join the discussion on Twitter.
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