10 Perfect Relaxation And Mindfulness Apps To Reduce Stress And Anxiety
Modern lifestyles cause stress, anxiety, depression, and insomnia. You don’t suffer from these symptoms if you know how to live in the present and are aware of where you are and what you are doing. Mindfulness helps you live in the present. Regular practice of it will transform you into a person who is not thinking about the past, not worried about the future.
Not all of us can commit to a regular practice. We always struggle to find the time or energy that a regular practice of meditation demands. These mindfulness apps are specially designed for you to improve your meditation practice.
1. Insight Timer
The number 1 free meditation app. Guided meditations and talks led by the world’s top meditation and mindfulness experts, neuroscientists, psychologists and teachers from Stanford, Harvard, the University of Oxford and more. Music tracks from world-renowned artists. Join millions learning to meditate on Insight Timer to help calm the mind, reduce anxiety, manage stress, sleep deeply and improve happiness.
Review: Food & Nutrition
Simple design with over 12,000 free, searchable guided meditations. It includes a new user meditation experience assessment and suggestions for levels from just starting out to over a year or teacher status.
2. Aura
Aura is the best solution to reducing stress and increasing positivity through 3-minute meditations, personalized by AI.
- Relieve stress & anxiety with a 3-minute guided meditation session every day.
- Choose how you’re feeling and receive the best meditation for you
- Rate your experience, and Aura will learn about you to provide a better session every time.
- Listen to meditations specifically created for your feelings, whenever you need
- Track your mood, learn about your mood patterns, and visually see yourself improve
- Take a mindful break whenever you need
- Receive daily reminders for mindful breathers and meditations
- Express gratitude as a habit through daily reflections
- Integrated with Apple Health
- Various relaxation sounds and music for unguided meditations before sleep
- Perfect for beginners who want to learn how to meditate
- Receive daily meditations just for you today
For Android For iPhone
Review: engadget
While some competitors offer 10-30 minute meditations, Aura has options that work for anyone’s schedule. Sessions last anywhere from three to ten minutes, depending on your level of comfort, making it great for newcomers and more experienced practitioners alike.
3. Calm – Meditate, Sleep, Relax
Calm is the leading app for meditation and sleep. Calm is the perfect mindfulness app for beginners, but also includes hundreds of programs for intermediate and advanced users.
Guided meditation sessions are available in lengths of 3, 5, 10, 15, 20 or 25 minutes so you can choose the perfect length to fit with your schedule. Topics include:
- Calming Anxiety
- Managing Stress
- Deep Sleep
- Focus and Concentration
- Relationships
- Breaking Habits
- Happiness
- Gratitude
- Self-Esteem
- Body Scan
- Loving-Kindness
- Forgiveness
- Non-judgment
- Commuting to work or school
- Mindfulness at College
- Mindfulness at Work
- Walking meditation
- Calm Kids
- And so much more…
Review: common sense media
Parents need to know that Calm is a subscription-based app that promotes relaxation through meditations, sleep stories, nature images, and sounds. The guided meditations give users choices in the topic (calming anxiety, deep sleep, forgiveness, gratitude, and more), length of time (from three to 25 minutes), and nature scenes.
4. Stop, Breathe & Think: Meditation & Mindfulness
This calming meditation app experience is uniquely designed to help you stay mindful, de-stress, sleep better, and build the emotional strength and confidence to handle life’s ups and downs. Mindfulness & meditation is the practice, Stop, Breathe & Think is the process.
Topics include:
- Morning meditation
- Guided meditation
- Slay your Stress+ Breathe Mindfully
- Tame Anxiety+ Sleep Better
- Strengthen Focus
- Manage Depression
- Meditation for Commuting
- Mindfulness techniques for College Life
- Meditation for Kids, Teens & Tweens
- 20+ Meditations in Spanish
Review: common sense media
This app makes meditation approachable and even fun. Kids can earn stickers for consistently using Stop, Breathe & Think, getting rewards for achievements such as multiple days of meditation and journeys through the same meditation.
5. Ten Percent Happier Meditation
Its guided meditations, videos, talks, and sleep content will help you build (or boost) your meditation practice, and stick with it.
What’s Inside
- Video and meditation combos that make it fun and straightforward to learn to meditate.
- A library of 500+ guided meditations on topics ranging from anxiety to parenting to focus, ensuring that you can find exactly the right meditation for the moment.
- An asleep section filled with relaxing meditations that make it easy to fall (and stay) asleep.
- Bite-size stories, wisdom, and inspiration that you can listen to while on the go – for those moments when you’re not feeling like meditation but what some mindfulness.
- New content released weekly to keep meditation from becoming a chore.
- Quick meditations that fit into your busy life—during your commute, lunch break, etc.
Review: TechCrunch
The app is now one of many operating in the self-care space, where meditation and other stress-reducing apps are ruling and raking in millions. But unlike some apps on the market today, 10% Happier aims to be meditation for the “rest of us” – that is, those who are turned off by the idea, thinking it’s some kind of hokey, hippie, crystal-waving practice.
6. Buddhify – Mindfulness Meditation On The Go
Buddhify is here to help you bring more calm, clarity and kindness to all parts of your life. Whether you’re looking to reduce stress and anxiety, or get a better night’s sleep buddhify has easy-to-follow guided meditations to help you live happier and healthier.
What’s Included
- 200 meditations to help overcome life’s challenges including anxiety, stress, sleep, pain and difficult emotions
- Mindfulness exercises you can do wherever you are, in categories such as travelling, at work, waking up, eating, and even when you’re online
- Sessions for complete beginners and those with more experience, with lengths from 3-40 minutes
- A solo timer for more seasoned meditators
- A range of experienced teachers so you can choose the voice and style that’s right for you
- Kids content for the little people in your life
- Brand new Buddhify Membership, available as an optional in-app purchase with a range of additional features for those looking to take their practice further
Review: PsyberGuide
It is an interactive app designed to introduce users to techniques of urban meditation, thereby fostering a state of mindfulness and well-being in everyday life situations. The app defines mindfulness as focused awareness of the user’s current experience. The app requires active listening, and is also designed to enhance concentration through meditations without distraction, and promote emotional balance through uncomfortable thoughts and emotions.
7. Smiling Mind
Smiling Mind is a unique web and app-based program developed by psychologists and educators to help bring balance to people’s lives. Its programs are designed to assist people in dealing with the pressure, stress and challenges of daily life.
Review: common sense media
It is a collection of hundreds of meditations for a wide variety of ages and situations. There are grounding body scans, breathing meditations, and sensory exercises such as listening to music or tasting foods. There are complete programs for kids in different age groups, a workplace program, and a sport program.
8. Headspace
The Headspace app teaches you how to breathe, meditate and live mindfully. It’s even been proven to improve focus. There are exercises on everything from managing anxiety and stress relief to breathing, happiness, calm and focus. Plus, it has specially-designed sleep meditations to guide you to a place of rest.
Features
- Train and calm your mind in just a few minutes a day with guided meditations
- Learn classic meditation and relaxation techniques to help you relax, manage your stress and anxiety, or for different topics like creativity and sleep
- Add some mindfulness to your day with push notifications that remind you to be present and breathe
Sleep sounds to create truly restful nights - Track your progress and share it with others
Headspace for Kids:
Guided exercises designed for younger meditators. Topics include: Sleep, Wake Up, Calm, Paying Attention and more.
Review: Gadgets360
This app teaches you everything you need to know about meditation, and it’s very beginner friendly. The very first time you use the app, you’re treated to a small cartoon video explaining how to meditate. The narrator has a very British accent and a little research showed that we were listening to Andy Puddicombe, one of the founders of Headspace, and a Buddhist who studied meditation for over a decade.
9. Simply Being
Simply Being has been developed by Richard and Mary Maddux, creators of the popular Meditation Oasis podcast. It allows you to choose from 4 meditation times and gives you to option to listen with or without music/nature sounds. You can also listen to music or nature sounds alone.
With this App you can:
- Meditate easily as you are voice-guided step by step
- Choose a meditation length of 5, 10, 15 or 20 minutes
- Listen to the meditation with or without music/nature sounds
- Listen to the music or nature sounds alone
- Read instructions to support and enhance your meditation
- Relax deeply and experience the present moment completely
- Enjoy the benefits of meditation
- Links to support on the Meditation Oasis website
- Separate Volume Controls for voice and music/nature sounds
Review: CNET
It allows you to choose from 5 meditation times and gives you to option to listen to the guided meditation with or without music or nature sounds. You can also listen to music or nature sounds alone. In addition, you can choose how long to listen to music or nature sounds after the voice guidance finishes.
10. The Breathing App
The Breathing App is inspired by resonance, the scientific name that describes what happens when our heart rate, heart rate variability, blood pressure, and brainwave function come into a coherent frequency. It occurs spontaneously when we breathe at a rate of five to seven breaths per minute (instead of our usual 15-18). It results in calm, restful alertness and many other benefits.
Review: EDDIE STERN
Resonant breathing gives you back your sense of you. It puts you back into the driver’s seat when the increasing load of the world so often takes over. In resonant breathing, you spend a few minutes each day living and breathing in a perfect balance between sympathetic and parasympathetic, in a neutral zone of mental calm and equilibrium, of conscious peace.
