Reduce stress with mindfulness meditation apps on your phone

Modern life can be hectic and stressful. There may be problems at work, deadlines to meet, awkward people to deal with and so much more. De-stress with these mindfulness and meditation apps

Problems can occur in your personal life as well as work and they may be a cause of more worry and stress. Mindfulness and meditation apps on your phone can help induce a feeling of quiet, calm, relaxation.

Mindfulness, according to Wikipedia, "Involves the process of developing the skill of bringing one's attention to whatever is happening in the present moment."

There is no doubt that stress is bad for you and it can be a serious health problem in severe cases. Anything you can do to reduce stress is good for you and there are various ways in which you can do this. Some people might find that walking their dog relaxes them, or they may like to chill out by relaxing to music.

Other people like to meditate and these apps for your phone will guide you, advice you and help you.

Headspace: Meditation & Sleep

By: Headspace for Meditation | Size: 12 MB | Android: 5.0 and up

Headspace is an app for Android and iOS phones that teaches mindfulness meditation. Skip the intro screen asking you to subscribe and you will find that a large amount of guided mediation and relaxation is locked. However, there is still a lot you can access for free.

The free app contains a 10-part Basics course of exercises that teaches the fundamentals of meditation and mindfulness. The idea is that you perform one each day and they last from 3 to 10 minutes each.

There is a choice of a male or female voice guide and once started, you can turn off the screen because it is not really necessary. Turn up the audio volume and put the phone down beside you. The voice then guides you and explains how to relax and enter a meditative state. There is a choice of times with each meditation, like 3 or 5 minutes for a short one, 10 or 15 minutes for a longer one. There must be many hours of courses in total.

There are two difficulties that people experience with meditating and one is falling asleep. Don’t laugh till you have tried it! When you relax and let go of your thoughts and worries you are doing exactly what you do to get to sleep at night, so it isn’t surprising. The voice will hopefully keep you awake. It isn’t constant or grating, it is smooth and relaxing and there are large silences where you can concentrate on your meditation. It’s just a few words to focus you every now and then.

The other difficulty is the ideas and thoughts that occupy your mind, preventing you from relaxing. The voice, every now and then, gives you direction and aims to prevent this from happening.

Navigating Change is another free course with 10 parts and there are single sessions like Adapting to Sudden Change, Finding Purpose, Focus, Managing Anger, Managing Anxiety, Recovering Confidence, Sadness and Loss, and Stressed.

That is a great collection of free content and it will keep you going for quite some time, but it is just a tiny part of the whole collection of themed mediations covering sports, illnesses, job interviews and work, fear of flying, sleep and more.

The app records your progress and shows the average duration of your mindfulness meditation, the total number of sessions and total time meditating. It also records the number of days you have been meditating too.

Several animations are included and these explain various techniques and topics. Sometimes you watch an animation video and then meditate using the technique that was presented.

I like the app a lot and it is colourful, easy to use and has many more features than I can cover here. I also like the free guides that come with it. The problem is that going beyond the free stuff costs £49.99 or $69.99 a year, which is a bit more than I would like to pay. I think I'll continue in free mode a bit longer.

Let's Meditate: Sleep & Guided Meditation

By: Heal Me Team | Size: 4.5 MB | Android: 4.4 and up

Let's Meditate is a very simple app that offers guided meditations for free. Over 30 are available and all are listed on the home screen. None come with the app and you tap the download link next to a meditation and after a few seconds, it can be played.

The meditations cover a wide range of topics and as the title of the app says, many are aimed at improving your sleep. Seven in fact. The others cover Study Meditation, Overcome Depression, Morning Meditation, Healing, Gratitude, Confidence, Deep Relaxation and many more. The shortest is 2 minutes and the longest is 42 minutes, so you can always find one to fit whatever free time you have for meditation.

There are like buttons so you can mark your favorites, and downloaded meditations are shown first, so it is easy to return to one you have used before. It does not track progress or provide courses and it is up to you what you do and when you do it, although there is a reminder feature.

The app is completely free, but there is a message from the developer saying that it is a struggle to keep it free and a donation would help. If you want to help with the costs, you can choose to pay from as little as £5.

Let's Meditate is a simple app and it cannot match Headspace on content, but for a free app, it might be all you need to begin with meditation and mindfulness.