Keep Calm And Breathe: The Best Self-Care And Mindfulness Apps Out Right Now

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Endel

Endel is one of my personal favorite soundscape and meditation apps. I use it every day whether working on my computer, relaxing or going to sleep.

Endel is a cross-platform audio ecosystem. It creates personalized, sound-based, adaptive environments that help people focus and relax. Endel has four main modes currently but is ever-evolving – Relax, Focus, On-the-go, and Sleep. Endel’s core algorithm is based on circadian rhythms, pentatonic scale, and sound masking. The sounds adapt to different inputs – time of day, weather heart rate, and location – offering a truly personalized experience unlike any other. The app is available on laptops and phones. 

Sanity & Self

Sanity & Self is a unique self-care app for women. Manage your anxiety, reduce stress, get better sleep, heal heartbreak, learn coping mechanisms, get advice from professionals in their fields, and gain self-love! S&S provides loads of content and guided audio sessions and no topic is off-limits – Loneliness, Sex & Intimacy, Self-confidence, Give less F*cks, sex, and the single girl, Maintaining mental health, trauma, dealing with toxic relationships, stress at work, impostor syndrome, anxiety, and sleep as well as yoga and meditation among many things. The app also includes personalized self-care recommendations with their new self-discovery journal and mood tracker.     

Calm

Calm is a guided meditation app to help reduce stress and enhance well-being. It is almost one of the most popular apps for meditation and mindfulness used, The 7-step program teaches you how to meditate, with adjustable nature scenes and relaxing music tracks. Sessions range from 2 to 30 minutes on the topics of focus, creativity, energy, confidence, sleep, and more. Based on your personal goals it will give you suggestions on guided meditations suited for you.

However, my biggest gripe with this app is that you can barely access anything with subscribing to the whopping $59.99 a year (or $12.99 a month). Given the lack of constant new content on the app and the comparison to other apps I think it’s more suited to using for small can’t sleep sessions. 

Smiling Mind

Smiling Mind is a meditation app aimed at young people. It was developed by a team of psychologists and uses mindfulness to boost calmness, contentment, and clarity. Mindfulness meditation has been shown to help manage stress, resilience, anxiety, depression, and improve general health and well-being. The biggest strength of this app is that it caters to younger people and is far more relatable to their generation than the other apps around. 

Headspace

Meditation has been shown to help people stress less, focus more, and even sleep better. Headspace is meditation made “simple”. The app aims to teach you the life-changing skills of meditation and mindfulness in just a few minutes a day. Headspace is primarily a meditation app, providing mediation for work, sleep, stress, and well-being.

If you are currently unemployed due to COVID, you can get the app for FREE! It’s a very modern and sleek app however quite a pricey one. You can also access original sleepcasts and relaxing sounds to help you unwind at bedtime.

Aura

This meditation app is for everybody, and for your daily wellness. It prompts you to meditate for just 5 minutes per day to reduce stress, improve focus, sleep better, relax faster, breathe easier, and more. The app contains courses on self-love, wellness as well as meditations on topics like forgiveness, time pressure, panic attacks, procrastination, productivity, anxiety, relationships managing stress, and many more.

Aura also provides a full sleep program that includes sleep stories, sleep sounds, and sleep meditations. Again, not all content is free and subscriptions are $15.49 a month. But I must say this is a great app with real practical help and support as well as great mediation and sleep integration. 

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Youper

Youper sets itself apart from other wellness apps referring to itself as an Emotional Health Assistant. Created by a team of doctors, scientists, and engineers, Youper uses artificial intelligence (AI) to personalize various therapy and mindfulness techniques to fit your needs. It incorporates strategies from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Mindfulness, and other approaches.

Youper is literally like having someone there 24/7 to talk to when you need it most. You can have quick conversations that can change your day and outlook and Youper will send you conversation check-ins to see how you are feeling. The app also has guided mindfulness practices, sleep sounds, a journal, mood tracker, a personality test and offers insights into anxiety, depression, and the symptoms.

This app is super awesome and I think to a lot of those out there who find it hard to reach out,  this app is designed for exactly that. Someone to listen when you need them.

Reflectly: Self-care journal

Reflectly is an intelligent journal and your new mental health companion. Reflectly helps you structure and reflect upon your daily thoughts, problems, and issues.

There are limited things you can do with the free version and there is a large scale of subscription prices available but it’s no cheap application. Another reason why it is so important to try out these kinds of apps before committing to subscriptions only to discover the full content isn’t what you expected or wanted.

Reflectly uses positive psychology, mindfulness and cognitive behavioral therapy to make you thrive in life and to give you the personal tools and mindset to overcome negative thoughts and build a habit of positivity through a journal into your life. This app enables you to deal with negative thoughts, make positivity louder, and to teach you about the science of well-being. This is a very cool app but its biggest flaw is the pricing.

MyLife Meditation

MyLife (formerly known as Stop, Breathe & Think) is a meditation and mindfulness app that helps you find your quiet place. It allows you to check-in with how you’re feeling and recommends short guided meditations and mindfulness activities, tuned to your emotions. It caters for all age groups – kids, teens, and adults.

MyLife contains various meditations and course such as morning meditation, slaying your stress, mindful breathing, anxiety, improving sleep, managing depression, improving focus, mindfulness for your work commute, mindfulness techniques for college Life as well as meditation for kids, teens and tweens.

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