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Meditation Apps for Mindfulness
Meditation apps aren’t a necessary component to your practice, but they can help you on your spiritual journey. Here are 10 apps that can help to lay the foundation for a regular meditation practice and help improve your sleep, manage stress, and cultivate a better relationship with yourself.
Are you looking for a meditation app to begin or enhance your practice? Developing a regular meditation practice is an ongoing process. While we know the benefits of regular meditation through what it can do for our health, emotions, sense of self, and by extension our relationships, it can often be difficult to find the motivation, time, or simply the reminder to sit.
Luckily, there are a plethora of meditation apps available to help develop and curate your mindfulness practice. In fact, if you have looked at what types of meditation apps are available, you may have been overwhelmed by the sheer number of options. These apps have seen a rise in popularity in recent years, and The New York Times reported that the demand surged in 2020 due to the global pandemic, with more people reaching to meditation and mindfulness in order to cope with change and grief.
Here are 10 apps — both secular and nonsecular — that might help communicate some dharma, support your practice, and — ultimately — lay the foundation for your own regular practice, with or without an app.
10 Meditation Apps for Mindfulness
1) Headspace
Price: 7-day free tiral, $69.99/year, or $12.99/month
Headspace is one of the most popular meditation, mindfulness, and sleep apps available. Founded with the missions to improve the health and happiness of the world the app has an extensive library of guided meditations for a variety of topics for those who may have many different goals from their practice.
2) Liberate
Price: 7 Day free trial, $71.99/year,
or $9.99/month
Availability: iPhone, Android
Liberate meditation aims to support the Black, Indigenous, and People of Color community. The free meditation app features dharma talks and guided meditations by Buddhist teachers of color, like Ruth King, Gina Sharpe, and Mushim Patricia Ikeda.
3) Insight Timer
Price: Free access, $60/year for MemberPlus to unlock courses and premium features
Availability: iPhone, Android, Web
Insight Timer offers a meditation timer, a library of Buddhist talks, courses, and a large discussion forum. The app boasts thousands of talks by hundreds of teachers from various spiritual traditions — including many prominent Buddhist teachers such as Jack Kornfield and Tara Brach.
4) Ten Percent Happier Meditation
Price: 7-day free trial, $124.99/year
Ten Percent Happier Meditation allows you to meditate with Emmy-winning journalist Dan Harris alongside other teachers. The app aims to help you build a regular meditation habit, offering a personalized plan for your goals. 350+ guided meditations, with the option to download meditations on the go.
5) Balance: Meditation and Sleep
Price: 1-year free trial, $11.99/month, $69.99/year
Balance offers a personalized meditation plan that works to deepen nine distinct skills including breath focus, loving-kindness, labeling, and awareness. Meditations, voiced by Ofosu Jones-Quarterly and Leah Santa Cruz, are offered in 10-day plans and as single meditations for specific needs.
6) Plum Village
Price: Free
Plum Village’s free app provides access to a vast library of digital content from Plum Village in France, and other practice centers in the tradition of the late Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh. Plum Village calls their app a “monastery for your pocket.” With a number of practices and talks on a variety of subjects, with offerings in English, French, Spanish, and Italian.
7) Imagine Clarity
Price: Free access, $82.99/year, $14.99/month to unlock subscriber content
Imagine Clarity is an online meditation course by famed Buddhist monk Matthieu Ricard, with more than 100 video and audio tutorials in English and French, photography by Matthieu Ricard, and daily content. For unlimited access, users pay for a subscription. The app also has a social justice component: some proceeds go towards Ricard’s humanitarian organization, Karuna-Shechen, which provided immediate and ongoing on-the-ground relief to over 200,000 villagers following the 2015 earthquake in Nepal.
8) Calm
Price: 7-day free trial, $69.99/year, $14.99/month, $399.99 for lifetime access
Calm is one of the most downloaded apps available for meditation, sleep, and relaxation. The app has access to a variety of guided meditations, stories, masterclasses, music, and timers in order to help users with their practice.
9) Smiling Mind
Price: Free
Smiling Mind is a non-for-profit web and app-based meditation program developed by psychologists and educators to help bring mindfulness into your life. The app offers a number of programs, including meditations curated for children and youth, families, educators, workplace practice, and mindful eating.
10) Lion's Roar
Price: Free access, $29.88/year to unlock subscriber archive
The Lion’s Roar app offers a digital archive of our print magazine. Filled with wisdom from some of the finest writers, thinkers, and teachers of the Buddhist world, the Lion’s Roar app also houses a number of read-along meditations from our archives to enhance your practice.
