This is a guest post by our friend Lori. Lori Hill is the president and co-founder of Sister Eden Media. Lori has a YouTube channel that features satirical and how-to videos on taking care of yourself and the planet. She has been meditating on a regular basis for over 3 years. Watch her video Meditation and Mindfulness to learn more!
Insight Timer
Cost: Free
Devices: Android and iOS
This is the app that got – and kept – me meditating. I first fell in love with the bell feature. Before this app, I would just try and mediate for a certain period of time, constantly looking at my watch. With this app, I get to select which bell sound I want to hear (I’m a fan of Dêngzê), how many – if any – bells I want to hear when I begin meditating, and if I want to hear any interval bells. Just hearing the bell sound puts me in a good place to begin meditating.
Some days, I just set the timer and meditate in silence, but most of the time, I meditate to a guided meditation that brings me to another key feature of Insight Timer: their 1,301 (as of this writing) guided meditations. These are rated with stars and written comments. You may browse them all, just focus on featured meditations, or only the ones you have bookmarked. You may also rate meditations once you are finished.
Insight’s guided meditations are extremely diverse and vary in duration and style, some with music and some without. I’ve learned along the way which voices I like and which annoy me. If I don’t know a voice, or like the music (if any is used), or the message within the meditation, I just stop. I haven’t lost any money, just a small bit of time.
Another feature I enjoy is that I can see how many people are meditating worldwide at the same time I am, and I can also see who, local to me, is meditating or just finished meditating. The app also indicates if that person is using a guided meditation and what it is called. I use this feature to find guided meditations I have never heard of before and, if it seems interesting, I’ll try it out right then and there.
This app also enables you to check your stats and track your progress, join discussion groups, and make friends.
Insight Timer was recently upgraded for iPhones and droids and is sleeker and easier to use than when I first started using it. Nonetheless, it maintains its traditional approach to meditation and truly has a worldwide community, which makes this app appealing to me.
Calm
Cost: Free or choose from 3 paid plans of $9.99/month, $39.99/year, or $299.99 for a lifetime
Devices: Android and iOS
I learned about Calm from a friend and decided to try it out because I wanted to see what else was out there. What immediately stood out for me was its free features which includes the sound of waves crashing on a beach, a mountain lake, or rain falling. Once you have the app, you can listen to these sounds all day long, which is what I did when I first downloaded it. I’d listen to the waves of the ocean while working at my desk. Ah… calm!
The free version of Calm comes with a few basic meditations, some of which are great for beginners such as Body Scan and 7 Days of Calm. But if you want to try the other guided meditations, you have to buy a subscription. That was off-putting to me at first since I was so used to the open and free Insight Timer.
The same pleasant, enthusiastic – but not syrupy – female voice (hereinafter referred to as The Voice) is used for all of the guided meditations. So if you don’t like The Voice, well, you are out of luck – and maybe some money. The Voice sounds like a normal human being, but I wonder if she is computer generated because I have yet to find information about The Voice. The web site indicates that the company was co-founded by two men, so The Voice apparently isn’t the person at the helm.
Calm’s guided meditations use the same language and approach to meditation as Insight Timer, but through its branding and The Voice, I find it appealing to the general public. If the thought of meditating seems foreign to someone, The Voice makes it a bit more hipster-trendy and mainstream.
What I don’t like about Calm is that when compared to Insight Timer, it is a more sterile and futuristic approach to meditation that is lacking in community (which I like). While I can listen to their ocean waves all day long, I found the guided meditation Another Good Day by Andrew Reeves on Insight Timer a bit more personalized. His description reads, “A simple mindfulness meditation to start your day. The sound of the sea and the boats were recorded near my home on the east coast of Scotland.”
Now that makes me happy.
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