Healthy(ish!)
a serious meditation expert – one who learned in a hut, on silent retreats, or in a monastery – might say that we shouldn’t use tech to calm our minds. After all, it’s the bleeping, the flashing, emailing and Instagram-checking that is speeding our brains up to 100mph. And they are right, true meditation is about escaping the constant fizz of modern life.
However, there is one app – Calm – that I feel should be the exception. While I would never suggest that anyone swap their therapist for a download, this one has helped me no end. Launched in 2012, the app has had 60 million downloads to date, over 700,000 five-star user reviews and, right now, it is my daily fix.
What makes Calm different to other apps? For me, it feels like a warm, friendly, very beautiful hug. Learning to meditate, scientists have proven, can alter our brains and lower cortisol levels, so is very useful for keeping us calm at this difficult time. However, it can feel quite an alien experience at first because we aren’t used to being with our own thoughts, and it can feel like jumping off a mental merry-goround while it’s spinning at full force, instead of the calm serene space we imagine meditation to be. Calm, however, with its useful advice, gentle piano music, nature sounds and whimsical selection of stories, is like a best friend, holding you by the hand and leading you into a more peaceful world.
What are the best parts? One of my favourite elements is the Soundscapes, background noises of the dreamiest music combined with nature. Choose from Flying Above The Clouds to Falling Sundrops, Celestial Sunbeams and my best pick, Rain On Leaves. All I have to do is listen to that and I feel comforted and calm.
If you’re feeling anxious, the Daily Calm is a 10-minute daily guided meditation led by narrator Tamara Levitt (Calm’s head of mindfulness), who offers practical advice and useful calming tools on different subjects from Self Trust to Risk, Sleep, Boredom and Compassion. Then there are more in-depth seven-day and 21-day courses on anxiety that offer practical advice and tools to help you manage thoughts and negative emotions.
For those of you struggling to sleep, there is an entire section of sleep-inducing meditations, advice and bedtime stories for grown-ups and there are clever musical meditations called Sleep Rhythms that take you out of your brain into a sleep state. My favourite is Rushing Waves, set to the sound of waves rising and falling on a beach.
And, while it’s important we put our own oxygen masks on before we help others, many of us are in fear of how all this is affecting our children’s anxiety, which is where the Calm Kids section may come in handy. With bedtime stories and meditations for different age groups, it should help to ease anxious little minds. Calm, £28.99; download from the app store @susannahtaylor_