You can’t scroll too far on most social media apps without stumbling upon wellness content in one form or another. Whether it’s an influencer in athleisure talking about finding their calm or a celebrity sharing the importance of looking inward, you’ll likely see the word “mindfulness” somewhere in their caption. Exactly what “mindfulness” is and looks like in everyday life, though, can be a bit murky and can vary from person to person. I’ve often wondered how other overworked and overtired moms like me could incorporate mindfulness into our lives without it feeling like just another thing we’re not checking off our to-do list.
Mindfulness, in itself, seemed interesting to me: I wanted to focus more on appreciating my everyday life a bit more, stress a bit less about little things, and generally find more joy in how I spend my time. So I decided to try The Mindfulness App, which aims to make mindfulness simple and accessible through narrated meditations and courses focused on everything from how to meditate to radical self-acceptance. It offers subscribers the chance to develop their meditation skills and figure out how to feel calmer every day—two things I was excited about incorporating into my life.
I did wonder if I could reap the benefits of mindfulness and meditation with four wild kids, a more-than-full-time job, and a whole lot of life to take care of each day. Despite my worries, I downloaded the app and tried it for a month. The Mindfulness App has a built-in beginner guide that eased me into daily meditation, and I was surprised to find that it was way less difficult than I thought to squeeze meditation into my routine. As the days and weeks progressed, I began to look forward to my meditation time and was excited for opportunities to find my Zen during my everyday life. If you’re ready to give meditation a spin but not sure where to start, read on to learn all about my experience with The Mindfulness App.
How The Mindfulness App Works and How I Signed Up
Before starting my journey with The Mindfulness App, I’ll admit I didn’t know much about it. I’d seen ads for it and many other mindfulness and mental wellness apps and could not really tell you enough about any of them to distinguish them from one another.
I assumed that The Mindfulness App included narrated meditations and other calming tools designed to help you destress.
I didn’t realize the personalized program it was capable of creating and what a wide range of meditations were available (over 400 with the premium version).
When I downloaded The Mindfulness App, I wasn’t sure what to expect regarding setup and what information it would need before I could access the content. Luckily, the sign-up process was simple. After asking for my name and experience level with meditation, the app asked if there was anything, in particular, I wanted to work on and gave me the option to click on as many options as I desired. The options included:
- Reduce stress
- Improve focus
- Learn to meditate
- Strengthen relationships
- Improve sleep
- Work with emotions
- Support physical health
- Increase compassion
Since I was brand-new to meditation, I chose “learn to meditate” and added physical health and reduced stress, because who doesn’t want to improve those aspects of their life? I was then prompted to choose a time to remind myself to do a meditation exercise. I selected 8 p.m. since I’m already either tired or stressed (or both) by that time of day. I opted in to push notifications of encouraging messages designed to help me stay mindful, then entered my details and selected my payment plan to complete the registration process.
How Much The Mindfulness App Costs
With a premium membership (which is the only option available) there are two pricing choices: $60 upfront for a one-year membership, or $10 per month. Both options allow for a one-week free trial, but there’s no free version of the app.
I chose the month-to-month membership since I wasn’t sure how much I was going to get from the app and whether or not I would want to stick with it for a whole year.
The membership includes 400-plus meditations covering more than 20 topics, personalized recommendations, and an offline mode for listening without a Wifi or cellular connection. While this may sound overwhelming to navigate, The Mindfulness App offers a one-minute overview of the app and how to use the sessions that pops up when logging in for the first time.
Since I’d chosen to focus on learning to meditate, improving my physical health, and reducing my stress, my personalized recommendations all fell under one of those umbrellas. While many of them don’t change until you listen to them, I appreciate that there was a new daily meditation featured immediately after logging in each day. This daily meditation offering made days I didn’t want to have to think about anything simple and intuitive.
How I Used The Mindfulness App
During the first few days of using The Mindfulness App, I was invited to participate in a series of “getting started” sessions that helped me understand the principles of meditation and practice the skills I’d need to meditate peacefully.
During these beginning meditations, I learned to notice things like how fast and deeply I was breathing and the sensation of sitting or lying where I was.
I also learned that it’s okay for stressful thoughts to enter your brain when you’re trying to meditate and that accepting them and letting them go feels easier and more achievable than trying to prevent them from happening at all. By the end of my session on day five, I felt ready to move on and tackle some of the more “intermediate” meditation offerings.
Exploring what sort of meditation sessions I wanted to try next was easy; I toggled to the “Discover” page to find a search bar and scroll bars for different topics: popular meditations (like “Effortless Sleep with Yoga Nidra”), popular courses (like “Stress-Proof Your Brain”), and popular categories (like emotions, body, and stress relief).
I started with some evening meditations since that’s a time I find it helpful to refocus and destress, and appreciated how many options were available.
Each one is designed to be listened to in the evening, and all seem to focus on unwinding and letting go of the day’s stresses. Most are narrated and include light music or relaxing sounds in addition to or in the background of the narration. While there weren’t any meditations that I flat-out hated, there were a couple I found odd, such as “My Sleepy Fluffy Friend,” a four-minute narration of a cloud telling you how it can spell relaxing words in the sky.
There are various narrators available across the categories and types of meditations. While each had a soothing voice, a few seemed to come right out of my speakers and wrap my shoulders in a warm, comforting hug.
Over the next few weeks, I enjoyed finding my favorite meditations again and again and was delighted to discover features like the ability to sync your Apple Watch to track your heart rate during meditation.
I also really liked having the ability to play with adding background noises to any of the meditations. Some noises included water lapping, wind chimes, and forest noises. I could also adjust the volume until I had the perfect mix of vocal narration and background soundscape.
My favorite narration, one I revisited several times over the month, was “The Countdown Returns,” narrated by Reuben Lowe. I liked playing this track with forest noises in the background right before going to bed. This narration includes a reflection on what went well across the day and then a series of gentle prompts like “notice your thoughts” and “scan the sensations in your body” while the narrator counts backward from 10. It might sound simple, but this meditation helped me relax so well that I fell asleep several times before getting to the end.
I also liked being able to track my meditation time on my profile page.
The meditation tracker on the profile page shows your total meditation time, your average listening duration, the number of sessions you’ve completed, and the number of courses you’ve completed.
You can toggle between the week, the month, the year, and the total to see how your minutes stack up over time. The tracker also shows your “streak” of meditation days and a world map with a note of how many people are meditating using The Mindfulness App in real-time. I found this tracker to be motivating, especially when I had a good streak going, and seeing my mindful minutes stacking up made me feel proud of the time I was giving to myself each day.
Pros and Cons
Based on my experience, I think The Mindfulness App is a great starting point for people who are interested in meditation, though it has some distinct pros and cons.
- Offers a beginner course for people who are new to meditation
- Includes meditations on a variety of topics and in a variety of lengths
- Can add favorites and filter searches
- Very user-friendly
- Lower cost than some similar apps
- More than 400 meditations to choose from (with premium version)
- Simple, cool-colored interface makes opening the app feel like stepping into a mini-relaxation spa in your phone
- Offers a smaller library of meditations than some similar apps, though it is still sizable
- Some meditations are very specific and cannot generally be enjoyed in other settings
- Default subscription is a single charge for the whole year
- Limited meditations in some categories, like options for kids
Final Thoughts
Overall, I felt like this app offers exactly what it says it does—an easy and welcoming introduction to mindfulness. The monthly price point seems reasonable to me. While you can find good meditation narrations for free with other apps and even on YouTube or Spotify, the little extras, like saving favorites, tracking meditation time, and courses offering progressive meditations with a specific focus, make it feel worth the cost.
While The Mindfulness App has not drastically changed my life, it has given me more confidence to meditate. It’s also made me more comfortable taking time to sit, breathe, and let my mind clear for a little while. I feel like it has helped me settle into sleep a bit easier and has given me some tools for when I’m starting to feel stressed or overwhelmed during the day.
If I had a friend looking for an app to help get them started with meditation and mindfulness, I would recommend The Mindfulness App.
I would also recommend it to people on the hunt for high-quality narrated meditations that are easy to search for and filter by topic and length, since that was a real strength of The Mindfulness App.
I enjoyed using this app and look forward to completing some of the courses I’m currently in the middle of. I plan to keep using it, at least for a little while, and I imagine that some of the meditation basics I have learned will benefit me for years to come.