if you're thinking about getting into mindfulness meditation then you probably
want to do it for free so in this video I'm gonna give you the three best apps
to get your mindfulness practice started hey this is Chris from the rewired soul
but we talked about the problem but focus on the solution and this is
meditation made simple
my first pick and top pick is the mindful life project this is the very
first mindfulness app that I was introduced to and it's kind of funny
because after using it for a little while I realize that this is an app that
was actually made for children but hey it worked and it introduced me to
mindfulness from my phone if you're a parent out there the coolest thing about
this app because it's made for children is that you can easily get your kids
involved in it with you they're doing more and more research out there that
shows that introducing mindfulness meditation to children helps in a slew
of different ways I started practicing with my son when he was about 6 or 7
years old and this is really cool because ever
since he's been practicing not only does it motivate me to practice more but he's
actually excited about it but I've seen clear changes in the way he acts and
reacts to different situations he's doing a lot better in school because he
can focus his emotional regulation is a lot better too he knows how to pause and
really check in with himself so there's a lot less freak-outs
so he's been practicing with me for about a year now he's about eight and a
half now and the changes that I've seen are amazing but like I said this isn't
hat made for a younger crowd but you can definitely benefit from it so with this
app one of my favorite things is that it has pretty much every single practice
that you would ever want to try out they have mindful breathing they have mindful
listening they have mindful walking they have a body scan pretty much anything
that you could want to try out with mindfulness they have it in this app and
it's absolutely free one thing is is that this app acts
pairs with SoundCloud SoundCloud is another free app where a lot of people
usually upload music but with this one they use it to record mindfulness
meditation all the instructors are very cool they have very soothing voice and
nice to listen to and the other cool thing about this app too is that you get
a nice variety of time so what I mean when I say that is that some of them
might be 3 or 4 minutes some of them might be closer to 10 minutes so
depending on how much time you have to squeeze in a practice you just pop in
your earbuds and do your thing and here's a bonus about the mindful life
project app so the mindful life project is actually an organization from
Northern California and what they do is is that they bring mindfulness lessons
into a bunch of different schools and what this organization did was they they
actually made soundtracks for mindfulness and you can kind of think of
it as like Kidz Bop but it's not done by kids it's done by the teachers and they
take a lot of new relevant songs but they incorporate mindfulness into all of
the lyrics number two on my list of free apps for mindfulness is headspace I
absolutely love headspace and it was one of the first ones I've been introduced
to headspace is probably the app that you've heard of this is the app where
they put a lot of marketing money behind it I think they do commercials I know
that they have ads that are on my subways or buses and all these other
things but it's actually a really good app I've seen some of the advertisements
and I don't necessarily think that they really tell you what mindfulness is but
the app is actually really good now I will say this headspace app is a paid
app but they give you ten free lessons and if you're cheap like me I'll give
you a little tip you can reuse those ten lessons all you want I love love
love the headspace app for one very particular reason as you're going
through it they break it down and they do little kind of fun animated cartoons
but if you're just getting introduced to mindfulness these cartoons kind of
explain what mindfulness is why you're even doing it how it helps you and
whether you struggle with mental illness addiction or you're just somebody who's
looking to have a better life when it comes to your own personal mental health
they explain it in an incredible way I'm always trying to explain how mindfulness
helps two people and sometimes I wonder if I'm connecting with them but
headspace does a magnificent job when it comes to that so just by going through
their their first 10 lessons it's 10 minutes a day for 10 days and by the
time you get through it you'll fully understand why you need mindfulness in
your life if you're gonna pay for the subscription or not that's up to you
but there is no way that you'll go through those 10 days and not see how
beneficial it is to your actual mental health I know this video is about free
apps but I must say headspace ended up giving me a 30-day free trial and I
cannot tell you how beneficial it was if I had some more money I can actually pay
for a subscription I would definitely do headspace so if you are interested in
having me do a review about the full paid for version of headspace leave a
comment below I'll check it out a little bit more in depth and I'll do a whole
video on how the paid subscription actually works number three on my list
is calm and let me tell you something about the call knob this app if nothing
else has saved my butt on countless occasions the reason that is is because
I suffer from what's called a generalized anxiety disorder which means
that my anxiety doesn't even really need to be triggered so a lot of the times
when anxiety comes up it's triggered by a thought or it's triggered by a
situation or whatever the case is I have the type of anxiety where I could just
be chilling everything's fine and it just hits me and if you have generalized
anxiety then you probably realize it doesn't
happen at opportune moments so one of the best parts about the comm HAP is
that they have a little button on there that simply just says breathe you click
that button and what it has is a circle with an animation and it guides you
through breathing in and holding it and breathing out so whenever my anxiety
arises and I have no way of controlling it I turn on that app and stare at that
little circle guide my breathing for a few minutes and I'm telling you it
reduces my anxiety like you would not believe and that is one of the best
features on the comm app the call map is a lot like headspace where they give you
free content and then they also have a paid subscription I will say this though
for the free content comm has a lot more that you can do than the headspace one
rather than just your 10 days of mindfulness with headspace calm actually
gives you a lot more of a variety of what you can do with the free side of it
so without even paying for the subscription you get to go through a
bunch of different practices some of them are very simple timed meditations
some of them are very open-ended where you just kind of have an open awareness
during your meditation some of them are loving-kindness and some might be for
walking or eating they kind of switch them up so just keep an eye out on the
calm app for which new courses are available in there my favorite favorite
favorite thing about the calm a p-- is that for each different kind of practice
is that it gives you different increments of time see I'm the kind of
guy where my life is so busy where my brain tells me Chris you do not have
time to meditate stuff needs to get done but no matter which section you go to
calm has different variations of length of which meditation you want to do so
for example let's say you do a breathing meditation it'll say do you want to do
it for two minutes or five minutes or you can go up to 20 minutes or 25
minutes if you have more time on your hand so depending on your situation and
what you have enough time for they have a meditation specifically that can help
you out when you have a little bit of time or
you have a lot of time and that's probably my favorite feature so far on
the comm at one thing I will say is that I have not yet tried the paid version of
the comm out because comm didn't give me a 30-day trial like headspace did so if
you're listening to me calm hooking up with a 30-day trial and I'll do a review
of your app so those are my three favorite free apps for mindfulness and I
highly suggest that you go download some of them if not all of them right now and
just see which one suits you the best but mindfulness is something that you
should really be incorporating into your daily life because it's gonna help
strengthen your mental health and it's also gonna strengthen your prefrontal
cortex with it which is in charge of a lot of different aspects of your life
thanks again for watching if you have any comments be sure to leave them down
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I'm posting new videos I'll see you next time