Mindfulness meditation with apps, gadgets and technology: How to start meditating
Mindfulness meditation is easier than ever to practice with the help of apps, gadgets and technology — includes reviews of the apps Calm, Aware, 1GiantMind, Insight Timer, Welltory and the Muse headband. #quantifiedself
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Why Meditate?
For many years, I had been reading about meditation.
You see, I am an avid reader. In the past years, not so much of books, I confess, as my attention span also seems to be dramatically decreasing as the amount of stimuli increases — but definitely of news articles in all their forms. I am a very cerebral, analytic person (more than I would have liked, as I admittedly end up lacking a bit in much-needed physical activities).
Being interested from a young age in all matters related to altered states of consciousness, self-improvement and life hacks, psychology and religion, health and exercise, I realised again and again that meditation was recurrently referred to in the authors, studies and research I read.
“There MUST be something to it”, I thought.
And the concept of meditation has always seemed fascinating to me. It’s just that throughout my whole life, meditation was only that: something I READ about.
The sheer thought of — pardon the pun — being left out with my thoughts actually scared the heck out of me. My mind is always racing, catching up on things that need to be done and, since I do have a mild social-anxiety, ruminating on past situations, particularly how I behaved in social interactions. How could I be calm and quiet those thoughts, that came more like a torrent or a flood rather than a gentle stream?
Close to my forty years of age and after a very rough patch — which involved, among other things, a very toxic work environment, a hateful boss, a burn-out and full-blown migraines way more often than it was endurable for me — I finally decided to try out meditating. After all, I needed to do something different, as what I was doing clearly was not working anymore.
“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
Particularly regarding the migraines, which accompany me since I can remember, I read some studies and recommendations that meditating could be helpful. Over the years, I realised that the brain of a migraineur is overly sensitive and hyper-excitable; therefore, any stimuli that for non-migraineurs would be normal for the former could unleash a migraine. More than anything, my reasoning went, could mindfulness meditation help quiet down my brain and bring it to a lower base level, so that it could endure more stimulation without the pain and other side-effects of this terrible condition?
We are lucky that meditation seems to be so “in” and fashionable these days. Big tech companies like Google offer it to their employees, and it made its way to the covers of Time magazine and others.
Unlike previous times — in which it was almost an arcane art, taught from master to neophyte from immemorial times, that some track all the way back to Buddha’s enlightenment under the Bodhi Tree, and even before — , nowadays meditation is readily available. There are literally countless apps available, both for iOS and Android, and even scientific studies comparing them (for kids too!).
DISCLAIMER: I am not commercially affiliated in any way with any of the apps, products or services mentioned here. In other words, I am just a user and this is my honest, non-incentivised review. There are no affiliate links either.
Calm App (Android, iOS)
I decided to start with Calm, one of the most popular ones, and after finishing their introductory “Seven Days of Calm” programme, decided to subscribe for one year, in order to get access to more advanced meditation programs, such as “7 Days of Calming Anxiety”, “21 Days of Calm” and others. Calm also integrates nicely with Google Fit, which for me is a positive aspect, as I am a big fan of the #quantifiedself movement and possibilities.
While it was very useful to get me started with meditation, I soon outgrew Calm. I found the default narrator’s voice, tone and guidance a bit too patronising (“breathe in and out… in and out… in and out…” — I got the idea on the first “in and out”, thank you very much) and overall, there was too much talking for my taste. In the beginning, it made sense (as I said, I was a bit edgy about being left all alone with my thoughts, remember?), but after a while it was just too distracting, as most meditations lead you to a relaxed state and then are almost some sort of lecture about the topic at hand.
Aware App (Android, iOS)
So I started looking for other alternatives, which is how I ended up finding Aware. I really enjoyed the narrator’s voice, accent and guidance, and I still do. Although not as well polished as the Calm app, Aware leads you progressively to longer meditations, and the narrator leaves you space to truly meditate, with no lectures of any kind — just guidance.
I also found that the techniques used and taught in Aware are recommended in other meditation references, such as the wonderful “The Mind Illuminated: A Complete Meditation Guide Integrating Buddhist Wisdom and Brain Science”, by Culadasa, including counting your breaths (up to 10) and being aware (in addition to being mindful). Aware also guides you through body scanning and body relaxation techniques, which I personally find very useful. I got the Pro version and I think it was very much worth it.
Two problems with Aware that I found is the background sounds, which sometimes tend to spike in volume and completely through me off the meditation practice (I ended up disabling it altogether) and the fact that its Google Fit integration is a bit fidgety, a bit of hit-and-miss.
1 Giant Mind App (Android, iOS)
Another app I used on and off was 1 Giant Mind. The narrator is Australian and has a very soothing voice. The progressive meditation steps are unlocked as you proceed through the programme, but not only the app is as well-polished as the Calm or Aware, I ended up losing the record of a few of those meditations, which meant I had to retake the previous step in order to move forward.
What I like about 1 Giant Mind is the fact that it is the only app I tried that teaches you a different meditation technique, one in which you focus on a mantra instead of your breathing. I found that this has come in handy when, for whatever reason, focusing on my breathing wasn’t really working, as my mind was too agitated. It’s one more meditation technique that one should have in his repertoire, I believe, not as the main technique but as an accessory to be used when needed.
Also, it was the only app in this list that provided feedback and advice regarding specific things that one could feel or think about the meditation practice, such as getting sleepy or forgetting the mantra. The explanations were very reassuring for a beginner!
Insight timer (Android, iOS)
As I felt that I was able to meditate for a longer time and without so much guidance, I decided to try another app, the popular Insight Timer.
Although Insight Timer does have a very extensive array of guided meditations, what I liked the most was the simplicity of the Meditation Timer function, and the ability to program certain bell sounds at specific moments. I used it to progressively increase my meditation time one minute per day, and the subtle bell I programmed to sound every five minutes helped not only to refocus on my breath (in case my mind had wandered), but also to have an idea of how long I was meditating for, and a final (different sounding) bell when the time I had programmed was up.
There were two other features that I loved: the first is the fact that even after the time was up, which I knew about because of that final bell, Insight Timer continued keeping track of time, and afterwards allowed me to log not only the meditation time I programmed but the extra time as well — a nice touch. The second, that after the meditation it showed me other people from the community who were “meditating with me”, both from close to where I physically am and in the whole wide world. To be honest, I’m not a fan of social features, but this was just a nice touch, that made me feel more connected to other like-minded people. If the other person allowed, the app would let you send them a message or a “thank you for meditating with me” note.
On the cons for Insight Timer, there is no Google Fit integration, but apparently, you can integrate it with Apple Health.
Muse headband (Android, iOS)
As I mentioned before, I am a big fan of the #quantifiedself movement, and that is how I found out about Muse, the meditation headband, which is what I currently use during my meditation practice.
I have a Muse 2, which has several sensors, including an electroencephalogram (EEG), to measure brain signals in order to give you some sort of objective measurement of your meditation. It also provides you with instant neurofeedback or in their own words: “Muse translates your mental activity into the guiding sounds of weather to help you find focused calm. Busy mind? Stormy weather. Calm mind? Peaceful weather.”
I was very excited with the Muse headband since such technology (EEG, in particular) was only previously available in the medical field and during the first 10–15 sessions, I used the neurofeedback a lot, since this was the main feature that I was looking for. My reasoning is that it doesn’t matter how much I read or be guided through other apps, the only way to confirm my own feelings and really know that I am “in the zone” or, in other words, achieving what meditation should let me achieve, is to have some external feedback.
Muse was helpful for this. Besides the “weather” that sounds depending on how calm you are, Muse features chirping and singing birds when you achieve a calm state for a while. However, to my surprise, after a while, all this feedback became too much of a distraction. The weather feature was too noisy most of the time, even though I was in a calm state. Also, I was getting anxious to hear the birds sing and once they did, I got so excited that I was immediately “zoned out”.
Also, particularly after reading “The Mind Illuminated: A Complete Meditation Guide Integrating Buddhist Wisdom and Brain Science”, by Culadasa, I found that using headphones during the meditation session with Muse was only effective for reaching mindfulness, but not awareness. In a way, keeping the headphones had the effect of keeping me in some sort of “meditation bubble”, which is not exactly what I want. Over time, I want to be able to meditate in other surroundings and not to be dependent on certain gadgets and technologies to meditate.
So after that adaptation and validation phase, I have been using the Muse meditation headband not with headphones, but with a connected Bluetooth speaker. The only sounds I have set up is the background noise (beach noises is my favourite), the alerts (for when the headband gets disconnected or the signal quality drops, and believe me, that happens more often than not and although annoying, it’s not really disruptive of the experience) and a very low, almost imperceptible, feedback with the birds.
The app is pretty well-polished and sufficient for my needs, but there are two aspects I wish they would improve upon: the possibility of continuing with the meditation session even after the programmed time elapses, just like Insight Timer does, instead of abruptly finishing the session; and some sort of integration with Google Fit.
Welltory App (Android, iOS)
My final addition to the list was Welltory. It’s an app that has two main features: the possibility of checking your Heart Rate Variability or HRV (and, therefore, offer you an objective measurement of your stress and energy levels) with your mobile phone camera; and integrating all sorts of data collection sources (from apps, devices, in addition to Google Fit and Apple Health) into one interface, in order to identify correlations between different things.
I had previous experience with HRV through EliteHRV and my Polar H7 Bluetooth heart rate monitor, although at the time I used it it was more for identifying the best days to practice physical activities. According to the EliteHRV website:
HRV is the best non-invasive measure of the Autonomic Nervous System, the main controller of health and performance functions.
And according to Welltory:
Heart rate variability (which is NOT your heart rate) is a method that has been used in healthcare and professional sports for decades. It is also featured in 20,000+ research papers on PubMed.
The problem with the combo EliteHRV and Polar H7, I found, is just the hassle of having to put the heart rate monitor strap every time, particularly during winter. Welltory allows you to measure your HRV using only your smartphone camera through a technology called PPG/photoplethysmography (basically using a bright light to track the transparency levels of blood vessels, which change as the heart beats and blood flows in and out of blood vessels), which is much more convenient.
Moreover, Welltory allows you to plot in a graph all sort of other factors (such as stress levels, sleep time, meditation time, calorie consumption, etc) and to analyse them in relation to other factors. The idea is that you are able to correlate certain things with others (for instance, sleeping too little or too much increases your stress levels). However, a lot of these integrations depend on subscribing to a Pro plan.
The interface of Welltory is very nice and clean, both on the smartphone and on the web (yes, there is a nice web interface available!) and the developers seem to be quite responsive, at least for subscribers — I opted for the annual plan. I am still collecting enough data from other sources to be able to really analyse it and try to find less-than-obvious correlations between what I do and how my body reacts.
Where I Am & My Conclusion So Far…
Meditation has now been established as part of my routine.
I meditate every morning: usually after I’ve had my cup of coffee (and not in such a nice surrounding as the one above!). I found that the coffee helps me being alert and not feeling drowsy or sleepy. I usually meditate from 35–75 minutes, depending on my availability. The Muse headband indicates that I am calm anywhere from 55 to 78% of the time.
Sometimes, when I have time, I meditate in the late afternoon, after work or during the weekends. I clearly notice that in those circumstances, my meditation practice is always harder, my mind wanders a lot more than in the morning, probably ruminating all of the things that went through my day. The Muse headband indicates that I am calm anywhere from 40 to 60% of the time.
Through Welltory and HRV analysis, I have noticed clear effects of mindfulness meditation, of breathing techniques and of yoga practice, which all reduce my stress levels — sometimes quite a lot!
The million dollar question: has meditation changed my life?
Yes. It has.
I don’t feel any closer to being a superhero, though.
There are no dramatic effects, but plenty of subtle ones: I am calmer, more balanced, able to react less harshly in stressful situations.
I am more aware of my needs and of who I am.
It’s also a much-needed way to make the hectic world we live in slow down a bit.
Although sometimes my mind just naturally wanders on and off, although it’s not always easy or pleasurable, I really enjoy those quiet moments that I have decided to dedicate to myself.
I am grateful for every little mindful moment that I can have, as quick as that might be before my monkey-mind wanders off again.
To finish the moment, to find the journey’s end in every step of the road, to live the greatest number of good hours, is wisdom. — Ralph Waldo Emerson
That’s all meditation is about.
