As of today, July 3, 2019, I still have no major stressors. Anxiety has been heightened slightly as I begin thinking about going back to school. All relationships are healthy. I have been working more than normal, so I am working out only once a week now.
My initial impressions of this app is how it is geared more towards younger generations upon first glance. The colors are muted and they have a lot of different cartoon characters on the app that make the animations entertaining. However, they push a membership on you almost all of the time, which is about $95 per year or $12.99 per month.
Headspace gives a brief quiz in the beginning to see how often you have meditated and what you hope to get out of the app. It started me out at five minute sessions everyday for 10 days. At the end of each session, it gives you a grand total of how long you have meditated and what your streak is. It is a very nice feedback strategy because overtime, it helps you realize how much time you sank into practicing. I am curious to see how long mine will be at the end of two weeks!
Before you begin a practice, it gives you a few quotes to read that hint at what the session is going to be about. One thing I’ve enjoyed so far are the daily “lift ups.” I made it so I get two notifications per day to remind me to think positive mentally.
After two weeks of daily meditation with each session lasting approximately five minutes, I can say I meditated for about an hour. For me, this app didn’t help as much as “Calm” did. I found it harder to focus on breathing because the narrarators don’t talk as much, so it is a lot of sitting in silence. There is also no background noise like the “Calm” app incorporated, so I caught myself getting stuck on the noises around me. One thing I really liked about the sessions is that the narrators let you lose focus for a moment which is a nice mental break. It is only for five seconds, but it was a nice exercise to help you regain your focus.
Overall, I would rate this app 7/10. It is really expensive and after finishing the 10 days of basic meditation, there isn’t much for you to interact with. However, I enjoyed the layout of the app and I really liked that it logged the time of meditation for me. It helped me see how much I actually meditated which was a nice perspective. I disliked how much it pushed a subscription and the daily “lift ups” ended up becoming somewhat like spam for me. Along with that, I found no benefit of using the “Sleep” tab on the app. One more app to go!
Brooke Crockett is a third year student at the Ohio State University with an anticipated graduation of May 2020. She is majoring in Strategic Communication and double-minoring in Professional Writing and Nonprofit Studies. She is the current marketing/PR intern for NAMI Greater Toledo.