Learn mindfulness techniques that adapt to you.
The Balance: Meditation App by ‘mental fitness’ startup Elevate Labs is helping to fill the gap between our meditation aspirations and our actions. Launched in 2019, the app seeks to replicate the experience of working with a live meditation coach, with interactive features that tracks your practice, provides reminders and questions your meditation experience, goals, and challenges for the day.
A library with thousands of pieces of audio is also available for you to choose from. The app then compiles all the information and gives you your own meditation, set to the music you choose as it guides you towards mental balance.
After installing Balance, the app walks you through a series of questions designed to tailor a meditation plan to your specific needs or preferences. For example, having trouble focusing? You can choose that as one of your priorities. When that part is done, the app will start with a quick sample meditation.
Users can choose the length of each session (five minutes or 10 minutes, and there’s sometimes a three-minute option) as well as whether you want to hear a male (Ofosu Jones-Quartey) or female (Leah Santa Cruz) voice leading the session.
Depending upon what best suits your goals, comfort levels level, and experience level, Balance is suitable even for a novice meditator.
In addition to its customisable content, the Balance meditation app teaches the benefits of meditation. I learned that “long term, consistent meditation changes the density of grey matter in key areas of the brain”. The app also reminds me that “meditation can improve your working-memory capacity and your attention span”, as well as how it is “natural for your mind to wander during a session” and guides me back to the present moment.
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Featured Photo by Sage Friedman on Unsplash