Best Apps for Meditation and Sleep

By Erin Glassmacher

Meditation is a great tool to decrease stress, improve depression symptoms, and improve sleep. It connects your brain and body to help you be more present in the moment, promoting mindfulness and a balanced state. With numerous health benefits, meditation has become a popular practice for people all around the world. Thankfully, technology has stayed up to date and there are a great number of apps that can help you with meditation. Here are a few that I think are fantastic.

• Headspace: Meditation & Sleep

  • This app offers hundreds of guided meditations that have specific focuses such as managing stress, exercise, focus, and sleep. They also offer 2-3 minute mini-meditations that fit perfectly into a busy schedule. 

• Calm: Sleep & Meditation

  • Calm specializes in sleep and lowering stress. They offer Sleep Stories, sometimes told by celebrity guests (including Harry Styles!), breathing exercise programs, stretching programs, and relaxing music. They also have guided meditations in lengths ranging 3-25 minutes, so you can choose whatever fits your schedule.

• Ten Percent Happier Meditation

  • This is a great app for beginners who are new to meditation. They offer videos that explain the basics of meditation and 500+ other guided meditation with varying themes. 

• The Mindfulness App

  • The Mindfulness App offers guided meditations from world-renowned experts and has a reminder function to alert you throughout the day to set time for mindfulness. 

• Insight Timer-Meditation App

  • Insight Timer is TIME magazine and Women's Health App of the Year Winner, and their features show why. They have advice from mindfulness experts, neuroscientists, psychologists, and professors from Stanford, Harvard, and more! Insight Timer also provides thousands of guided meditations, music tracks, and discussion groups across so many topics!