5 Meditation Apps To Help You Stay Sane Over the Holidays

Table of Content

• GearBrain helps you find, buy and connect any smart device.
• Link your Calm account
• How to meditate at home with help from Alexa and Google Assistant
• Create a Service Account
• unusual things to try with your Google Home speaker
• Ambient sound options
• Think Your Phone Has Been Hacked? Here's What to Do Next
• Meditation Apps To Help You Stay Sane Over the Holidays

It can be used as an alarm for sleep as well and when the alarm goes off for sleep or meditation it will gradually decrease in volume as it softly pulls you back into this realm of consciousness. The method simply means that you inhale for 4 seconds, hold your breath for a count of 7 seconds, then exhale with a ´WHOOoosh´ sound for 8 seconds and repeat. The sounds the machine includes are zen, calming ocean, thunderstorm, white noise, pink noise, and fan noise. If you´d prefer a timer that vibrates at the end of your meditation session then the X-Wlang 3-in-1 timer will work perfectly for you!

IHome´s Zenergy Meditative Light & Sound Therapy Candle is my personal favorite timer for meditation because it adds such a soothing and pleasant ambiance to the environment. It is designed for meditation with customizable sounds and LED lights so you can personalize it. It even has a setting for a breathing meditation in the method that you can choose to listen to with or without a voice to guide you. This can be used as a meditation timer by utilizing the timer cycles for a meditation session. You have the option of setting the sound to play for a 15, 30, or 60-minute cycle.

GearBrain helps you find, buy and connect any smart device.

As for March 16, 2020, Headspace is offering its premium tier, Headspace Plus, free to healthcare professionals in the US public health sector, as they deal with the continued spread of coronavirus. On a similar note, meditation app Balance is offering a free year (worth $50) in the wake of the new coronavirus. The timer is designed where you can switch between hour/min and min/seconds easily.

The timed session is completely silent, though some desktop speakers produce their own static sound. At the end of the session, you will hear some light taps of the gong to gently alert you that time is up followed by three rings of the gong. The session times begin with the end of the beginning gongs and end with the start of the ending gongs. Although Alexa's own voice is used to guide you through the skill's basic menu system, the meditation sessions themselves are narrated by an expert.

Link your Calm account

Also, you will want to consider if you want a physical timer or if you want to use one of the free apps available for your phone. It can be hard to develop your internal silence, though, if you´re external environment is rampant with distracting sounds. Naturally, try and reduce all the sounds that you have control over as much as possible. If there is still too much sound you can look at using earplugs for your meditation practice to help nullify the external sound altogether. I really would've liked this app but every couple of seconds there is a short break in the ambient noise where it loops over and that short break is really distracting.

Her voice is soothing, but we found the moments of silence between each instruction felt slightly too long, occasionally making us wonder if the skill was still working. This Alexa skill offers up a new meditation session every day, varying from three to eight minutes in length. There are over 60 meditation and breathing exercises aimed to help users tackle stress and depression, and to help with focus and falling asleep. The Big Red Rooster´s White Noise Machine is a portable and travel-friendly sound machine that has 6 different soothing sounds to choose from. You can set up the device to run continuously if you use it to sleep.

How to meditate at home with help from Alexa and Google Assistant

These apps are designed to help you take a minute to switch off from your busy life, and because they are interacted with by only your voice, there's no need to look at your phone or tablet. Just sit down, or get into bed, and ask your smart speaker to start the meditation session you want. This highly-rated skill offers meditation sessions of three, four, five, ten and 20 minutes. The shorter sessions focus on breathing and making you aware of how your body feels, while the longer sessions cover a broader spectrum and aim for total relaxation after a hectic day.

To set the duration time I don't like having to scroll around the circle or having to click the plus/minus because it often skips the seconds I'm trying to choose. If I could just tap the time and type it in it would be a lot more convenient. If you are interested in a stand-alone meditation timer, please visit our Meditation Timers category. On opening Calm for Google Assistant, you are asked whether you want to meditate or sleep. Meditation brings up three options for guided sessions, while asking for help getting to sleep gives you three 'sleep stories for grownups' to pick from.

You´ll be able to use this timer for other purposes as well with the 3 different functions in case you need a timer for non-meditation related activities. Each alarm function can function independently or you can have 2 or all 3 alarm functions go off simultaneously. There are many different reasons that you may be looking for the best meditation timer to add to your practice.

Usefully, Alexa will remember if you didn't get to the end of a meditation. When you reopen the app, she will say where you got to and ask if you'd like to continue from there. If not, you can always say no and go back to the top menu. The 6 sounds that are included are Rain, Brook, Thunder, White Noise, Ocean, and Summer Night. As you advance you may actually look to increase your distractions to further train in your concentration, but that will come later. End the ten minute period with chimes or a zen bowl sound.

Others will be simple timers that simply play a soft but audible tone at the end of your meditation session. Insight Timer is "the #1 free app for sleep, anxiety, and stress"—all things you may deal with over the holidays. Listening to guided meditation sessions and talks spearheaded by leading mindfulness and meditation experts, neuroscientists, psychologists, and more.

You will see all your rooms and the devices in them in the Google Home app. Alternatively, you can set up a Cloudflare Tunnel to expose your Home Assistant server to the internet. We recommend the latter method as it’s more secure and much easier to set up. In a world that feels overrun by bad news and constant tragedy, an app like Tell Me Something Good is almost necessary. Meditation and relaxation are two things that are easily forgotten in our busy schedules.

If you find your thoughts being loud and frantic, allow them to be, but focus on the silence in between the thoughts. Creating silence during meditation is just as important to do internally as it is externally. Most of our time is spent around a spectrum of different sounds and if there is nothing happening we tend to talk away to ourselves in our own heads. Some people also prefer meditating with a kneeling seiza bench or need a meditation chair with back support for more intense back issues. These items will help reduce any pain distractions during your meditation.

Now it stays on, potentially all day if you don't notice. More specifically, if you press the "home" key after the meditation ends, silent mode stays on. If you press the "back" key after the meditation ends , silent mode turns off. A timer help you to focus on meditation for a specific period every day. It helps to increase your will power that could benefit you more in life.