Mindfulness has become a popular concept, one that can help to reduce stress and to improve well-being. The approach can be particularly relevant people in high-stress roles, which is why we’re looking at meditation and mindfulness apps for caregivers.
To put it simply, mindfulness is a state of awareness.
It typically involves being aware of the current moment, including the sensations, thoughts and feelings that are occurring. A key aspect of mindfulness is not judging what you are feeling.
Learning and applying mindfulness techniques can seem difficult at first, which is where these meditation and mindfulness apps come in.
Some of these apps teach you about mindfulness specifically, while others focus on meditation. Meditation is an effective way to practice mindfulness and many people see benefits.
Without further ado, let’s look at the apps that are out there.
Best Meditation and Mindfulness Apps for Caregivers
- Headspace
- Calm
- Reflectly
- NeuroNation Ease
- Stop, Breathe & Think
- The Mindfulness App
- Let’s Meditate
- Mindfulness Coach
Headspace
Headspace is one of the most popular mindfulness apps that you’ll find, perhaps because there is so much advertising for it. It has more than 10 million downloads and 12,000+ reviews.
It’s easy to see why too. The app looks fantastic. It is easy to use and has plenty of options.
What Headspace Offers
Headspace has a comprehensive library. This includes:
- Audio-guided meditations
- Mindfulness exercises
- Courses on stress, anxiety and other areas
The length of your meditation sessions can be varied based on your previous experience. Headspace will also make recommendations based on the goals you input.
Other key aspects of the app include:
- A reminder for meditation (which is set ‘on’ by default)
- Mindful Moments (notifications that offer ‘Headspace wisdom’)
- Group meditation
- Themed courses for a variety of topics
- Bedtime exercises
- Sleep sounds
- New daily meditations
The Price
There are two ways to pay for Headspace. If you pay annually, Headspace Plus costs $139.99. This breaks down to $11.67 per month.
The fee is $18.99 if you pay month-to-month instead.
Both options give you a free trial, so you have a chance to check out all of the medications. But…
- You need to provide your credit card details to access the trial
- You will automatically be billed at the full price unless you cancel
- If you upgrade before the automatic renewal, you lose the rest of your free days
Headspace Reviews
Reviews for Headspace itself tend to be positive – when the app actually works.
One problem is that there are glitches, with the app often not behaving as it should. The number of complaints about problems is surprisingly high when you consider how much Headspace charges.
Billing seems to be an issue too. Many customers struggle to get the automatic billing to stop
Personal Thoughts
If you’re able/willing to pay for Headspace, then the app is probably amazing. There is a lot of content and everything is very well put together.
I have no doubt that the app really does help people to meditate and become more mindful.
But, Headspace is seriously expensive.
There’s also very little that you can do on the free version. The main aspect is simply a free course for medication basics. This contains 10 sessions, which can be 3 minutes or 5 minutes long each.
You can also try 3 free sessions of Everyday Headspace
But, that’s pretty much it. The other features of the app are all locked unless you become a paid member.
As pretty as the app is, it simply doesn’t seem worth the price. You can find similar lessons and techniques on free apps and YouTube.
The main advantage of Headspace is simply that everything is all in one place and is well presented. That might be enough if the app was cheap. But, it’s hard to justify $139.99 a year or $18.99 per month.
Calm
Calm is another popular choice. It currently gets better ratings than Headspace, averaging 4.4 stars across 185,000 reviews (Headspace averages 3.8 stars).
The app looks very professional. Some aspects are similar to Headspace, but there are clear differences in styles and features too.
What Calm Offers
Key features of Calm include the following:
- A Daily Calm, which focuses around a specific theme each day
- Sleep Stories, with new ones being added weekly
- Music tracks that aim to help with sleep, relaxation and sleep
- Masterclasses to help teach specific approaches for improving well-being
- A Mood Check-In feature
- Breathing exercises
- Specific features for kids
The inclusion of features for kids is a nice touch. While this aspect won’t be relevant to everyone, it could be perfect for some situations
The Price
Calm offers a 7-day free trial, after which it costs $84.99 per year.
This time there aren’t any other payment options, so you can’t pay month-to-month.
Calm Reviews
Reviews for Calm tend to be very positive, especially from paid users. Many people mention that the app is worth the high initial price, which is always encouraging.
There are some negative reviews about the performance of the app, but not many. The biggest complaint is simply the price. That’s not too surprising. It is a pricey app.
Personal Thoughts
Once again, most of the features from Calm are targeted at paid users. Free users do get access to a little more with Calm though – enough to make the app worth checking out.
For example, I liked the Blue Gold sleep story from Stephen Fry.
Of the two services, I prefer Calm to Headspace. Calm seems to offer a large number of features. It costs less per year too.
The reviews suggest that the app does end up being worth the price you pay.
The biggest limitation is that you’re forced to pay for a year at a time. You can’t just try out the service for a month or two. $84.99 is a lot to pay for an app, especially when you don’t know whether you will use it consistently or not.
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Reflectly
Reflectly is a little different. This app is designed as an intelligent journal – and it’s actually pretty cool.
What Reflectly Offers
Reflectly focuses on keeping a journal. The journal pages look like this:
Reflectly uses various prompts to make the journaling process fun and engaging, including the ability to select particular emotions and events.
This is the particularly interesting part.
These pieces of information then provide you with the ability to filter journal entries. This should mean that you can easily scroll through all entries with particular tags, which could be a great way to see patterns or look back at particular parts of your life.
Reflectly does also provide stats that allow you to track changes over time based on these tags.
In some ways this is the most powerful feature of the app. Being able to look at data like this can help you to see the potential causes of challenging emotions, along with patterns of behavior.
However, the feature is linked to the paid version of the app.
The Price
While Reflectly does have a free option, the paid Reflectly Premium offers the most features, including the following:
Reflectly Premium costs $49.99 a year.
There is a 7-day free trial. But, you need to provide your credit card details first, then cancel the your subscription before the 7-day trial is up.
Reflectly does also offer a one-time discount if you turn down that initial trial. For me, the screen looked like this:
This pitch suggests that you can pay month-to-month, although paying yearly would work out cheaper.
I actually like this offer. You get to try out the app for a full month without paying much at all. A month is enough time to get a good sense of what the app offers and whether it would work for you.
Reflectly Reviews
Reflectly generally gets positive reviews, but many people aren’t happy with the price for what you get.
Some people mention limitations in the app’s features. One common issue is that people want to be able to choose more than one reason for what they feel during the day.
Personal Thoughts
I agree with the reviews for Reflectly. The app is a nice idea and it has some cool features. It could be powerful for people who struggle with journaling.
Still, the app doesn’t offer all that many features for its price.
You’re basically just getting the ability to see stats. If this is the main thing you’re looking for, then an app that focuses on mood could be a better approach.
The app Daylio is one example. The free version is ad-supported and provides basic stats, along with many more things that you can track.
NeuroNation Ease
NeuroNation Ease is similar to Headspace and Calm, with the same focus on meditation and mindfulness. However, this one isn’t nearly as well-known, with around 50,000 downloads and 700 reviews.
Still, NeuroNation Ease does have an appealing visual style (as long as you like hot air balloons).
What NeuroNation Ease Offers
NeuroNation Ease has three main sections: Meditate, Courses and Premium.
When I tried the app, there was just one aspect of the Meditate section, a course called Foundations. This contained 10 short activities that focused on mindfulness.
The next section is Courses. This currently contains 3 items: Foundations, Body Relaxation and Being Present. Body Relaxation and Being Present can only be accessed by Premium members.
Foundations is the same free course from the Meditate section. So, the Meditate section may simply show the active course.
NeuroNation Ease has a note at the bottom that says “New courses will be coming soon!”. Still, for the moment, there are just 3 courses, which isn’t that great.
The Mini-Exercises section contains 3 items too: Three-Fold Ease, Breathing Calmly and Relaxation. These are tagged as #short, but the actual duration isn’t provided.
Finally, there are 3 Explainer videos. These are cute and are all free.
The catch is that the videos are all very short (the longest is around 2 minutes). They are also very basic. For the most part, the videos are just simple ways to explain the concepts behind the app, like mindfulness.
The Price
NeuroNation Ease offers two ways to pay – quarterly or yearly.
The approach is slightly silly. You pay $45.99 for a quarter or $10 more for an entire year. But, it looks like the yearly price is normally $119.98, which would make this a very expensive app.
NeuroNation Ease Reviews
The distribution of reviews for the app looks like this.
The balance of reviews isn’t too bad, suggesting that most people like the app.
But, there are hardly any written reviews for the app, so it’s hard to know how it really compares. The most useful reviews are the ones below.
It isn’t clear whether these reviewers were using the paid version or the free one. They also highlight completely opposite perspectives, so they don’t tell us much about the app itself at all.
The rest of the written reviews say things like “great app”, which isn’t helpful either.
Personal Thoughts
NeuroNation Ease does provide access to a full course for free. This provides basic information about mindfulness.
The course might be too basic for some. But, it could be perfect if you have no experience with mindfulness.
But, that’s pretty much it. Everything else with the app is locked unless you pay for it.
There’s another serious problem too – the app doesn’t offer much, not even on the paid version. There are only a handful of courses and a similar amount of mini-exercises.
Personally, the app doesn’t feel like it is worth the price. The creators have made it look appealing, but the content just doesn’t seem to be there.
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Stop, Breathe & Think: Meditation & Mindfulness
Here’s a popular choice: Stop, Breathe & Think: Meditation & Mindfulness (the name, however, is a mouthful).
This time the app as 4.7 stars across 15,000 reviews. 4.7 stars is impressive for any app.
Stop, Breathe & Think has the same high-quality feel that is present in the other apps we’ve looked at.
What Stop, Breathe & Think Offers
The app starts off with a morning check-in, which asks about how you feel physically, mentally and emotionally. The check-in can be skipped, but the information is used to suggest activities.
This is a useful feature, as the app does contain quite a lot of different activities (you can browse them individually too).
Activities are grouped into topics to make them easier to find. Examples include:
- Get Started
- Sleepy Time for Kids
- Sleep Well
- Slay Your Stress
- Three Minutes
- Mindful Parents
- Strengthen Resilience
- Heal and Forgive
- Meditaciones en Español
While there aren’t any caregiving-specific activities, some of the themes could be perfect for caregivers (like resilience).
Most of the sections have a combination of free and paid content, like the example below for resilience.
Each area tends to offer multiple sessions. For example, the section ‘Commonality of Suffering’ has a free 6-minute session in English, a free 7-minute session in Spanish and a paid 7-minute session in English.
The number of free items varies by topic and subtopic.
Even so, Stop, Breathe & Think offers much more free content than most other paid apps.
There is also a meditation timer and a breathing timer. These can be used on the free plan, but there are more options if you’re using the paid plan.
The Price
Stop, Breathe & Think offers 3 payment options:
- Month-to-month: $16.99/month
- Yearly: $99.99 (calculates to $8.33/month)
- Lifetime: $439.99
So, the app is expensive (although it’s still cheaper than Headspace). Still, it has a lot of content to offer.
Stop, Breathe & Think Reviews
Stop, Breathe & Think has an average of 4.7 stars in Google Play, so it’s no surprise that the reviews tend to be positive.
The biggest complaints seem to come from when the company switched payment models to rely on subscriptions. But, even then, customer service appears responsive and willing to resolve issues that people experience.
There were also a few people complaining that Stop, Breathe & Think charges for some meditations, especially the longer ones.
Such complaints feel unreasonable. Stop, Breathe & Think provides a huge amount of free content, more than most competing apps.
Personal Thoughts
I found Stop, Breathe & Think more appealing than most of the other apps. For one thing, you can choose to create an account or just browse the app.
Other apps forced me to sign up with my email address before I could even see what the app had to offer (which put me on their email list, sigh). It’s nice to see an app that does things differently.
The app doesn’t spam you with upgrading either. You can easily upgrade to Premium under the More tab or by tapping on the lock icon. But, that’s it. Stop, Breathe & Think gives you the space to make the decision on your own.
There are some downsides. For example, Stop, Breathe & Think doesn’t have courses like some of the other plans. The app isn’t quite as pretty either.
Even so, the app is perfect if you want something free.
The Mindfulness App
With an average of 4.3 stars, The Mindfulness App isn’t as popular as some of the other apps on this list, but many people do still seem to enjoy it.
The app opens with a ‘get started’ section. This provides a short welcome and then 5 individual meditations.
What The Mindfulness App Offers
The full version of the app has a variety of features including:
- 250+ guided meditations
- Monthly programs
- Themed mindfulness courses, with topics like stress, love and focus.
There is a surprising number of distinct sections on the main page of the app. These include:
- Timed sessions (guided, silent and personalized)
- Featured content (free and new)
- Programs (meditations and courses)
- Free
- Foundational
- Stress relief
- Sleep
- Emotions
- Body
- Focus
- Relationships
- Travel meditations
- Mindfulness in school
The free section places all of the free content in one place, which is a nice touch. It includes 9 meditations, ranging from 2 minutes to 11 minutes.
There is also a single course called Basics of Mindfulness. This takes 1 hour and 21 minutes in total and is broken down into 7 sessions.
It looks like most, if not all, of the timed meditations are free as well, regardless of whether they are guided or not.
The Price
The Mindfulness App states that you get 31 days as a free trial and then $6.67 per month.
While membership does average out to $6.67 per month, that’s not what you’re paying. Instead, The Mindfulness App charges you a yearly fee of $79.99 as soon as the 31-day trial ends (unless you cancel).
The Mindfulness App Reviews
There are many positive reviews of the app, with users enjoying the meditations and what the app offers for the price.
However, some reviewers mentioned that there are bugs in the app, including issues with adding items to favorites and the audio sometimes cutting out when the screen is off.
I also saw some reviewers mention that the voices aren’t always appealing.
A response from the company suggests that there is more variation in the paid version of the app, but honestly, that isn’t encouraging. If the company can’t get the free version right, why would you want to spend almost $80 a year on the paid app.
Personal Thoughts
I do like the large number of meditations and courses offered on the paid version of the app. It’s also nice that you get a full course on the free version. This gives you the chance to see what a course feels like.
The yearly price is similar to some of the other ones on the list, as is this app. I wouldn’t personally pay $80 per year for it, especially as you’re just getting meditations and courses. There isn’t much else to the app.
Still, for caregivers, the free version could be worth trying for the mindfulness course and the free meditations. You can skip the trial entirely and just use the free version of the app.
Let’s Meditate
Let’s Meditate gets 4.8 stars from 44,000 reviews, which should tell you a lot about the app.
This one doesn’t look as pretty as most of the others on this list, nor does it have as many features. But, the app really is free. It isn’t even ad supported.
What Let’s Meditate Offers
Let’s Meditate provides a decent selection of meditations, which range from 2 minutes to 42 minutes in length. Some of them are simple, while others are more complex.
A short description is provided for each meditation, along with information about the length and whether the meditation is voiced by a male or a female.
The meditations can be sorted by length, name, downloaded/non-downloaded, favorited or completed.
Individual meditations need to be downloaded before you can use them. The process for doing so is simple. Downloading has its uses anyway, as this means you can use the meditations offline.
There are no other features of the app. No courses or pretty animations, just a selection of meditations.
The Price
The app is free – and has no ads.
Let’s Meditate Reviews
Most reviews for the app were positive.
In fact, people tended to rate the app at 5 stars even when they did mention issues, such as the selection of voices being limited.
Personal Thoughts
If you’re specifically interested in meditation, then this app is easily your best choice. It has a decent amount of content and doesn’t cost you anything.
If nothing else, the app is a good place to begin. You don’t lose anything by trying it out for a while and deciding you need something more comprehensive.
Mindfulness Coach
Mindfulness Coach is the final app that we’re going to look at. This one was developed by Veterans Affairs.
The app is a little bit different, as it focuses entirely on mindfulness, rather than meditation. It isn’t as video and audio-focused as the other apps on this list.
What Mindfulness Coach Offers
Mindfulness Coach is a comprehensive app that focuses on the idea of mindfulness. This includes theoretical information and also practical steps.
The app is broken down into four areas:
- Mindfulness training
- Practice now
- Track progress
- Build expertise
The app is also broken into levels. For example, Level 1 looks like this:
The Price
Mindfulness Coach is another entirely free app. There are no costs to worry about.
Mindfulness Coach Reviews
Reviews tend to be positive, with many people talking about the fact that the app is free.
There are some negative reviews too, with some users having problems with bugs in the app. Still, there aren’t many complaints about the app’s function, so it seems to work well most of the time.
Personal Thoughts
The app isn’t nearly as engaging most of the other apps, but does contain a lot of information. It’s also a free app that provides the information at your fingertips.
These aspects mean that Mindfulness Coach can be worth trying out. Even if you just learn a few things, the information could make caregiving easier.
Our Top Choice
Let’s Meditate and Mindfulness Coach are the only two entirely free apps – so they will be the best choices for many people.
However, out of the paid apps, Stop, Breathe & Think is the most powerful. The app looks better than the free alternatives and has more functionality too. You don’t need to go with the paid version either, the free option offers a surprising amount of features.
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