Out of all of the meditation and mindfulness apps out there, I highly recommend Insight Timer (not a sponsor). I recommend it for a few reasons: you get a lot for free, variety, professional teachers, and if you feel like paying, the premium courses are powerful. Let's unpack these reasons a little.
You get a lot for free
Many similar apps only give you a small taste. They give you maybe five guided meditation sessions or something like that, and then if you want more you have to pay. Insight Timer gives you 35,000 free meditations. As they say right in the app, "the largest free library on earth." There's all kinds of ways to filter through them too. There's ones for beginners, trending ones, popular, or you can view them by their benefits, or length. Do you want a guided session for recovery & healing? Tap that category. Sleep? No problem. Performance? Yep... and so on. They've also got a large library of meditations and other content for kids. You've also got relaxing music, sleep sounds, what they call "Talks" (interviews, talks, ideas about a wide range of topics). Of course, they've got a very nice regular timer too with all kinds of settings and sounds. Finally, it tracks your activity and you can connect with others, and see who else around the world is doing the same guided meditation at the same time you are. All for free.
Variety
Well, I just pretty much summed up the variety point above as I talked about everything you get for free. But, I'll go a little deeper. Just in their free beginners kit alone they currently have guided sessions for learning to meditate, anxiety, stress, sleep, work, relationships, self-esteem, and sessions for mornings. If you go into a particular more advanced category, let's say performance, you've currently got over 2,000 guided sessions just on that topic alone. In addition to everything I already mentioned they've got a "Daily" section. Every day there is a new mindfulness practice to listen to. Every single day! Finally, it's not just all one or two voices/teachers. Which brings me to my next point.
Professional Teachers
I'll be honest I do not know how "professional" or experienced all of the teachers are. But, many do appear to have PhD's, some type of extensive training, or have been doing this kind of stuff for many, many years. And, there are a lot of them. With some apps you have the same person talking to you in every session. Which is, OK. But, with Insight Timer you get so many different perspectives. If you don't care for one perspective, there are plenty of others to choose from. Plus, they are all rated out of five stars. By looking at the rating and comments, you know even before you begin if the session might be good or not. And, I didn't list this as a reason originally, but the audio quality is great. You would think with all kinds of different teachers all recording with different equipment, that maybe some wouldn't sound professional. But, all the ones I've tried do.
Powerful Premium Content
Finally, if you can afford it, currently $60 a year, I recommend the premium subscription. Again, you get so much for free that you almost don't need it. But, first, paying helps support the teachers who are taking the time to make all of the amazing content. Also, by paying you unlock "Courses." There is a dedicated section with currently 200 courses you can take. Plus, courses scattered throughout the guided, music, kids, and other sections unlock as well. From what I've seen so far most are 10 day courses (some 30 days), and each lesson is just about 10 minutes a day. And again, these are from professional teachers. You've got courses on anxiety, obsessive thinking, creating a morning ritual, sleep, relationships, reprogramming your brain for happiness, workplace related courses, self-acceptance, and the list goes on and on and on.
I can't say enough good things about it. Like I said, you get so much for free there's no reason to not try it. Also, I thought it used to only be an app for your phone, but now it looks like much of their content can be streamed right from their website (for free): https://insighttimer.com/
