App of the week: Calm

Welcome back to our weekly spotlight on helpful apps. We focus on a variety of products that are useful for work, personal use, or both, providing our own thoughts on the apps and what you can do with them. This week we learn to relax with meditation exercises from Calm.

An intro to calm
Meditation is one of the best ways to melt away the stress in your life. Calm puts guided meditation and soothing soundscapes into one handy app so you can practise mindfulness on the go.

Calm features a variety of meditation programmes, from a seven-day basic mindfulness intro to a 21-day course. It also offers guided and unguided meditations designed to fit into busy lifestyles. Each programme features deeply relaxing music and nature sounds to help clear your mind and get rid of the negative effects of stress.

Our review
The Calm app is available on iOS and Android phones and tablets, as well as through an online portal, so you can access meditations practically anywhere – perfect for anyone who needs to relax on the train journey home or likes a bit of help drifting off to sleep during a business trip.

I followed the “seven days of sleep” programme and found that it actually did help me feel more rested by the end of the week. And the deep concentration guided meditation is perfect for those days at work when I really need to focus on getting an article finished; I found taking just two minutes out of my day to run through this session before starting on an important piece makes me more receptive to the app’s “scenes”, which include relaxing nature sounds that prove effective at drowning out the noise of the office.

The verdict
Calm is great if you can spare the monthly subscription, which starts at £7.99 a month. However, the size of the app’s catalogue justifies the cost, which also gets you access to any new content uploaded to the Calm app. It’s a subscription that I have yet to regret.