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Calm is an award-winning app for guided meditation and sleep. An individual can use the Calm app as a instrument to enhance their psychological well being and sleep by watching distinctive and calming audiovisual content material. Mindfulness is efficient for many individuals, however some might expertise destructive results, and mindfulness apps might not be appropriate for everyone.
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Analysis means that conscious meditation can promote mental health and general emotional well-being.
This text explores the Calm app, the way it works, its options and effectiveness, its professionals and cons, and extra.
Please observe that the author of this text has not tried any of those merchandise. All data offered right here is only research-based and proper on the time of publication.
Calm is a meditation app developed in 2012 by Alex Tew and Michael Acton Smith. The app is accessible for obtain on desktop, iOS, and Android units.
The multi-award-winning app has greater than 100 million downloads and over 1.5 million 5-star opinions, in keeping with the Calm web site.
The app makes use of expertise as a instrument to enhance an individual’s well being and general well-being. It has a spread of options which can be designed to swimsuit customers’ completely different wants.
Calm teaches an individual concerning the foundations of mindfulness meditation and offers entry to a library of meditation classes and applications that concentrate on particular themes, comparable to courting, panic, anxiety, and deep sleep.
Other than meditations, the app offers workouts, respiration methods, music, and bedtime tales for people who find themselves tense, really feel anxious, or wish to enhance their sleep.
As quickly as an individual enters the app, Calm asks for his or her targets to make personalised content material suggestions.
An individual can select from the next choices:
- scale back anxiousness
- develop gratitude
- enhance happiness
- enhance efficiency
- construct shallowness
- scale back stress
- get higher sleep
Though the app can provide suggestions, folks may discover its intensive library of content material, which incorporates sounds, tales, audio lessons, and guided meditations.
Calm makes use of mindfulness meditation to assist an individual turn into conscious of their present psychological state and give attention to the current second to assist them really feel secure, calm, and rested.
Mindfulness meditation is a part of mindfulness-based stress discount (MBSR), which is an 8-week intensive mindfulness coaching workshop developed within the Nineteen Seventies by Prof. Jon Kabat-Zinn.
The apply contains meditation and yoga and teaches folks to be extra conscious of their our bodies, behaviors, and feelings in a nonjudgmental method. Utilizing this method, an individual can have higher management of their minds.
A 2020 study discovered that MBSR successfully lowered stress, anxiousness, and depressive signs whereas bettering the psychological well-being of retired soccer gamers.
Equally, a 2019 review discovered that the apply lowered anxiousness, fatigue, stress, and distress and improved mindfulness and cognitive perform in folks with breast cancer.
Subscribers to calm can entry an array of various options, together with the next.
Meditations
Meditation classes are guided by a speaker who narrates the session by delivering content material that incorporates mindfulness instructing.
The meditation classes are grouped into completely different classes, comparable to:
- sleep
- anxiousness
- inexperienced persons
- stress
- work
Meditations could be accessed as standalone classes, programs, or collection.
Classes vary from 3–half-hour.
Sleep Tales
These are bedtime tales for adults. They’re designed to assist the individual’s thoughts settle and assist them go to sleep sooner. These tales even have classes, comparable to:
- fiction
- non-fiction
- naps
- autonomous sensory meridian response
Calm Music
The Calm app incorporates a curated checklist of music tracks organized into the next classes:
- soundscapes
- pure melodies
- work
- loosen up
- lullabies
- focus
Calm Masterclasses
The Calm Masterclasses are audio lessons that dig deeper into numerous matters, comparable to display habit, creativity, breaking habits, and acutely aware parenting. These lessons are delivered by famend specialists of their subject.
Calm Children
Calm Children has a library of kid-friendly content material, together with meditations, Sleep Tales for kids ages 3 years and up, and lullabies. Meditations included on this part of the app assist kids study calming methods.
Calm Physique
This part contains 10-minute classes that information an individual by mild stretches and conscious actions that goal to launch their rigidity and recharge their minds.
The Spark
The Spark incorporates bite-sized interviews between a number and completely different friends, comparable to athletes, thought leaders, and entrepreneurs. The interviews goal to offer listeners with motivation, perception, humor, and knowledge.
Respiratory workouts
Calm has a number of respiration workouts that concentrate on completely different targets, comparable to relieving stress or enjoyable the physique. An individual can regulate the breaths per minute (pace) and the size (length) of the respiration train.
Verify-ins
The app permits folks to log their moods, sleep, reflections on explicit matters, and what they’re grateful for every day.
Calm is free for anybody to obtain. Upon signing up, an individual will get a 7-day free trial and is routinely enrolled in Calm Premium.
With the free model of the app, an individual can entry an unique Day by day Calm session every single day, in addition to check-ins, a number of scenes with sounds, and chosen classes from meditation programs.
The app additionally provides a Premium subscription for individuals who wish to entry the complete suite of options.
The Premium subscription contains:
- over 100 guided meditations on a spread of matters, together with stress and sleep
- a library of Sleep Tales, which is up to date weekly
- unique Calm Music for sleep and leisure
- Calm Masterclasses for deeper discussions about conscious studying
The price of Calm Premium varies relying on the kind of subscription an individual chooses:
- Month-to-month: $14.99
- Yearly: $69.99
- Lifetime: $399.99
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A 2020 study that regarded on the perceptions of oldsters of youngsters utilizing Calm discovered that just about all mother and father thought that the app was useful for his or her kids’s sleep. Nonetheless, it did recommend that extra analysis was wanted to verify the effectiveness of mindfulness meditation apps for bettering sleep and psychological well being in kids and youngsters.
Calm encourages folks to work together with the app every day. Nonetheless, a 2020 study discovered that though intermittent use of the app can enhance an individual’s well-being, every day use of the app can pose potential destructive outcomes. These embody emotions of failure and demotivation if an individual doesn’t use the app every day.
Moreover, the research additionally talked about that some folks discovered that utilizing mindfulness apps made their psychological well being worse, with studies of elevated anxiousness, agitation, and discomfort — together with unmanageable destructive ideas — included in various the research cited by the authors.
Regardless of good opinions from the App Store (4.8 stars) and Google Play (4.4 stars), the app has solely 1.9 stars based mostly on 146 rankings on Trustpilot. Unfavorable opinions are likely to revolve round:
- poor customer support
- troublesome cancellations
- the feminine voice being annoying and never calming
- a cluttered person interface
- new Sleep Tales not being added as usually as talked about
Earlier than downloading or utilizing the Calm app, an individual might want to take into account the professionals and cons of the service.
Please observe that the author of this text has not tried any of those merchandise. All data offered right here is only research-based.
An individual might want to take into account various mindfulness apps earlier than buying a subscription to Calm.
Calm vs. Headspace
In contrast with Calm, most of Headspace’s content material is for inexperienced persons.
Nonetheless, varied customers observe that Headspace has extra voice choices and enjoyable animations than Calm’s extra serene and calm nature sounds. People who find themselves on the go additionally take pleasure in Headspace’s mini-meditations, which final for under 2–3 minutes.
Calm vs. Perception Timer
In contrast with Calm’s restricted free content material, the vast majority of Insight Timer’s content material — which incorporates round 70,000 music tracks and guided meditations — is freely accessible. Furthermore, individuals who like yoga might take pleasure in its separate yoga class.
Perception Timer additionally provides a 30-day trial, in contrast with Calm’s 7-day trial.
Calm provides a extra visible expertise than Perception Timer, which provides a extra audio-based expertise. Individuals who wish to focus solely on meditation, irrespective of the custom (religious, secular, or philosophical), might discover Perception Timer higher suited to them.
Calm vs. Buddhify
Like Calm, Buddhify has content material for each inexperienced persons and meditation professionals. Nonetheless, Buddhify doesn’t provide a free trial and has no desktop model. The ranges of classes are comparable on Buddhify, with classes starting from 4–half-hour.
Though Calm provides some personalization, Buddhify permits folks to create a wheel that incorporates their most well-liked meditation classes.
Calm vs. Smiling Thoughts
Like Calm, Smiling Mind has applications for folks of all ages and can be utilized in lecture rooms and workplaces. Nonetheless, this Australian not-for-profit model provides its app totally free.
In response to the corporate, Smiling Thoughts makes use of evidence-based methods to assist people address every day struggles and customary conditions comparable to taking public transport.
Though Calm is accessible in varied languages, comparable to German, French, and Korean, Smiling Minds has recorded meditations in Kriol, Ngaanyatjarra, and Pitjantjatjara languages.
The app additionally contains the talents of conventional healers with the goal of bettering folks’s well-being and psychological well being literacy.
Calm’s vary of instruments might profit anybody who’s seeking to enhance their psychological wellness or who desires to equip themselves with new instruments to deal with every day well-being struggles.
The app’s big selection of instruments could be useful for people who find themselves having hassle with their sleep. Additionally, Calm provides guided and unguided meditations, making them appropriate for many who are new to meditation and longtime meditators.
Nonetheless, folks in a psychological well being emergency and those that are eager about harming themselves or others ought to instantly name the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline.
Calm is a well-liked meditation app utilized for its number of instruments that individuals use to handle their day and cope with stress, anxiousness, and sleep issues.
There are lots of comparable apps that an individual can discover in the event that they discover Calm’s content material restricted or if they’re on the lookout for a decrease value or free mindfulness app.
An individual who’s experiencing a psychological well being emergency mustn’t depend on a mindfulness app. As an alternative, they should search recommendation from a longtime psychological well being group.
