Taking a moment out of your day for Guided Relaxation. That is basically what calm.com is all about. In essence, it’s meditation, but I’m glad they don’t call it that because I have found that the word meditation scares people off. They hear meditation and immediately think they need to go out and buy Yoga Pants, incense and a gong, which off course is untrue, you don’t need any of those things to meditate. I have tried meditation on my own before but I have found it most effective when it has been guided meditation which is exactly what calm.com offers. I learned about calm.com after reading an article on LifeHacker and immediately got the app for iPhone.
The app takes you through 7 steps of guided relaxation and after you’ve done those sessions you can customize how long you want your sessions to be. Initially the app is free but to access all 7 steps and other features (scenery and ambient noise for your sessions etc) you would have to pay $4.99 which I did. I’m not usually one to spend that much on an app (I’ve wanted Hipstamatic for months and cant justify paying $0.99 for it) but I knew this was something that I would use everyday and I liked that I could use it anywhere because it was on my phone.
You can also go a different route and simply go to calm.com and start doing the guided sessions without going through the 7 steps of calm. From what I can tell the website is FREE and the only thing you don’t get that the app has is the ability to customize how long you want the sessions to be and the introduction to the 7 steps of calm.