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A day in the life of a teacher can be pretty darn jam-packed. So it’s important to make the most of the moments you do have by fostering some inner peace and tapping into the Zen. Check out these eight meditation apps perfect to guide you through some relaxation and rejuvenate your soul for the hectic afternoon ahead.
Aura
Entry price: Free
Paid option: Premium – $11.99 per month, $59.99 per year (billed at $4.99 / month), or a one-time $399.00 for a lifetime subscription.
Perfect during even a super-short break, Aura features daily, 3-minute, micro-meditation sessions. Filled with mindful meditations, life coaching, stories, nature sounds, and music, Aura is an awesome way to bust stress and re-center before the kids get back from lunch.
Buddhify
Available for iOS, Android, and the web
Entry price: $4.99 to download and a $30 per month membership.
Buddhify was designed for those who [think they] don’t have time to meditate. Meditations are brilliantly categorized by what you’re doing and how you feel. With meditations for walking, stress and difficult emotions, work, break, sleep, waking up, and more, you can find a session to perfectly suit your needs. Plus, with meditations lasting from 4 to 30 minutes, it’s a cinch to work these into your busy schedule.
Calm
Available for iOS, Android, and the web
Entry price: Free 7-day trial
Paid option: $69.99 for 12 months
Everyone strives for more calm in their life. Calm offers relaxing sounds such as crackling fires, falling rain, crickets, and birds in short, guided meditation sessions that are perfect for lunch-time breaks. In addition to meditation and relaxation sessions, Calm has some pretty fabulous new features, including a mood check-in to reflect on your emotions each day. The app can then make recommendations based on those moods. With guided instruction and star-studded narrative stories, Calm’s award-winning app promises to help you learn the life-changing skill of meditation.
Mindfulness Daily
Entry price: Free for 21 days of meditation
Paid option: $12.99 per month or $7.99 per month when billed yearly ($95.88)
Mindfulness Daily provides, as its name implies, a mindfulness habit built in just a few minutes each day. Effective, short, and targeted guided meditations aim to reduce the negative emotions and stresses of the day. As sessions are only 1 minute long, this app can be a lifesaver any time you need a moment of serenity. Mindfulness Daily is also beneficial for falling into a restful sleep and finding energy first thing each day.
Headspace
Available for iOS, Android, and the web
Entry price: Free 2-week trial
Paid option: $12.99 per month or $69.99 per year (at $5.83 per month)
Headspace helps get you in the right — you guessed it — headspace at work. Improve energy, health, and happiness with specific guided meditation sessions and clear instruction on how to use meditation to improve your overall well-being. An added element worth noting is Headspace’s SOS exercises for those sudden cases of meltdown panic. (Yeah, we’ve all been there.) With bite-sized sessions, Headspace is a great choice for a quick moment of peace amid the cray cray.
Inscape
Available for iOS
Entry price: Free 1-week trial
Paid option: $9.99 per month or $58.99 per year
Developed by one of New York City’s popular meditation studios, Inscape brings the studio experience to your lunch table. With an extensive library of guided meditations, Inscape’s app features tools to help you sleep, relax, and even sit still. With customized recommendations based on the time of day, this app can be the perfect side to that peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
10% Happier
Entry price: free 7-day trial, $99.00 per year
10% Happier is a no-nonsense way to learn mindfulness for those “fidgety skeptics.” 10% Happier begins with a tour guide, Dan Harris, known for suffering from a live-TV panic attack that led him to meditation. Accessible and unique in its perspective, 10% Happier provides insight on how to push past some barriers to effective meditation, like how to know you’re doing it right and how to deal with the boredom that sometimes accompanies meditation attempts.
Smiling Mind
Available for iOS, Android, and the web
Entry price: Free
Created by a team of psychologists, Smiling Mind focuses on mindfulness to ease stress, boost concentration, and bring balance to your life in 10 minutes a day. Smiling Mind offers sessions for adults, as well as specific meditations for kids and classrooms.
Turn off the autopilot
Meditation alleviates stress and anxiety, which is crucial in the life of today’s teachers. And it doesn’t have to mean carving out a huge chunk of time and burning incense. Although kudos to you if that’s your thing. The truth is, the benefits of meditation can be felt in just minutes a day. So download one of these apps and start dedicating a bit of your lunch break to your mental health. You’ll be amazed by just how calm, cool, and collected you feel!
Ashley is an award-winning copywriter and content expert with more than a decade of proven results for national and local clients. From brainstorming high-end conceptual content to styling sentences that engage and convert, she’s got a knack for shattering the status quo. When she’s not in full-on writing mode, she’s hanging out with her rascal of a puppy and discussing the plausibility of unicorns with her 8-year-old daughter.
Categorized as: Lifestyle
Tagged as: Teacher Self-Care, Teacher Wellbeing