Meditation Monday: Reviewing the new "Ananda-Living In Love" Meditation App from Chopra Enterprises

Hello and Happy Monday once again! This week I received an offer to download a new meditation app from Oprah and Deepak Meditation called Living In Love. The initial app is free and comes with one basic breathing meditation led by Deepak Chopra but if you want to experience any of the other 22 guided meditations in the app you'll need to purchase them for $2.99 each. As with my previous meditation posts, I am reviewing only the free version of this app so that it's an even comparison. In this first meditation, Deepak Chopra leads this meditation and it is called the SoHum meditation because this word becomes a mantra that you repeat with each breath in and out.

  When you download the app and open it, you'll see that you have a choice of different music tracks that can accompany your meditation. These are only accessible if you purchase one or more of the meditations.

Next, you can choose the length of your meditation.

You can also choose the balance of the volume between the guide's voice and the music you hear with one slider bar.

The titles you see below relate to the title of the music selection on the left and the guided meditation title on the right.

For comparison, here is the free app Simply Being that I reviewed in an earlier post. You can see that you have separate slider bars and can choose between music, nature sounds, and voice. You can also choose to have the music continue at the end of your guided meditation for a certain amount of time.

Speaking for myself, I prefer the Simply Being app because it gives the listener more choices without having to purchase anything. I love the option of listening to nature sounds also instead of music. Also, I find the guide's voice to be more soothing and conducive to deep meditation than in the SoHum mantra meditation in the Living In Love app. Don't take it from me however-I encourage you to experience it for yourself. Here's the link to download it:http://bit.ly/1mlDhvA

                 Enjoy your Monday and your entire week. I wish you peace and happiness!

Meditation Monday-Comparing Guided Meditations Part 2

Today I'll be talking about two meditations that are both free but very different than the meditations from two weeks ago. The first is a meditation that you can download through the Oprah.com Spirit Channel. It's by Kim Eng and is part of the Eckhart Tolle New Earth series. It can be downloaded for free on iTunes. There are many different meditations within this program like Breath Awareness, Object Awareness, Inner Body Meditation, Rising Meditation, etc. I chose the Inner Body Meditation to review today.

1. Relaxed Awareness Meditation: Inner Body Meditation by Kim Eng
Cost: free

There is no interface per se for this meditation because it's part of a podcast series. Kim's voice begins after the prayer bell sounds. There is no other background music. The entire length of the guided meditation is about 7 minutes, but she does instruct you to continue it for 5 or so more minutes longer. Her voice is very even and calming and I like the fact that she begins with awareness on the outer sounds and sensations around you before directing your focus inward. She directs you to move your attention through each part of your body, which is both very calming and also helps you to become more aware of how you are actually feeling. One thing I like in particular is that she says that if you have pain, be it mental or physical, notice the pain but don't associate a certain story with that pain. When you do this, I think the pain lessens and you feel like a burden has been lifted that you don't have to think about anymore. We all have our stories that we carry around about what's happened to us in our past and this helps you release those.


2. Laura Evans Spiritual Medium: Meditation For Your Higher Mind
Cost: free

This is a podcast that I also downloaded for free from iTunes. I had never heard of Laura Evans but I was drawn to all the different podcasts about both hypnosis and meditation. She has MANY to choose from so look her up. Here are just a few of the hypnosis subjects:Become free of worry and anxiety, A.D.D. Better concentration, Drawing love to you/self love hypnosis, Trusting your intuition, Self-esteem for young adults, Authentic power, etc. Laura's voice begins and there is background music but it's very light. She also has a calming voice and I noticed that she will speed up or slow down her cadence depending on the meditation or hypnosis. This meditation is also around 6 minutes long. She says this meditation comes from Sanya Roman, who is another medium, and her two spirit guides. This meditation is a listening one rather than an internally quiet one, where it's more about focusing on those qualities that you want to pull toward you: love, clarity, intent, abundance, serenity, enthusiasm, commitment, peace, creativity, etc. and you repeat them as a mantra. Although it's not at all like Kim Eng's meditation, it's a good meditation to help you start out the day focusing on the positive within you. I could see listening to this meditation when you just need a short break in the day or when things aren't going so well. I really did feel lighter and more positive overall when it was done and I find myself repeating those good thoughts to myself afterwards too.

Meditation Monday-Comparing Guided Meditation Apps

I know I haven't done the Meditation Monday post for quite awhile but I'm attempting to make it my Monday "thing" again now that I'm past the Stationery Show and have some of my orders filled for the moment.
I thought I'd re enter the meditation discussion by comparing a couple of guided meditation apps: the two I'm comparing this week are Simply Being and Headspace. I tried the free (or almost free) versions of each of these so that's what I'll be reviewing here.

First: Simply Being
Cost: $ 0.99

Nice calming graphic interface with simple button choices for options to meditate with music, with music and voice, with nature sounds and voice or just with voice. For time options, you can choose from 5, 10, 15, or 20 minute sessions. There are slider bars to regulate the volume of each sound individually. The guide's voice is a female one and it's mild and soothing in my opinion. After using this app for several weeks, I didn't feel the need to have the voice on anymore as the different programs weren't that varied plus I realized how much I missed just meditating in silence and hearing whatever sounds were around me instead. It seemed a bit silly to me to listen to pre-recorded nature sounds and drown out the actual nature sounds that were right outside my window!

Secondly: Headspace
Cost: Free for 10 day intro

I've heard this app described as "Type A Meditation" and I have to say I agree with that description. With fun, graphic illustrations on the interface I really was drawn in to the Headspace Take10 program-this is the introductory program that lasts 10 days and is meant to encourage you to purchase the full year of the program for $6.28 a month. The guide's voice is male and he speaks in an easy-to-understand Australian accent. I really like a lot of his techniques in this program--he uses some visual cues that really did help me to get in the meditation mode--the only problem was, every time I felt that I was really relaxed and into it, he would speak again and it would distract me. Some people may really like this approach and if so, you should definitely try it out as his program is varied each day plus he has different programs that I haven't tried like Headspace Motivate and Headspace Active. I felt that I didn't really want to pay $6.28 a month for this type of guided meditation but if you like lots of verbal cues while you meditate, this may be the program for you. Also there is an entire website/blog devoted to this app so you can read a lot about the various meditation options before you sign up for the paid version.

That's all for this Meditation Monday. Next week I will compare two other guided meditation apps.
Happy Monday!