Top 5 Apple Watch Apps for Meditation in 2018

With all the responsibilities of daily life, it’s hard to get just a few minutes to yourself. It’s important to set aside some time to relax though, even if its only for 5 to 10 minutes at a time. If you have an Apple Watch, it can help you use that time to the fullest with breathing exercises and mediation. Even taking 60 seconds with the native Breathe app could provide the stress reduction you need to continue all of your tasks, and finish up with your day. Take a look below for the best meditation apps for your Apple Watch series 3, or any of the earlier models.

Breathe – native Apple Watch app

The Breathe App that comes installed on the Apple Watch encourages you to carve time out of your day to do some mindful deep breathing. They recommend using the app at least once a day, and will send you reminders to complete the task. You have the option of setting the Breathe timer from 1 to 5 minutes, depending on how much time you have. From there, once you start the app, your Apple Watch will vibrate, prompting you to center your breathing. Once you do, it will guide you in taking deep breathes until the timer runs out. It’s a nice way to take a minute if work is stressing you out, and you can’t step away to take a longer break.

Top 5 Apple Watch 3 Apps for Meditation

Calm – Free, In-App Purchases

The meditation app Calm has been selected as Apples 2017 App of the Year, and it is the number one app for mindfulness and meditation in the App Store. It is free to download, and it offers various subscription models. You can choose for it to bill monthly, or save money by choosing to bill yearly. There’s also an option to get a $299 lifetime subscription. It can integrate with the Health app on your iPhone.

Unlike Headspace, Calm does require a subscription to use. It does not have a free basic version. The subscription does come with a bunch of features such as breathing exercises, sleep stories, unguided time meditation, nature sounds, and specific guided meditations for things like calming anxiety or managing stress.On the Apple Watch, the app allows you to hit play and pause, and also shows you your streaks.

Headspace Free, in app subscription

The Apple Watch app Headspace has a free basics package that allows you to meditate with them even without a subscription. The app has 4.9 out of five stars in the iOS App Store, so you know it’s good. Out of over 100,000 ratings, they haven’t gotten any one or two star rating. The Headspace app is number eight in health and fitness on the App Store, and it’s noted as one of the editors choice apps. In order to use the app, even in basics mode, you do need to create an account. Headspace allows you to create one with either Spotify or Facebook. From there, a member has access to 3 different Basics packs. Each pack has 10 sessions. This means you can enjoy 30 days of meditation for free. Also included in the free package is a one minute guided breathing session.

If you are enjoying Headspace, and want to progress past the basic stage, they offer several different ways to get into the Headspace premium mindset. The subscriptions that are available are $12.99 for a monthly subscription, $7.91 per month if you purchase an annual subscription, or $399.99 in one payment for a lifetime subscription. Each one will give you access to hundreds of guided meditations which are available in the Headspace library.

On the Apple watch, there are two different exercises that you can do with the basics package. One involves maintaining basic pressure for 30 seconds on the little picture of an egg. It will tell you to press harder or softer, and keep you in the moment. If you press too hard the egg will crack. It’s a good way to stay mindful. Another option is the SOS meditation track. This is a good button to press if you’re feeling particularly stressed, and need to calm down quick. The audio will play over the iPhone, or through your Bluetooth headset if you are wearing one.

Enlighten – $0.99

The Enlighten app is available on the iPhone, iPad, as well as Apple watch. On all these platforms, it features natural sounds which simulate the natural environment. The nature sounds are the main focus of the Enlighten app. There are many different kinds. The example that they use in their description is you can choose a wind or waves sound, and then pick from three different variations. You may also choose to add additional sounds or binaural beats to the background of the nature sound.

On the Apple watch, enlighten tracks your heart rate and sends you a notification when it senses that you are getting stressed. The app studies your health data as its entered throughout the day and will send you a signal to relax if it feels that you are particularly anxious or stressed. In order to use this feature you do need to enable the app to access your data from the health app.

Enlighten gives you different exercises to work on when you are feeling overwhelmed or stressed. Similar to headspace, it offers a touch based exercise where you keep pressing a yellow dot in order to stay in the moment. It will notify you if you need to press harder or softer. Their task lasts for one full minute.

Relax Meditation: Mindfulness, Sleep Sounds, Noise

The creators behind the relaxed meditation app provide users with free access to their five-day introduction to meditation. This is a total of 15 minutes of meditation divided into 10 minutes a day. The watch app lets you stop and start to meditation, which can be played on your iPhone or a Bluetooth headset connected to the watch itself. You can also choose from different meditations, or pick favorite relaxing sounds.

If you enjoy that, relaxed meditation has two different auto renewing subscription options. You can pay $9.99 per month, or $24.99 for three months. If the option of connecting it to the health app for tracking how often you were mindful.This app has almost 5 stars in the app store, and it updates regularly.

3 Minute Mindfulness

This meditation boasts that it’s been featured in 30 different countries such as the United Kingdom and the United States. It has a 4.4 star rating in the app store, and also offers iPad and iPhone options. It stands out by making all of its guided meditations just three minutes long. In addition to the Seven Days of Mindfulness course, Three-Minute Mindfulness offers different kinds of breathing exercises as well.

Like most of the other apps, it only offers some free content. It has a price of $7.99 per month, or $28.99 per six months. If you decide to purchase the years subscription, it is $47.90.

With all of these options to choose from, hopefully you will find an Apple Watch meditation app that gives you a few moments of relaxation and stress reduction each day.