Recommended products · App · Meditation
Balance
The meditation app that learns who you are and shapes the exercises around what you've already learnt.
Roughly ages 13 and upAbout €45 a year, with a free trial
Independent recommendation. No commission.
Positives
- It interviews you as you go, about experience, goals and what's stressing you, and builds the next meditation from your answers. The longer you stay with it, the better it fits.
- It teaches concrete skills, breath focus, body scanning and visualisation among them, level by level. You can see what you've learnt, not just how many minutes you've sat.
- A proper sleep section: falling asleep, power naps and help drifting off again when you wake in the night.
Worth knowing
- Everything is in English, and there's no children's content. This one is for you or your teenager, not the little ones.
- Same story as the others: use it at bedtime and the phone tags along into the bedroom. In the article on good sleep I recommend the opposite, so send the sound to a speaker or leave the phone out of reach.
- The price has a mind of its own. When I tested it, a year cost about €45, but the moment I closed the payment screen without buying, an offer of about €20 a year appeared. Worth knowing before you pay full price.
My assessment
The best of the meditation apps at meeting you where you actually are. Most of them hand everyone the same course; Balance remembers which techniques you already know and builds from there.
I used Balance for a full year during the pandemic, when they were giving the first year away. The personalisation delivered: the app kept track of what I'd learnt and wove it into new meditations. When the free year ran out I drifted back to Headspace, mostly because I'd invested so many years there. The recommendation stands all the same: if you want a meditation app that gets to know you, this is it.
Try it
Comments
No comments yet. Be the first to say what you think.
