Do you need to give your meditation practice a boost? Here are seven things you can do with one easy download.  I have been using the mediation app, Insight Timer, for a couple of years now and I am not surprised at how popular it has become.  It is the most highly rated free meditation app with more than 2 million users around the world. Here are some of the ways to use it.

1. Use the Guided Meditations. There are thousands of guided meditations that you can search for—with easy categories like “playing now,” “popular,” “new,” and “staff picks.” You can also search for a name of a meditation like “Breathing and Relaxation Meditation” which is one I just recently added to the app along with the MBSR Sitting Meditation from my Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Class.
2. Find a Meditation Teacher. Second, you can search for your favorite meditation teacher. Many of the major meditation teachers are available on Insight Timer and there are currently 1, 286 teachers listed. If you don’t have a favorite, there are plenty to pick from. Don’t forget to look for me.
3. Join an Interest Group. You can connect with groups that have formed around various interest groups.  There are 3,000 of those to pick from like eating mindfully, poetry and meditation, and daily gratitude.
4. Use the Meditation Timer.  Do you ever sit there wondering when 20 minutes is over and keep checking your watch? This is part of other app I use the most–the meditation timer with different sounding bells that will keep track for you. Just set how many minutes you want to meditate and you hear a bell at the beginning and the end of the practice.
5. Connect with Others. One of the really cool things about the app is, after the last bell, it tells you how many people both near you and from around the world meditated with you.  When I first started using the app there would be one to two thousand people and now there are usually three to six thousand people meditating with the app at a time.
6. Have a Feeling of Accomplishment. For those of you who love to track things, there is a built-in function that tracks how long you have meditated over time. Sometimes it helps to have a little reminder of what you’ve done so you can pat yourself on the back. Of course, the practice itself will help you feel good anyway.
7. Share some Gratitude. We know how important the practice of gratitude is for improving your psychological and physical health. This app has a built-in feature to help you practice your gratitude after you meditate. You can pick people from the thousands who have meditated with you and send them a thank you.  Brilliant!!

If you haven’t downloaded Insight Timer, I recommend that you take a moment to try it now. I submitted ten meditations last week which will eventually all be available. The first meditation I posted had over 1,000 listens in 8 hours.  Join the community that meditates together. You can even search for me and add me as a “friend.”  Come join me on the cushion.

Enjoy!