Mindfulness Daily: get started with this easy-to-use app

Looking to develop or improve your mindfulness practice? Tine Steiss reviews Mindfulness Daily, an app that aims to do just that.

In Mindfulness Daily, Jack Kornfield and Tara Brach are presenting a 40-day introduction for mindfulness and meditation. You can access the daily lessons via an app or online.

Mindfulness Daily app: what is it?

The lessons are usually around 10 minutes long and are either taught by Jack or Tara. An explanation about today's subject is followed by a guided meditation to dig deeper into the subject. It's wrapped up with a daily practice to try throughout the day. Finding some space to incorporate your Mindfulness Daily practice during the start of your day could be a great idea. 
 

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Once you've completed a lesson you can access the following one the next day. This creates a nice pace and means that you can't rush through the course. You're given the time to explore each lesson throughout your day and you can always revisit the lessons you've already completed. These lessons are currently divided into four main topics:
 

• Mindfulness Basics
• Emotional Intelligence
• Resilience, Healing and Inner Freedom
• Mindful Living

With the latest update of the Mindfulness Daily app, each lesson also has a name. This makes it much easier to revisit your most influential lessons when you feel like you need them. With this, you can tailor your sittings to your daily needs once you've finished the course by starting out with a subject you'd like to focus on. Which means the app keeps being your little helper, even after having finished the course.

“Once you've completed a lesson on Mindfulness Daily you can access the following one the next day. This creates a nice pace and you can't rush through the course.”

The course has a great structure that guides you through all the relevant areas of mindfulness without being boring or too demanding. It's suitable for beginners as a first introduction to mindfulness, but if you're more experienced you will still find this course helpful and structured and are likely to discover new aspects of mindfulness for yourself.


Get 'appy: Mindfulness Daily offers 40 lessons
 

Going through 40 aspects in 40 lessons you'll most likely encounter some that seem to be an easy ride and some that touch you on a deeper level. So, this is also a great way to explore where to focus on more in your future practice.

Pricing and benefits

Mindfulness Daily is distributed by Sounds True, an independent multimedia publishing company focusing on spiritual traditions, arts and humanities. I paid $38 for the app, so each lesson came down to less than $1. If you download Mindfulness Daily you also get access to other free Sounds True content. Even its regular newsletters come with free content, so the marketing is actually a win-win deal; they remind you to spend your money with them and give you something nice for free. Fair enough if you ask me.

[UPDATE] Mindfulness daily is now available for free!

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The Sounds True library app is a similar deal. It provides you with easy access to meditations, music, Mindfulness Daily and whatever else you may buy there in the future. It also tracks the time you've been meditating with the app, offers a meditation timer with different bells, and a journal for your experiences. This keeps me from not deleting the app from my phone and even using it on a daily basis.

Mindfulness Daily: my personal experience

Due to the briefness of each lesson, it's easily incorporated into your morning routine. At least for me, it was easy to sit down for ten minutes each morning and I didn't skip or postpone a single day. Most of the time I'd even revisit a lesson in the evening again to wrap up my day.

“The Mindfulness Daily app course has a great structure that guides you through all the relevant areas of mindfulness without being boring or too demanding.”

I started with meditation many years ago, but it wasn't until about two years ago that I developed my personal daily routine. Having a structured program is very helpful for me to keep up a daily practice. Even better if it helps me revisit and expand my knowledge and practice. So, the structured daily lessons were really up my alley to start with. I also realized how I got a bit slack after the course had finished. But I started using single lessons matching my needs that day as an intro to my daily practice.


High praise: daily meditation using Mindfulness Daily works

Furthermore, I admit to being a bit of a Tara Brach fangirl. She has a lot of free content out there that I listen to regularly. Normally it's harder for me to concentrate on a subject if I'm just listening and I prefer reading about it. In her case, it's the other way around. I had some troubles reading her book True Refugee. On the other hand, listening to her talks is a great experience, as the way she explains things really resonates with me. So, that's one of the main reasons I chose this course.

If you're unsure about whether or not you like Tara Brach's or Jack Kornfield's style, just check out the free content they provide. Some of it you can also get for free on Sounds True. ●

Main photo: colourbox.com

Written by Tine Steiss

Tine is part of the happiness.com team. She's an artist, meditator, media engineer and MBSR teacher. If she's not traveling she's working on turning her rooftop terrace into a garden paradise. Find out more about her on Instagram.