The Calm App
The Calm app is an app made to help users sleep, meditate, and relax. Their mission is to make the world happier and healthier. The app also has exclusive access to music, video lessons on stretching, and nature scenes to watch when trying to relax. The founders are Alex Tew and Michael Acton Smith.
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The app is free to download. With the free subscription, users gain access to daily meditation podcasts and a limited amount of other calming exercises. For $14.99 a month or $69.99 a year, users acquire access to exclusive features. If users pay for the year subscription the total per month comes out to $5.83 per month which is less than other meditation apps. They also offer a group discount. For 5 or more, Calm offers a 15% discount and family plans are available for up to six users at $99.99 a year. Students also can get a discount through Amazon Prime Student. It includes a three-month free trial and then a discounted yearly subscription of $8.99 a year.
They also provide a lifetime subscription for $399.99. The paid version includes sleep stories told by your favorite celebrities. LeBron James, Harry Styles, Kate Winslet, and many more. The app is easy to navigate and they are continually updating and adding more content.
Some of the pros of the app are that it is easy to use and even kid friendly. It has exclusive content that other mindfulness apps don’t have, such as celebrity sleep stories. It has the ability to track users' statistics such as the number of days used, minutes meditated, and the number of sessions. It has meditation reminder notifications. It also has a mood tracking feature, where users can log their mood over an extended period of time. Tamara Levitt, an expert in mindfulness and meditation, teaches a masterclass on those subjects. The app also provides real-life visuals and nature sounds.
Some cons of the app are there is no networking feature. So, users can’t connect with friends and watch each other's progress. Some users report that the nature sounds are distracting and that the sleep stories are too long. The free version is very limiting compared to other free meditation apps.
In 2020, a survey found that 97% of participants found that Calm’s sleep stories helped improve their kids’ sleeping patterns. When users open the app, they are immediately met with a welcome and walked through some breathing exercises. They then ask you what your goals are so they can tailor activities toward you and your lifestyle. They ask questions like, “Are you looking to increase your happiness or reduce stress? Do you want to get better sleep or reduce anxiety? All of the above?”
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The meditation section is separated into different categories, including anxiety, relationships, stress, focus, and many more. They offer unguided and guided meditations. Each meditation can range from lengths of 3 to 30 minutes. Calm tries to avoid religious or spiritual themes and instead focuses on mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR). Techniques include walking meditations, breathing exercises, body scans, and shifting from focus to awareness. In the anxiety section of the app, users can find sessions like “Calming Flight Anxiety” and “Letting Go into Sleep.”
As mentioned earlier, the app is updated every morning and offers an original 10-minute guided meditation that focuses on different wellness topics. Daily Calm is only available to users with premium memberships. The breathing section of the app consists of 6 different types of exercises. The six types are relax, balance, restore, focus, energize, and unwind. Each breathing exercise can be adjusted from 1-60 minutes depending on your preference.
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Along with sleep stories from A-listers like Scottie Pippen and Kelly Rowland, the app also offers that activate your autonomous sensory meridian response, also known as ASMR. The music portion of the app has hundreds of playlists curated for different occasions. The six categories are focus, lullabies, relax, sleep, soundscapes, and nature melodies. The Masterclass section of the app is to teach users mindfulness. With the help of experts like Shawn Achor, Elizabeth Gilbert, and Ryan Holiday, short courses varying on topics are taught. Some topics include breaking bad habits, embracing stillness, discovering happiness, and conscious parenting. The education component of Calm is another feature that sets them apart from other apps.
Calm Kids is a section of the app that is dedicated to kids. A study in 2016 found that mindfulness instruction can help improve psychological functioning, lower stress, and reduce trauma symptoms in some children. Sleep stories include classics like “The Velveteen Rabbit” or “Peter Pan.” With Calm Kids, children can learn to meditate with Thomas the Tank Engine.
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Another feature that separates them from other apps is the Calm Body. These 10-minute sessions are developed to get your body moving. The different options to choose from are “Morning Wake Up,” “Afternoon Reset,” “Mindful Warm Up,” Mindful Cool Down,” “Evening Wind Down,” “Morning Stretch, “Evening Stretch,” and “Back Care.”
It is the #1 app for sleep, meditation, and relaxation. It has over 100 million downloads and over 1.5 million 5-star reviews across all app stores. In 2017 and 2018 Apple awarded the app Best of the Year. Google Play also awarded the app Editor’s choice in 2018. The Center of Humane Technology named Calm the “world’s happiest app.”
Calm is a great app for people who are trying to learn to deal with daily stress or anxiety. It’s science-based and can be used by both beginners and experts. The more you use the app, the more likely you’ll notice positive mental health benefits. Calm has a very strong social media presence. Their Instagram has over 3 million followers and posts snippets from the app. Their Twitter has 261.9 thousand followers and tweets words of encouragement regularly. They also have Facebook and LinkedIn. Something that I thought was interesting was that in addition to the typical social media platforms that are regularly used by businesses, they also had TikTok. Here they post calming content. They have 267.7 thousand followers.
@calm Breathing in new possibilities, breathing out resistance to change.
♬ original sound - Calm
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