I started meditating about 2 years ago. Since then, I meditate almost every day. I recommend it to my clients. I’m crazy about it!
After trying a couple of apps, a bunch, actually, I landed on CALM. After a couple of weeks, it offered me half price for a month so I went for it. Then I kept using it, I was offered a half price lifetime offer and I grabbed it!
I know you are going to think I get a kick back from the app, but I don’t! There are so many different categories of meditations: sleep, stress, calming anxiety, deep sleep, flight anxiety, staying on track, mindful eating, body scan, mindfulness at work, happiness, self esteem, gratitude, focus, relationship with self, loving-kindness, forgiveness, mindful walking, emotions, relationship with others, breaking habits, Winnie the Pooh, college collection, deep concentration, emergency calm, commuting, non-judgement, a bunch for kids, and more!
Here is an example of meditations within each app:
My favorite meditations are the 15 minute deep sleep release (I use it when I have trouble falling asleep or falling back asleep) and day 4 of the 21 days of calm which teaches about emotion. The homestead girls like the self forgiveness meditations and the loving kindness meditations. My clients like the emergency calm and the gratitude mediations and some of the sleep stories. When I need to fall asleep, I put on the app and the gal’s voice (Tamara Levitt) just makes me relaxed and sleepy.
The research on meditation keeps pouring in. It has been proven to help you with feeling calm (improves mood disorders such as depression and anxiety) and promotes relaxation, improves focus (memory, less distraction, attention, learning, concentration), improves health (more energy, less pain, helps with heart disease, inflammation, immunity, resilience), and reduces impulsivity, and increases creativity, and optimism.
My goal is to do every single meditation offered on the calm app and then do the daily calm meditations. As you can see from my stats, I’ve been at it awhile but I have a long way to go!
dianegclark 
Last fall Lisa and I went to RenFest in KC and watched a hypnosis therapist at work on the crowd. It was hilarious. I bought a $5 CD on losing weight and have listened to it a few times (mostly for fun), but I observed his techniques for bringing a person into a state of relaxation. When I have a difficult time getting to sleep, I will use those techniques on myself and typically fall asleep with 3-4 minutes. One of the very first steps usually shows me just how tense I am normally…when I relax my face and I realize that my jaw is usually clenched until I just “let it go”. I rarely get past relaxing my shoulder at that point before Mr. Sandman comes calling.
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