Mental health and peace of mind are as important as your physical health. Therefore, you cannot afford to neglect your mental health.
Besides, mindfulness has become a hot topic among most people.
Whether you’re attending school, working at a public office, owning a business, or whichever field of life, you must realize the importance of balancing your energies.
The best way of doing it is by reducing your stress through meditation.
Luckily, technology has blessed us in this field too. Many applications and online platforms let you meditate and calm your mind.
Yeah, we know that limiting your screen time is also important for your physical health. But it’s all about the positive use of your screens to improve your health.
In this article, we will be talking about Insight Timer, a mindfulness app that lets you reconnect to your soul.
What is the vision behind it? How does it work? Who should connect to the app? How to get started? All of these questions will be answered in this blog post to get you started on the journey of mindfulness.
History And Science Of Meditation
Meditation is a practice that originated back in 5000 BCE in ancient Egypt and China. The practice was widespread in Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism, and Sikhism.
Paramahansa Yogananda, who traveled from India to America in 1920, is known as the ‘Father of Modern Meditation’ in America.
If we talk about the theory of meditation, there are many of them. In general, it improves your physical and mental health.
When you meditate, the activity of the sympathetic nervous system is reduced, resulting in a slower heartbeat, lower blood pressure, muscle relaxation, and slower breathing.
Meditation is subcategorized into different types. A few of many meditations are metta, mantra, spiritual, focused, walking, transcendental, and visualization meditation. Whichever type of meditation you choose, it helps you increase your physical and mental peace leading you to live a fuller life.
You also learn how to live in the present maximizing what you have.
What Is Insight Timer?
‘Magic Happens When You Give Meditation Away For Free.’
The app with such a tagline seems to be very enticing and giving. Insight Timer is a mindfulness app discovered by Christopher and Nicho Plowman, two brothers.
The app was developed to help people meditate, sleep well, reduce their anxiety and prioritize their health. The app has become the No.1 app for guided meditation and Live Yoga.
It wouldn’t be wrong to say that it is one of the longest-running apps leading paths of people’s lives. The app started with a simple interface and meditation practice.
And since then, it has been innovating and evolving to create a strong online meditation community.
When we talk about Insight Timer, here is what should come to your mind:
- Over 100k guided meditations
- You can choose short meditations to help you to develop a habit gradually
- A plethora of music tracks and ambient sounds for relaxing your mind and focus
- Most popular meditation app
- A strong community of people helping each other
- Stats and tracking of your progress
What Does It Offer?
Insight Timer is an app that is packed with many free and premium features. Let’s have an overview of it.
Guided Meditations
The biggest and mainstream feature of Insight Timer is Guided Meditations. There are over 100,000 meditations to cater to the needs of every type of meditator.
Here are 200 topics sub-divided into sections.
Whether you have a religious orientation or a secular one, you take an interest in scientific disciplines or philosophical ones, you will find the right content for you.
Above all, you can also ‘search and sort’ meditation content according to length (from 1 minute to 2 hours), voice(male or female), etc.
Timer For Self-Led Meditations
If you want a self-led meditation, you can sit in a silent mode by setting a timer. Insight Timer has the feature of setting a timer for you.
All you have to do is set a timer for the timing you want to meditate and choose a meditation sound to alert you when the session ends.
Playlists
As talked about earlier, different playlists are comprising meditations on different topics. Each playlist has a group of meditations on the same topics. Therefore, you can easily choose the type of meditation according to your choice.
Courses
Courses inside the ecosystem are a great way of boosting yourself. You can take your personal growth and mental health to the next level by enrolling in exclusive Insight Timer courses.
Oh, if you’re not sure about variety, there are 400+ courses to choose from.
Daily Insight
If you think you struggle in the consistency department, the Insight Timer has covered you there. Every day of the year, you get daily insights to make you a more consistent practicing being.
Live Events
Having the support of someone at your back is very crucial when you’re setting on a journey of any kind.
Live events of Insight Timer are held daily for you to take part in guided meditations, yoga, or receive insights on different topics around the world.
Tracks For Kids
Sounds great, right?
You can also help your children grow more mindful and balanced persons with customized tracks for kids.
The app has covered all age groups when it comes to content. The tracks for kids help you cultivate calmness, mindfulness, and lifelong meditation habits in your little one.
With this part of the app, you will get kids’ stories, yoga and meditation, music, and customized courses for kids.
Music
We all love music, right!
Besides, it is the most important part of meditation or relaxing. Whether you are looking for relaxing tracks to help you sleep calmly or want a self-led meditation, you get the right music in there.
Sleep Programs
Stories, soundscapes, meditations, and music is all about sleep programs. It helps you resolve your anxieties and difficulties of sleeping well.
Costs Of Insight Timer
It is an important question to ask. We know everything good about the app. But what is the cost of subscribing to Insight Timer?
There are many features that you can get as a free member. But paying a little for the greater value is worth it. The free version gives you access to the following features for unlimited time:
- Insight Timer
- Complete library of guided meditations, podcasts, tracks, talks, etc
- Groups
- Playlists
- Live events
If you choose the premium subscription of Member Plus, you unlock the additional features like:
- All courses
- Offline Listening
- Advanced player that lets you play in loop, fast forward, rewind, pick-up where you left off, etc.)
- High-quality audio
You can unlock all of these features at a minimal cost of $9.99 per month. However, if you opt for the annual billing, it will cost only $59.99 per year.
How To Get Started?
Getting started is very easy with Insight Timer. All you have to do is download the app and signup for free. The app interface is designed to help you navigate the features easily. You can easily assess what you want to.
Who Should Subscribe To Insight Timer?
For anyone who has an interest in calming the mind, being more mindful, and balancing mental and physical wellbeing, Insight Timer is a great choice.
Meditations, yoga, live events, music tracks, etc., boost yourself and heighten self-compassion and compassion for others.
Besides, it helps you set on a journey of self-growth.
Do you think you want to connect with a community of mindful people who are more considerate toward the universe and personal wellbeing?
Insight Timer provides you with a platform to interact with such individuals. The platform has also launched Timer Work for the teams and businesses to grow together and help each other elevate.
Pros Of Insight Timer
Here are some of the benefits of subscribing to Insight Timer:
- A plethora of content and guided meditation that never let you get lost on your way
- Personal profile with a stat dashboard featuring notifications, milestones, messages, groups, etc.
- You’re helping other individuals grow in their careers as 50% of your subscription fee is directly paid to teachers.
- Advanced player to not let you lose track of your performance. Whether you want to play a track from where you left off or want to play a music track on loop, you can do it.
- You can bookmark your favorite meditations and teachers
Cons OF Insight Timer
Some things that we didn’t like much about the Insight Timer are:
- Sometimes technical glitches can become annoying. For instance, you won’t be able to enter a live event, or your progress might not get updated, etc.
- You might get confused with such a huge basket to choose from.
Conclusion
To conclude, it is a great app and worth subscribing to. If you’re still asking yourself, it is an Insight Timer subscription worth it?
Be informed it is indeed one of the best mindfulness apps. You must try it out to set yourself on a journey of self-exploration.
If you’re not sure if you should pay for the premium content, you can get a sneak peek of what’s inside by checking out the 7-day free trial period of the platform.