One of the oldest and most used meditation apps, Calm offers hundreds of hours of lessons and exercises.(Photo: Calm.com, Inc.)

Between calendar notifications, pushed emails, and intrusive messaging platforms, you might believe smartphones contribute to your daily stress levels. Ironically, that same device could also help nudge you to take much-needed breaks throughout the day thanks to a handful of meditation and mindfulness apps.

I often say that mindfulness isnt hardwhats hard is remembering to be mindful, says Sharon Salzberg, renowned meditation expert and bestselling author. Ones device is the perfect implement to offer those reminders, not only for a time-out of 5 to 10 minutes, but for what we call short moments, many times taking a few breaths to return to ourselves and return to the moment."

Salzberg, whose new book Real Love (Flatiron Books; $24.99) is available June 6, believes theres an increased interest in meditation in the West, perhaps because the incredible busyness and sheer unrelenting pressure of potentially always being on. Salzberg says several apps could help with reminders and bite-sized lessons at home or the go.

Given the fact May is Mental Health Month, the following is a brief look at five picks available at both the App Store (for iOS) and Google Play (for Android), unless otherwise specified.

A new player with some exceptional meditation and mindfulness teachers, Simple Habit gives you a daily break from the grind.(Photo: Simple Habit, Inc.)

One of the newest players is also one of the most impressive.

Simple Habit is an on-demand meditation platform built for busy people. With simple 5-minute lessons, the app features more than 1,000 meditations guided by mindfulness teachers from around the world and for a more tailored lesson, you can choose the time, place and cause of your stress. For example, tap Tough Day or Big Event (perhaps before public speaking), or Morning Meditation, or At Work.

You can also pick a lesson by Series (Drift to Sleep, Sharpen Focus, Meditate in Nature), and by Teacher of your choice (check out Australias Kate James, with her soothing voice and helpful instruction).

More than 50 sessions are free, with the option to upgrade to a Premium version for $11.99/month or $99.99/year. Its also available through a desktop website, and Simple Habit will remember where you left off.

Calm lets you track your progress and choose a meditation topic that matters most.(Photo: Calm.com, Inc.)

One of my favorites, Calm is a meditation and mindfulness app with guided sessions in varying lengths, ranging from 3 to 25 minutes, and with content designed for beginners, as well as intermediate and advanced users.

Similar to some other apps of this kind, you can choose a topic that matters most to you: Calming Anxiety, Deep Sleep, Self-Esteem, Forgiveness, Happiness, Managing Stress, Focus and Concentration, and so on. Track your progress with gamification elements, such as daily streaks, as well assessing a tally of time spent meditating.

While theres some free content to get you started, subscriptions are $12.99 per month, or the heavily discounted $59.99 per year. Subscribers get full access to all the instructions, along with a new 10-minute program added daily, more than 20 Sleep Stories, 7- and 21-day programs, breathing exercises, relaxing nature sounds, and more.

The Headspace app has been described as "the gym membership for the mind."(Photo: Headspace Inc.)

Your gym membership for the mind, Headspace wants to teach you how to meditate in just a few minutes a day.

Endorsed by Emma Watson, this UK app features a clean and easy-to-use interface, and offers a free beginner series called Take10 10 sessions, each 10 minutes, over 10 days using proven meditation and mindfulness techniques that could help clear your head, reduce stress, sleep better, and enjoy greater overall happiness. Available for iOS, Android, Amazon, and the web, the lessons include stat tracking, rewards, and an optional buddy system (for friends to motivate each other).

If you want more than the introductory Take10, Headspace offers a subscription service ($12.99 per month or $94.99 per year) for access to many other meditation lessons, guided and unguided, as short as 2 minutes and as long as 1 hour. Some deal with applying mindfulness to everyday activities, while others cater to managing stress (S.O.S. sessions) and life-altering situations.

As part of Headspaces Get Some, Give Some program, for every subscription someone signs up for, the app will donate a subscription to someone in need, says the company.

A book, app and podcast rolled into one, 10% Happier is an app for "fidgety skeptics."(Photo: Change Collective)

Designed for fidgety skeptics, 10% Happier offers clear and simple meditation lessons.

Led by New York Times bestselling author and ABC news anchor Dan Harris who suffered an on-air panic attack in 2004, which prompted him to write the book 10% Happier the app (iOS, web) features quick meditations by many respected teachers, include Salzberg, which you can do whenever you have a spare moment.

10% Happier Free offers free access to a 7-session introductory course, with daily meditation videos (with offline access), guided audio lessons (for when you cant look at a screen), advice and tips to applying mindfulness to your personal and professional lives, and new content added monthly to keep things fresh. While the app is free to download and use, members get a lot more content for $9.99 per month or $79.99 per year. Too bad theres not an Android version, given its the worlds no. 1 operating system.

Reminders to take a time-out arent just on your smartphone, but are prompted by your smartwatch, too. Built into the latest Apple Watch operating system is Breathe, Apples own app that encourages you to relax, focus, and (you guessed it), breathe.

Youll feel a slight tap on your wrist every four hours, and when you glance down at the screen the app will ask you to start a session, if youre able to. The app will guide you through some deep breaths over a one-minute session of seven breaths, but you can tweak these session lengths. Follow the animated circles on the screen to inhale and exhale, plus you can feel a tap on your wrist to inhale, if you want to do this with your eyes closed.

A summary screen, with heart rate info, is shown at the end.

Other recommended meditation apps for both iOS and Android include Buddhify, The Mindfulness App, Take A Break and Omvana.

Follow Marc on Twitter: @marc_saltzman. E-mail him at askmarcsaltzman@gmail.com.

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Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

'The Rules Do Not Apply' is a meditation on grief Pittsburgh Post-Gazette This book doesn't pretend to be anything but a meditation on grief, in the tradition of Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking and Cheryl Strayed. In the preface, the author writes, It has been made overwhelmingly clear to me now that anything ...

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'The Rules Do Not Apply' is a meditation on grief - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Mindfulness is a type of meditation thats said to enhance emotional well-being. Its become extremely popular in recent years, with major companies such as Google, Goldman Sachs and General Motors encouraging its practice amongst their employees. NASA, the US Olympic team and the Navy SEALs are just three organizations said to use this type of meditation as part of their training. Mindfulness has also been promoted by celebrities such as Gwyneth Paltrow, Kobe Bryant and Emma Watson. So what exactly is mindfulness and how is it practiced?

What exactly is mindfulness?

Worry and anxiety often enter our minds via thinking about what has happened in the past or what may happen in the future. Mindfulness is a way of controlling this type of instinctive, yet negative thinking. By being fully focused on the present moment, it means you are not thinking about the past or future and the worries or anxieties that may accompany this. As such, practiced regularly, mindfulness is said to have long-term benefits on how to cope with the stresses of everyday life.

What are the origins of mindfulness?

The name mindfulness is a translation of the Sanskrit word for remembrance or awareness. Its known mostly as a form of Buddhist meditation but is also thought to date back to ancient Hindu traditions 2,500 years ago. It has gained popularity and recognition in recent times, most notably through Jon Kabat-Zinn who introduced the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) Program at the University of Massachusetts in the late 1970s. Mindfulness has continued to grow in popularity, becoming an accepted part of modern-day psychology. Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) is the most recent innovation of this stress-reducing technique, building on work achieved with MBSR.

Who can benefit from practicing mindfulness?

Mindfulness can be beneficial to anyone wishing to reduce stress and worry. Its particularly helpful for people suffering from psychological conditions such as severe anxiety, depression and addiction. Its also thought to help with physical ailments such as heart disease, gastrointestinal problems and chronic pain. This is, in part, because those suffering from medical conditions like depression and physical pain are more prone to negative thoughts.

Mindfulness in more detail.

Without realizing it, at any given moment, the brain is a hub of hyperactive mental activity. Thoughts can be racing away in many different directions, making connections, one thought leading to another and another. Often these thoughts lead to possible negative scenarios or memories of past events that have caused worry, emotional or physical pain. Mindfulness stops that. It creates a barrier between those runaway thoughts and your consciousness. It makes you more aware that this type of negative thinking is there in the first place. By doing this and slowing thoughts down at a given time, it lets you take a moment to just be, to experience a present moment and nothing else.

Mindfulness itself has also highlighted the strong connection between psychological problems and physical problems. In other words, how we think can have an effect on what we physically feel. This is why many people experiencing a condition such as chronic pain say practicing mindfulness helps them cope better with that pain.

Is there any scientific evidence mindfulness works?

There has been a number of controlled, scientific studies that have highlighted the positive effects of mindfulness. For example, a study by neuroscientists from Harvard University showed an eight-week program of mindfulness therapy produced changes in brain structure that were beneficial to patients. Using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans, they revealed that participants practicing twenty seven minutes of mindfulness a day increased grey matter density in the hippocampus, the part of the brain that is associated with compassion, self-awareness and introspection.

Meanwhile, the area of the brain that is associated with depression and anxiety, the amygdala, decreased in density. This made many patients more open to a positive way of thinking thus reducing stress, pain and/or depression. A similar study published in the British medical journal The Lancet concluded that MBCT was just as effective as drug treatment in preventing patients relapsing into depression. Mindfulness being a lot less expensive than medication means its both beneficial for patients and medical practitioners.

How do you practice mindfulness?

To begin the practice of mindfulness, find a quiet environment for yourself. Try to be as fully relaxed as you can be. Regulate your breathing. Become more aware of this breathing rhythm. As you breathe in and out, become aware of your senses. Dont judge or think about them, just sense where you are in the present moment. Sense, for example, your body against the chair. The temperature of the room. Sounds you hear. What you smell. However, dont let thoughts randomly enter your mind or wander off. Whenever you feel this is happening, bring your thoughts back to your breathing rhythm. Only sense that present moment where youre practicing mindfulness. The aim here is to be in control of your thoughts, to make the present moment everything. Once you are only aware of the here and now, you are on your way to successfully practicing mindfulness.

Incorporating mindfulness into your daily life.

Although it can be helpful, its not necessary to be in a completely quiet environment to practise mindfulness. Once you learn the technique or, ideally, adapt a technique thats best suited for yourself, you will be able to practice it almost anywhere. It could be while sitting on a bus or train, at work or during leisure time. Likewise, the amount of time a mindfulness session can last is up to you. For example, you could begin with short periods of around ten minutes a day and build up your time practicing mindfulness to forty minutes a day as you get used to it.

The more you practice mindfulness, the more beneficial it can be. Mindfulness is not a miracle cure for a number of psychological or physical conditions. It is, however, recognized more and more as a very effective help to anyone who wishes to lead a more stress-free life.

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A Mindful Meditation Technique - Chicago Defender

Gisele Bundchen told Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight ShowFriday that meditating has been a great stress reliever in her life and joked that it even helped the New England Patriots win Super Bowl LI.

That was a very big nail-biter, Bundchen said about the big game, which was one of the greatest comebacks in sports history.

Surrounded by intense Atlanta Falcons fans, Bundchen first handled her stress by screaming and praying and calling my family and asking everyone to pray, she told Fallon. After that? I started meditating, because it was the only thing that could calm me down, because it was kind of crazy, she said.

The Pats wound up defeating the Falcons 34-28 in overtime, coming back from a 25-point deficit.

I channeled some great energy and, really, I feel like a little responsible, Bundchen said, laughing.I brought love and peace and clarity and calmness into the game. It shifted after that, I must tell you.

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Gisele told Jimmy Fallon her meditation skills helped the Pats win ... - Boston.com

Theres no doubt thatGisele Bndchenis a busy woman, but thanks to hertranscendental meditation routine, the legendary supermodel is able to juggle all aspects of her hectic life.

Speaking with PEOPLE, the 36-year-oldreveals how the natural technique has changed the way she handles the stresses of her life and what works best for her.

Meditation has been a greattool for me in my life. It helps to quiet my mind and helps me see things more clearly. It brings a sense of peace to my day. Meditation provides me space to rebalance and refocus when things are at their busiest, she tells PEOPLE in this weeks issue.

When I started practicing Yoga in my early 20s,I also started practicing meditation, Bndchen adds. I am very fortunate to have learned at an early age.

Transcendental meditation, which is a natural, effortless technique that is practiced sitting comfortably in a chair with the eyes close for 15-20 minutes (twice a day), is just one form of meditation thatBndchen practices on her own.

Gisele had been meditating and doing other forms of mediation for a while, Bndchens meditation coach, Bob Roth, tells PEOPLE. A few years ago she heard about TM and she loved it. She also loves the work of the David Lynch Foundation, so I think thats how she came to it.

For Bndchen, who is mom to daughter Vivian Lake, 4, and son Benjamin Rein, 7, she knows exactly what time works best for her and finds it easy to practice just about anywhere.

I prefer to practice early in the am, before the kids are up. Probably because that is when things are silent. I feelabigdifference in my mood when I practice regularly. Meditation brings so much clarity for me. I love it! she admits. I can practice in most places. Sitting in my bed is probably my favorite though. But on an airplane,in a hotel when traveling or in the passenger seat on the way to workreally anywhere!Meditation is a trip you take inward.

Like anyone else,Bndchen experiences her fair share of stress, but being able tomeditate helps her refocus and deal with her day to day responsibilities.

The busy life we lead today generates a lot of stress.We are overloaded withinformation andovercommittedto so many tasks in our homes, jobs, causes I think meditation is a wonderful tool to deal with stress, she admits.

Her profession and her career is so outward directed. There are so many demands and challenges whether it be her business, modeling, family or whatever, adds Roth. Mediation twice a day allows her to settle down inside and reconnect with her own true self. It helps her handle the stress, the demands and the pressures like nothing else.

It also allows her to enjoy her life even more, he adds. Its not just the question about managing the stresses, but getting to actually enjoy her life and her beautiful family and the opportunities that she has. She speaks with eloquently about reconnecting and keeping that connection with her self.

She says it allows her to stay at the top of her game, Roth continues. I think shes like other people at the top of their game who stayed at the top for a long time. They all say mediation helps them get to the top and stay at the top.

For more on the David Lynch Foundation and transcendental meditation click here.

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How Transcendental Meditation Keeps Gisele Bndchen at the Top of Her Game - PEOPLE.com

Ten minutes of mindful meditation per day can be enough to help people prone to anxious thoughts focus more effectively on tasks in the present moment, according to new research.

Practicing mindful meditation on a daily basis can help anxious individuals focus on tasks in the present moment, reducing the likelihood of repetitive off-topic thoughts, a hallmark of anxiety, according to researchers from Canadas University of Waterloo.

Researchers studied 82 students who experience anxiety.

They were asked to carry out a computer-based task while being interrupted several times to assess their ability to stay focused on the task at hand.

Participants were then split into two groups at random. Before being reassessed, a control group was asked to listen to an audio story while the other group took part in a short meditation exercise.

The researchers saw a reduction in off-task thoughts in the meditators, who were also better able to stay focused on the task at hand.

Mind wandering accounts for nearly half of any persons daily stream of consciousness. For people with anxiety, repetitive off-task thoughts can negatively affect their ability to learn, to complete tasks, or even function safely, explains Mengran Xu, a researcher and PhD candidate at Waterloo.

Another benefit of meditation was that it appeared to help anxious people shift their attention from their own internal worries to the external world and the present moment.

For beginners taking up meditation, the aim is to concentrate attention solely on breathing throughout the 10-minute session, without setting any specific goals.

Follow the flow of air by taking a deep breath in then a long breath out, before marking the short, natural pause before taking the next breath in.

Just focus on your breathing.

Systematically bringing thoughts and attention back to breathing keeps the mind focused on the present moment. The next step is to become mindfully conscious of all parts of the body in contact with the floor or the chair on which you are sitting.

The study is published in the journal Consciousness and Cognition. AFP Relaxnews

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Do this meditation daily to improve your mental focus - Star2.com

HARTFORD Escape from the stresses of daily life with an hour of light yoga and meditation from 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. Saturday, May 6, at the Lewis and Clark Confluence Tower, 435 Confluence Drive.

This free event will feature certified yoga instructors Theresa Franklin and Gail Herzog from Be Well Now in Alton. They will bring their meditation and yoga skills to Davis Plaza in celebration of National Garden Meditation Day. A few yoga mats will be available to use, but there is limited availability, so it is recommended people bring their own mats. Although this is a free event, there is a charge to tour the tower.

After the class, be sure to take a tour to see the impact local flooding has had on the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi rivers from 50, 100 and 150 feet above ground.

The tower is open Wednesdays through Saturdays from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. and noon to 5 p.m. Sundays. Admission is $6 for adults, $5 for veterans and active military and senior citizens, $4 for children 12 and younger and children 2 and younger are free. Group rates are available for 12 or more people and reservations can be made by calling the Alton Regional Convention and Visitors Bureau at (618) 465-6676.

Yoga at the Tower is sponsored by SMS Engineering. For information, call (618) 251-9101.

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Hartford event to mark National Garden Meditation Day - AdVantage News

Thursday, May 04, 2017 2:57 p.m. EDT

By Ronnie Cohen

(Reuters Health) - In a college course that included meditation training, women were more likely than men to report that the practice improved their mood, a small study found.

Meditation is an increasingly popular form of mental training on college campuses and off. Research suggests it may reduce blood pressure, gastrointestinal symptoms, anxiety, depression and insomnia, according to the National Institutes of Health (http://bit.ly/1BQ4I9l).

Practitioners direct and redirect their attention to the present moment, often by focusing on their breath.

At the end of a mindfulness meditation course at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, female students, on average, rated their so-called negative affect significantly lower than at the beginning, indicating better mood. But among male students, the only difference was a very slight increase in their negative affect, possibly indicating a worsened mood, researchers reported in Frontiers in Psychology.

Senior author Willoughby Britton cautioned against concluding that men fail to reap rewards from meditation, though. Instead, the Brown professor of psychiatry and human behavior said the gender differences could reflect variations in the ways men and women tend to regulate their emotions.

There has just been too much data - both anecdotal and empirical - suggesting that many men benefit from mindfulness, she said in an email.

Dr. Madhav Goyal, who practices meditation and studies it as a professor at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore, pointed to a group dedicated to practicing meditation.

Most of the monks who meditate are men, he said in a phone interview.

Previous research validates the benefits of meditation for men and women, Britton and Goyal both said.

Britton and her colleagues analyzed self-reported surveys from 77 students, 41 men and 36 women who completed 12 weeks of seminars and meditation labs between 2008 and 2011. The labs met three times a week and included about 30 minutes of Buddhist or Daoist meditation practices.

At the end of the course, women self-reported greater gains in their ability to observe their feelings and describe them as well as their ability not to judge or react, the study found.

Men also showed improvements in self-compassion as well as in not judging and not reacting. But they reported an average 3.7 percent increase in their negative affect score, compared to women who showed an average 11.6 percent drop in negative affect.

Though the mens average negative affect score went up slightly, some of the men probably improved their mood, while the training probably did not lift the spirits of all the women, Britton said.

We may need to pay more attention to issues of diversity and individual differences that could impact how different people respond to mindfulness interventions, she said. The differences we found may not be about gender per se but about different emotion-regulation strategies or goals.

When faced with challenging feelings, women tend to ruminate, and men tend to find ways to be distracted, Britton said.

While facing ones difficulties and feeling ones emotions may seem to be universally beneficial, it does not take into account that there may be different cultural expectations for men and women around emotionality, she said.

Men and women may process meditation skills differently, said Goyal, who was not involved in the study. That said, the point of meditation is not to reduce negative affect, though people do use the practice to that end.

The point of meditation is to learn to be in the present moment and through this practice over time, one gains greater understanding of themselves, Goyal said.

Sydney Tan, a Brown senior who took the class as a sophomore and served as a discussion leader this year, has seen many men who benefited from the class and some women who struggled with it.

I actually had more women talk to me about the difficulties of sitting for a long time and being still, she said in a phone interview.

Its more complex than just the duality of this is the womens experience, and this is the mens experience, she said. Its more nuanced.

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/2ozb4tj Frontiers in Psychology, April 20, 2017.

(In paragraph 19, corrects name to Tan, from Tam)

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Mindfulness meditation may work differently for men and women ... - WHTC

Forbes

Mindfulness Meditation May Help Reduce Mind-Wandering In People With Anxiety Forbes Several years ago a now famous Harvard study found that people's minds wander about 50% of the timethat is, if you stop a person randomly (this particular study used an iPhone app to do it) and ask them what they're thinking about, half the time it ...

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Mindfulness Meditation May Help Reduce Mind-Wandering In People With Anxiety - Forbes

I used to be like you. I knew meditation could help reduce stress, curb anxiety, and help me sleep. But I never sat down and actually did it. Now that Ive followed my breath every day for 734 days in a row, meditation has become a huge part of my life. And it has such obvious, noticeable benefits that I can't imagine my life without it.

I began meditating because Headspace, the app I use (and for whom I occasionally write meditation articles, full disclosure), hooked me in. It seemed like a game: I didnt want to lose my streak of meditating nine or 10 days in a row. While the game-ification of working out might be garbage, it turned meditation into something that taught me skills as I achieved higher levels of meditation (it didn't hurt that, after each session, I felt fantastic). Headspace isn't the only option, either: Apps like Calm and ABC newsman Dan Harris 10% Happierare great, too.

When I told my friends I was getting into meditating, I was teased. Was I going to become a zen master, start wearing beads, and put my hair in a man bun? (Answers: Probably not, nope, and Im balding.) Id explain calmly, because I'm so chill now that I was just sitting down and closing my eyes for 10 minutes a day. Almost every time, the friend admitted that a 10-minute shutdown would probably help them, too.

Yes, meditation has helped me become a calmer person. But it also had unexpected benefits. I don't take my thoughts as emotions as seriously anymore. And, maybe most usefully, I'm better at focusing on the present. The form of meditation I practice most often requires that I pay attention to my breath. Sure, I get lost in thought and drift off. But I got better at realizing that when I had a thought, I could acknowledge it and go back to breathing. Now, instead of getting lost in unhelpful thoughts, Im focused on the task at hand. This makes me more productive and more appreciative of whats actually happening around me, rather than worrying about the future or dwelling on the past.

But it took some extra effort to turn meditation into a consistent practice and not just something I do when Im stressed. After all, studies have shown clear benefits to the brain. Here are the tricks that worked for me:

Ill tell you a secret. After a few months, I stopped needing those reminders. I meditate because its a part of my day, like brushing my teeth. I never forget to brush my teeth, so why would I forget to meditate? And since Im guessing you brush your teeth every day, I bet you can take the time to do this, too.

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What I Learned from Meditating Every Day for Two Years - Men's Journal