It’s been a difficult year for teachers. At Wacom we’ve been amazed to see how quickly schools have adapted to the challenges brought by COVID-19. We’re here to support educators with our range products perfect for online learning.
Maybe you’ve been thinking about your own self-care? Now is an excellent opportunity to dedicate some time to your mental well-being. We’ve found five apps perfect for building mindfulness into your daily routine.
1: Calm
With over 50 million downloads, it’s no surprise that Calm is ranked the number one app for Sleep, Meditation and Relaxation. They were named Apple’s App of the Year in 2017, Google Play Editors’ Choice in 2018 and can boast over 70,000 five-star reviews.
Calm reduces stress and anxiety and improves your sleep and performance with their enormous library of programs. A popular feature is their ‘Daily Calm’ 10-minute sessions to start the day exploring different topics and themes. It’s useful if you’d like to build mindfulness into your daily routine but need it to fit around your busy teaching schedule.
If you’re interested in learning meditation, Calm offers a week-long introduction called ‘7 Days of Calm’ that covers the basics. The site is full of interesting sections to explore including relaxing stretches, soothing music and sleep stories (grown up bedtime stories) to help you get to sleep. You’ll also love their blog containing mindfulness tips.
2: Simple Habit
Created by a former investment banker on Wall Street, Simple Habit was launched for busy professionals with limited time to build in mindfulness. It was Google Play Award Winner in 2018. It’s perfect when you have a heavy teaching workload to juggle and would struggle to manage long meditation sessions.
Simple Habits is organised around quick five-minute meditations for common situations. You can use it on the go wherever you are. It includes simple lessons about how to control your breathing with sleep and wellness plans.
You can use the free download or upgrade to the paid version, especially if you want to listen to the sessions offline. There are monthly and yearly subscription options.
3: My Life: Stop, Breathe & Think
My Life has over 20,000 5-star ratings and was named Best App of 2019 by Healthline.com. It featured as an Apple App of the Day in 2020. Their study of 10,000 users of the app showed 82% rated themselves as less anxious after using it for ten sessions.
As it includes meditations for children and teens, it’s a good one to recommend to your students. Along with Calm, they were named a Top Pick For Learning by Common Sense Education in 2019. You’ll find useful topics including improving sleep and reducing anxiety with a range of short mindfulness activities and games.
The app has a free version including meditations. There’s also lots of great content on their YouTube channel. Choose the premium upgrade to access yoga and acupressure videos and over 400 activities. You can track your mood and it offers a daily check-in. My Life are very supportive of teachers. Watch out for special offers for educators and check out their education community on Facebook.
4: The Mindfulness App
On The Mindfulness App you’ll find a simple five-day introduction to mindfulness and a range of guided and silent sessions that range from 3 to 30 minutes. Their extensive library contains meditations from renowned teachers.
The app includes a journal to record your progress and the reminder function is useful to help you build meditation into your daily life. It will stop you forgetting on those busy days in the classroom. You’ll enjoy the statistics to track your progress and personalised reminders based on your habits.
It’s free to download and use the app with a premium subscription option that can be paid monthly or annually to access all the resources.
5: Headspace
The Headspace app is rooted in scientific research with an in-house science department and 25 published studies to their name. They are involved in over 65 research studies to validate the use of meditation to improve sleep, reduce stress and increase focus.
Headspace boasts of 40 million users and they report that 10 days of consistent use is enough to reduce stress. You can use the app on your phone, download to listen offline or access through their website. It includes guided meditations, mindfulness exercises and a range of sleep music and nature sounds to listen to at bedtime.
You only need a few minutes each day to commit to using Headspace. It offers personalised plans to let you track your progress and you can choose topics you’d like to focus on including sleep, stress and pain management. After a free trial of Headspace, choose monthly or annual payment plans for full access to all the features.
Mindfulness as a teacher
Teaching has always been intense but currently it’s more pressured than ever. You’ve been adapting to rapid changes as online learning increases. It’s important that you find time to rest and replenish to avoid burn out. Apps are a popular way to explore mediation and add mindfulness into your daily routine. There’s one to suit everyone.
At Wacom we want to help you reduce your teacher workload by removing the stress of online learning. Check out our useful information for educators to see how you can use Wacom pen tablets to help you with t
