The narrator is Australian and has a very soothing voice. Two problems with Aware that I found is the background sounds, which sometimes tend to spike in volume and completely through me off the meditation practice (I ended up disabling it altogether) and the fact that its Google Fit integration is a bit fidgety, a bit of hit-and-miss.īack to the table of contents 1 Giant Mind App (Android, iOS)Īnother app I used on and off was 1 Giant Mind.
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I got the Pro version and I think it was very much worth it. Aware also guides you through body scanning and body relaxation techniques, which I personally find very useful. I also found that the techniques used and taught in Aware are recommended in other meditation references, such as the wonderful “The Mind Illuminated: A Complete Meditation Guide Integrating Buddhist Wisdom and Brain Science”, by Culadasa, including counting your breaths (up to 10) and being aware (in addition to being mindful). Although not as well polished as the Calm app, Aware leads you progressively to longer meditations, and the narrator leaves you space to truly meditate, with no lectures of any kind - just guidance. I really enjoyed the narrator’s voice, accent and guidance, and I still do. So I started looking for other alternatives, which is how I ended up finding Aware.
In the beginning, it made sense (as I said, I was a bit edgy about being left all alone with my thoughts, remember?), but after a while it was just too distracting, as most meditations lead you to a relaxed state and then are almost some sort of lecture about the topic at hand.īack to the table of contents Aware App (Android, iOS) I found the default narrator’s voice, tone and guidance a bit too patronising (“breathe in and out… in and out… in and out…” - I got the idea on the first “in and out”, thank you very much) and overall, there was too much talking for my taste. While it was very useful to get me started with meditation, I soon outgrew Calm. More than anything, my reasoning went, could mindfulness meditation help quiet down my brain and bring it to a lower base level, so that it could endure more stimulation without the pain and other side-effects of this terrible condition? Over the years, I realised that the brain of a migraineur is overly sensitive and hyper-excitable therefore, any stimuli that for non-migraineurs would be normal for the former could unleash a migraine. Particularly regarding the migraines, which accompany me since I can remember, I read some studies and recommendations that meditating could be helpful. “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
After all, I needed to do something different, as what I was doing clearly was not working anymore.
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Credits - Left: Photo by Adrien Olichon on Unsplash / Right: Photo by Ian Keefe on Unsplash.Ĭlose to my forty years of age and after a very rough patch - which involved, among other things, a very toxic work environment, a hateful boss, a burn-out and full-blown migraines way more often than it was endurable for me - I finally decided to try out meditating. Left: What my mind is / Right: What my mind should be.
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