The Best Free Guided Meditation App? — Picture courtesy: Balance App Twitter Feed

Consistency, pricing and a lack of variety has always been a major issue when it comes to guided meditation apps. Beginners are always in a dilemma whether paid meditation apps are effective or are they even worth it. This also stems from a lack of pre-testing because trial periods of the best in the market are certainly not enough to judge the app in it's entirety.

What is Balance App?

Balance is an artificial intelligence based guided meditation app that customises your sessions according to your needs, pace & progress. They're constantly updating the app to add more meditation sessions.

Personalized meditations driven by artificial intelligence

At the beginning of every session you're asked questions regarding your relationship (for the lack of a better word) with meditation. At the end of each session, the AI requests for feedback as well.

Meditation Exercises

Before this I had no idea there were different types of Meditation skills that you could develop. This can then be extrapolated to your daily life, especially during emotional crises and downtimes.

The Balance App offers to hone 10 such skills namely-

Breath Focus
Body Scan
Labelling
Loving- Kindness
Spotlighting

Breath Control
Awareness
Visualization
Innovation

Self Direction

Daily meditation vs Singles vs 10 day plans

Daily meditation tab offers a session as per the mood defined by you.

The Singles meditation sessions are pre-defined. They're perfect when you are not in a state to make decisions due to the maelstrom raging in your mind.

Finally, the 10 day plans are curated as per the meditator's level of expertise.

Every session builds on particular meditation skills mentioned previously.

Meditation for sleep

From sleep meditations and sleep sounds to mindfulness exercises for before and after sleep, one can make the maximum out of this free trial version. Sleep for kids meditation session deserves a special mention.

Unique Mindfulness Exercises

Guided mindfulness activities like Eating helps you inculcate gratitude for the simplest things. There's a meditation session solely for Procrastination in the Singles section.

Guided Meditation Voices

You're free to choose between Ofosu and Leah's voice. Both of them are certified meditation coaches.

How long does a meditation session last

You have the freedom to choose the lengths of your sessions in multiples of five- 5 minutes, 10 minutes and so on. As you progress, the duration choices keep increasing towards longer sessions.

How to measure meditation progress

The profile section houses a calendar and session history which are crucial elements for consistency.

The skills tab gives you an in depth insight of the individual meditation skills mentioned earlier. This along with batches and total hours meditated provides a boost to one's will power.

Your feedback forms provides the base for the AI to measure meditation progress.

Is Balance app free

Good things always comes at a price albeit not always monetarily. I might even say that this too is individualized like the rest of the app.

The Balance App is free for a year on both Google Play store as well as the Apple App Store.

Having used this app consistently for the past few months, I can that 365 days are enough to make the most out of this Guided Meditation App before you're no more a novice. One complete year is also more than enough time to start seeing the benefits of meditation.

Final Verdict

Whether the app is free or paid, depends entirely on the consistency of the individual. You can scale upto two sessions per day or stick to 10 day plans with sporadic Singles or Daily sessions.

Which brings me to the ever looming question-

Is Balance the best free meditation app?

The answer is again largely subjective. But if you can gain the most out of their year long trial version and if it caters to your needs; then it certainly deserve a small space in your phone memory.

Thank you for your time!

The Best Free Guided Meditation App?