Whether you’re loved up or fed up on Valentine’s Day, this meditation app has the cure

Why it matters to you

Mindfulness is one of the hottest trends at the moment, but you need to choose the right app to really understand and feel the benefits

“I simply don’t have time.” How often do you make that statement? If you’re like us, then pretty often, so if it was suggested that you take a few moments to meditate each day, you’d probably derisively laugh it off as an impossibility. Simple Habit is an app that understands the problem, but knows the benefits of meditation, therefore makes it easy to squeeze it into your daily routine.

Simple Habit contains fast, five-minute mindfulness meditation plans, which can be listened to over headphones at any time, anywhere. The guided sessions are run by experienced meditation teachers, and although five minutes may sound like a short time for meditation — we often consider such a practice to involve siting cross-legged on the floor for hours — with mindfulness, the benefits come after short sessions.

What are these benefits? The app promises better sleep, more focus, improved memory, and crucially, less stress. It’s that final benefit that led Yunha Kim, CEO of Simple Habit, to create the app in the first place. She discovered meditation when stress was at its highest while running her previous startup, Locket, saying learning to meditate “changed the way I dealt with stress.”

Now, she wants others with busy, nonstop lives to reap the same rewards. Apparently, just one Simple Habit session can help focus attention; but obviously, to really get the best from the app, it requires some dedication. Simple Habit says five minutes a day for two to four weeks will really supercharge the initial effect.

Take the stress out of Valentine’s Day

Valentine’s Day, an annual event where restaurants are packed, flower shops are like Best Buy on Black Friday, and many (many) chocolates are handed out with declarations of undying love. It’s a busy, and sometimes pretty stressful time. Whether you’ve got a date lined up or not, the stresses that come along with Valentine’s Day can quickly be lessened using Simple Habit’s new meditations.

Six new guided meditations are available to coincide with February 14, including those to help you stay calm before a date, maintain a healthy relationship with your partner, or to mend a broken heart. The sessions are around five minutes, so you won’t have to plan too far ahead, but some categories have multiple sessions. Several different members of Simple Habit’s guidance team run the sessions. These are permanent additions to the Simple Habit library, and can be tried out during the 30 day free trial.

Additionally, if you’re without a date this Valentine’s Day, Simple Habit has teamed up with dating app Coffee Meets Bagel to help change that. If you already use Simple Habit as a premium member, then you can claim 1,000 free “beans” to spend in Coffee Meets Bagel, worth $20. Follow this link for more details on the offer. Plus, if you’re new to Simple Habit and want to try the premium version, and get going with Coffee Meets Bagel, then you can get a three-day premium trial of Simple Habit here, especially for Valentine’s Day.

Availability and price

Initially only for Apple’s iOS operating system, Simple Habit is available for Android, and as a web app. The mobile apps are free to download, but to really enjoy the app, you’ll need to pay a subscription. For both iOS and Android, it’s $12 per month, or $100 per year. If you’re really keen, a $300 one-off payment gets you a lifetime subscription. Alternatively, sessions can be purchased individually for less.

The app is packed with content. Meditations address everything from getting better sleep to getting over a breakup, and the available sessions total two years worth of content, with more added each week. Sessions can last for five, 10, or 20 minutes, and there are many different guides, so you’re not always listening to the same person. Beyond the meditation aspect, the app includes podcasts, a calendar to track progress, monthly challenges, and reminders to get meditating.

Hippies

Don’t worry if all this sounds like hippy hokum. There are several studies that show mindfulness mediation can not only reduce stress and anxiety levels, but also to train the brain to get better at multi-tasking, and to free it creatively. Apple has recently drawn attention to mindfulness meditation with the addition of the Breathe feature inside WatchOS 3, which will be released later this year. The Apple Watch app presents breathing exercises, designed to help improve focus and reduce stress.

More: Say ‘om’: Now you can meditate wearing Samsung’s Gear VR

Created with the help of a Harvard psychologist and several mediation teachers, Simple Habit has sessions designed for everyone, ready to prepare the mind for a task, or particular situation. Kim told Digital Trends that a surgeon used the app with success during the early beta test, “to focus better before performing surgery.” If that’s not a glowing recommendation, we don’t know what is.

In the first six months after Simple Habit’s release, people in 115 countries have used it to meditate for a collective total of 20,000 hours.

Download for iOS

Article originally published 06-16. Updated on 02-10-2017 by Andy Boxall: Added in details regarding Simple Habit’s Valentine’s Day programs.