Most individuals walk around with an overload of micro stressors. Whether it’s worrying about finances, getting into a tiff with a friend, or dreading speaking to your boss – it’s likely that your cortisol levels are high.
One way to reduce these stressors is to set aside time for self care every day. Self care doesn’t mean you need to whip out the bubbles and have an entire spa day. Instead, it can be as simple as taking 20 minutes for yourself to practice deep breathing exercises.
We recommend building it into your daily routine via self-care apps! These are apps designed to help busy individuals build self care habits and rituals. If you’re lost and don’t know where to begin, we’ve compiled a list of self care apps for you to try out!
This is the list of our recommendations for self care apps:
- ClassPass
- Insight Timer
- Talkspace
- Flora
- Sayana
- Routines by Care/of
- Fabulous
ClassPass
Did you know that we offer more than just fitness classes? That’s right! You can book a variety of wellness, spa and beauty appointments directly through the app. Great choices for self care include: infrared sauna time, physical therapy appointments and even facials! We also provide remote opportunities for meditation and guided breathing.
Insight Timer
Insight Timer is the leading free meditation app. Their vast library of guided meditations can help with everything from easing you into sleep, reducing stress and increasing mindfulness. They include cameos from celebrities such as Russell Brand and Giselle Bündchen. Download it today.
Talkspace
Talkspace is a text, video and phone based app that connects you quickly and easily to a therapist. There’s no need to physically visit a therapist’s office, instead you can download the app and get help right from your living room. Talkspace offers traditional therapy, psychiatric evaluations, couples therapy and teen therapy. Talkspace is not free, but they do accept insurance and accept a large list of insurance providers.
Flora
Flora focuses on helping you stay focused by providing an incentive: the longer you go without using your phone, the more “trees” that will grow in your virtual garden. It’s a soothing visual reminder of the growth daily habits can bring to our lives. Flora is free and also has a chrome extension for desktop!
Sayana
You are prompted to choose a goal when you download the Sayana app: reduce anxiety, fix negative thinking, improve self esteem and develop gratitude. The app is a conversation and narration based app, focused on helping you process your feelings and thoughts in a healthy, safe environment. This is not a free app, but they do have a seven day free trial. If you are looking for an app where you can work through your feelings and have structured check-ins, Sayana is a great solution.
Routines by Care/of
Routines by Care/of is a free app that helps you build routines based on your goals, then assess how these routines make you feel and helps you track these routines over time. You receive a personalized “wellness score” that is an indicator of how these routines are helping or hindering your daily life.
For example, it tracks your energy levels and will report on your average energy level based on if you meditated that day or didn’t meditate. It’s a great, free way to track habits that help you with self care every single day!
Fabulous
Similar to Routines by Care/of, Fabulous is an app that helps you build routines and incorporate self care into your daily life. But Fabulous is slightly more structured: they provide a coach! This coach provides daily feedback and helps you stay on track to reach your goals. For someone who needs external motivation, this might be the app for you.
All of these apps can be downloaded on the app store.
Source: The apps are included in this article based on their review count within the apple store and the experience when testers downloaded the apps for themselves.