Sunday Appreciation: Headspace

Toward the end of October, I added Headspace back to my morning routine.

I first heard about the app from this 2015 article in The New Yorker. At the time, I had used Insight Timer to help me meditate, an app I loved for its simplicity and the fact that it was free. But Headspace appeared interesting, so I tried it. I used it briefly, but I missed Insight Timer, so I returned to it and moved on from Headspace. A few years later, I learned that Headspace offered free lifetime access for educators, so I applied and upgraded my account, and I began to use it again to meditate. Like before, I used it for a few months, tried their new meditation courses, but for some reason, I couldn’t stick with it. Around that time, I had learned that Calm also offered lifetime access for educators, so I applied and used that app for a while. I liked this one more because they had a nice daily meditation, so I stuck with Calm.

Sometime last year, I stopped meditating. I think I had hit a plateau, and I no longer felt like meditating was bringing my life any value. So I stopped, and I didn’t miss it. At least, it wasn’t something I craved. All those years of meditating didn’t mean much to me anymore, and I felt like I was okay with that. As you might be able to guess, I wasn’t okay with that. Over time, I had started to feel on edge more and more. It’s remarkable sometimes how something could affect your life so much, but you only realize by how much when it’s gone. I had lost something when I stopped meditating, and the only way to get it back was to meditate again.

So—toward the end of October, I added Headspace back to my morning routine.

And I love it.

I setup Headspace to send me a reminder every day at 8:15am, and every day at around that time, I open the app and start my day with The Wake Up, then I follow it with that day’s meditation. Sometimes they include nature videos, videos of animals in the jungle or the sea or the desert, and these ten minute videos have been a joy to watch in the afternoon and evening. At the moment, I’m only meditating for ten minutes every morning, but I am planning to add another meditation later in the day.

My current streak stands at 39 days, and I’ve been meditating everywhere, at home, at work, and in different times throughout the day. I feel like I’ve regained a piece of whatever it was I was missing—some mental edge I had lost over the last year. Will I ever quit again? Honestly—probably. I’m human, after all. At the moment, though, I’m appreciating what this app has done for my life and for my mental health.