Before Aura, the Idea of Meditating Was Overwhelming—But Now I Feel Like a Pro

As a health and wellness writer, I’m familiar with the benefits of meditation and how the practice can help reduce stress, improve sleep, and increase self-awareness. But even with that understanding, I’ve struggled over the years to develop my own meditation practice. 

After repeatedly trying and failing to incorporate meditation into my daily life, I had mostly given up on the practice. But then I discovered the world of meditation apps which is when I found Aura. 

Available on iOS and Android, Aura is a wellness app designed to help users develop mindfulness practices, improve emotional well-being, and support healthier sleep (another challenge I’ve faced for years). After using the app daily for a month, I am starting to see firsthand how meditation, breathwork, and hypnosis can help me manage stress and feel more grounded. 

What I First Learned About Aura 

Launched in 2017, Aura is a wellness app with an expansive library of expert-created “tracks” designed to boost mood and improve well-being. It uses artificial intelligence to gather data on how you are using the app and provides personalized recommendations based on this information.

Each track offers a particular mindfulness practice or experience, like a guided meditation, a lesson on gratitude, or a short story focused on helping you unwind at the end of the day.

Here’s a look at some of the different types of tracks Aura provides and what they can help with.

• Meditation is a practice that helps train your mind to focus your attention and awareness on a particular activity, thought, object, or bodily sensation. 
• Hypnosis is a state of deep physical and mental relaxation that can help you gain clarity and feel a sense of calm. 
• Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is a therapeutic practice that helps reshape negative thought patterns. 
• Breathwork refers to a set of breathing practices designed to help relieve stress and increase relaxation.
• Short stories can help you unwind and fall asleep, boost your creativity, or inspire you. 
• Motivational tracks from life coaches can help you set goals, improve confidence, and practice gratitude. 

How I Signed Up for Aura

Aura offers a free version of the app that allows users to access one three-minute session a day for a week (but only if you sign up for the annual plan). I was looking for more than that, so I opted for the premium subscription (the monthly plan), which gave me unlimited access to everything the app has to offer, from meditation and breathwork to coaching, stories, music, hypnosis, and more. 

After downloading the app, I set up my profile by answering a few short questions about what I was hoping to get out of the app. I was first asked to select what I was most interested in from a set of options, including:

• Boosting energy
• Improving focus
• Morning meditation
• Relaxation
• Managing stress
• Sleep
• Parenting
• Self-esteem 
• Gratitude
• Beginner meditation
• Advanced meditation
• Dealing with anger

After that, I was prompted to select reasons why I wanted to focus on these specific areas. I could select answers such as “to have a healthy response to stress” and “to find more peaceful moments in my day.” Other questions pertained to demographic information like my race, age, and gender identity.

How I Started Using Aura

My Aura homepage showed me suggestions based on my answers. I could also record my mood each day through a mood tracker at the top of the app’s home screen. After recording how I felt that day by choosing from options like “Anxious” or “Stressed” to “Great” or “Grateful,” the app recommended a meditation based on how I felt.

The recommendations were a great starting point, but I loved that I wasn’t locked into just the tracks recommended to me.

At first glance, the staggering amount of options felt overwhelming, but I was able to browse tracks by category (meditation, breathwork, stories, etc.), which gave me a sense of what was available and what I was drawn to. 

From there I was able to save the tracks I was most interested in and even combine tracks to make playlists. I selected sleep meditations, relaxing sleep stories, and breathwork exercises to listen to at night, as well as energizing tracks to help me set intentions for the morning. 

Aura’s tracks vary in length. You can choose from several short three- to 10-minute tracks or longer 30- to 60-minute sessions. This was a huge draw for me as a meditation beginner. Starting with a five-minute session feels a lot less intimidating than trying to meditate for half an hour right off the bat.

When I first started using Aura, I created a few playlists with some short tracks that looked interesting to me, like an introduction to chakras, about which I didn’t know much and was curious to learn more. I also selected some meditations focused on gratitude and sleep stories that looked soothing. 

In the mornings, I’d open the app and log how I was feeling in the mood tracker on the home screen. Then I’d turn on the recommended meditation based on my mood. These morning meditations were usually pretty short and an easy way for me to set positive intentions for the day.

Using Aura to Help Me Sleep

At night I have always struggled with sleep. I have an anxiety disorder, which can sometimes make falling asleep difficult, especially when I’m stressed. Given this history, I was skeptical the app would change anything for me. But, to my surprise, many of Aura's sleep stories and guided meditations really did help quiet the anxious thoughts that often keep me tossing and turning at night. 

One 17-minute track in particular, called “Sleep Meditation With Mantra,” did the trick one evening after a chaotic day.

All the tracks, especially the ones focused on sleep, are remarkably soothing. The teachers and coaches talk slowly against a background of nature sounds that really do make you feel like you’re somewhere else. Whenever I turn on a track, whether it’s a story, meditation, or soothing nature sounds, I can physically feel my body relax.

Not every track I listened to was a hit. A few of the short stories weren’t engaging for me and some of the coaching tracks didn’t seem particularly applicable to my life. But there are plenty of tracks to choose from and for every track that didn’t seem up my alley, I was able to find a different one that works for me. 

Pros and Cons

My month-long experience with Aura was positive and there are a lot of things I liked about the app. But no app is perfect. Here’s a look at some pros and cons.

Final Thoughts

I’ll admit I was skeptical when I first downloaded Aura, but the experience was better than I’d anticipated. With thousands of tracks to choose from, I found there was always something new to learn. And, as a beginner, I was happy to see shorter meditations alongside longer ones. 

The more I used the app, the better my recommendations became, and after a couple weeks, I felt like the app knew just what I needed to unwind after a long day. Overall, Aura has helped me experience some of the benefits of meditation I hadn’t been able to reach before. If you’re new to meditation like I was, Aura is a great place to start.