I Wanted to Develop Better Meditation Habits So I Tried the UCLA Mindful App

These days, I find myself growing increasingly stressed and overloaded. Whether it’s social media, TV, the pressure of working two jobs, raising three young children, or just maintaining my household, I feel like I can rarely escape the ever-growing to-do list. So when I heard about UCLA’s Mindful app, I was intrigued: Maybe this would help. 

The UCLA Mindful app was created by the University of California, Los Angeles Mindful Awareness Research Center, and it is designed to encourage you to try meditation throughout the day and practice mindfulness regularly. It’s also a mostly free app (except for nine classes) because UCLA is a public university and it receives funding from grants and individual donors—a fact that I really appreciated because although therapists have recommended meditation and mindfulness to me, I’ve never really been able to successfully practice them before. So, while I was hopeful that the app might be able to help me change that, I wasn’t sure I was ready to invest a lot of money into learning a practice that I’d been unsuccessful at trying on my own. 

The good news is that I found this app to be hugely beneficial in helping me better incorporate mindfulness practices into my day-to-day life and helping me feel more productive. Here’s my review.

How Much Does the UCLA Mindful App Cost?

The UCLA Mindful App (which is available for both iOS and Android phones, by the way) is mostly a free app, hosting a number of free resources that you can access as soon as you download it, including some basic meditations that vary in length, wellness meditations, a large catalog of relevant podcasts, and a set of timers for meditation practice. 

However, it also offers nine online MAP (Mental and Physical) training classes for an additional fee:

• MAP Training for Daily Living 
• Improving Your Meditation 
• Cultivating Positive Emotions
• Working With Difficult Emotions 
• Turning Obstacles Into Allies 
• Cultivating Self-Compassion 
• Ethics and Mindfulness 
• Opening to Joy 
• Cultivating Forgiveness 

These classes are each eight weeks in length and the costs range from $165 to $200. 

How I Used the App

The UCLA Mindful App website explains meditation and mindfulness in the “Getting Started” tab. There, I found four different helpful introductory videos: an introduction to mindfulness, how to choose a meditation, how to select the best meditation posture for you, and the science behind it all. These videos are just one of the many free resources that the app offers. I learned that meditation is the practice of stopping what you’re doing to focus on your body: your posture, breathing, thoughts, and feelings. 

I also found out that mindfulness means focusing purely on your current situation without distraction. These two practices together form mindfulness meditation, which the app notes is intended to help enable individuals to focus on each moment calmly as it occurs. According to the American Psychological Association (APA), mindfulness should be used to become aware of sensory information and to focus on each moment as it transpires, and the UCLA Mindful App states that it can be used to relieve stress and promote relaxation and overall health and well-being. 

Basic Meditations

The free audio meditations are separated into “Basic Meditations” and “Wellness Meditations” tabs in the app. Meditations usually start off with a chime to bring your mind into a meditative focus, then they are narrated. A soothing, almost hypnotically slow narration guides you toward becoming increasingly aware of your body, your breath, and the present moment. At the end of the meditation, that same chime sounds to signal the end. 

Basic meditations, according to the app, are the ones that are supposed to be used throughout the day to help with routine stress and to foster relaxation and focus. The options for basic meditations include Breathing Meditation, Breath Sound and Body Meditation, Meditation for Working with Difficulties, Loving Kindness Meditation, Body and Sound Meditation, Body Scan Meditation, and Body Scan for Sleep Meditation. Basic meditations are available in 16 languages, including American Sign Language. Most of the basic meditations are short: Many are only three minutes long and most range from three to 13 minutes.

Of these, I found myself frequently using the body scan meditation to relax and calm my body throughout the day. It was only about three minutes in length, which made it easy to quickly relax and refocus. The narrator, with a very calm and soothing voice, walked me through the process of relaxing my body by pointing out areas to focus on. This process helped to center my thoughts on the present and tune out that nagging to-do list that keeps rearing its ugly head. 

Another meditation I loved was Body Scan for Sleep. It’s 13 minutes long and focuses on shutting out thoughts, directing your attention to relaxing each part of your body, and eliminating sensory inputs as you slowly scan your body for tension and let it go. The narrator's voice is calm and soothing, and is accompanied by soft, rhythmic sounds. This meditation is similar to the body scan meditation but longer in length and more effective in completely shutting down your body and mind. For many years, stress and anxiety have induced insomnia and made a restful night of sleep feel elusive and fictitious. This sleep meditation, paired with the exercises I do throughout the day, has better enabled me to truly shut down my consciousness at night, aiding in a much more peaceful relationship with sleep. 

Wellness Meditations

Wellness Meditations, meanwhile, are those specifically designed for people in hospitals or who are otherwise experiencing health issues. They are supposed to be used to help address more personal and reflective needs, like loving yourself, overcoming difficulties, and combating anxiety. Among the options are Body Awareness, Sound, Breath and Tibetan Singing Bowls, as well as longer versions of many of the basic meditation options. Most of the wellness meditations are longer than the basic meditations, between eight and 14 minutes. There is also a separate file of audio instructions for the wellness meditation section.

Classes

In addition to using the free meditations, I enrolled in the MAP for Daily Living class. It ran for eight weeks and was $165. Each class was two hours long, pre-recorded, and available online every Monday. There was no instructor interaction during these recordings, but there is an “Ask the Mindfulness Teacher” option where you could have any course-related questions answered by the instructor. 

These classes discussed the importance and benefits of mindful meditation and the different approaches to meditation. For example, there is not one meditation posture that suits everyone. Instead, it is about personal preference and comfort. In the class, the instructor spoke about how to find, or help someone find, the best posture for effective meditation. This was one of the more basic practices discussed. I found that more often than not, the instructor seemed to be speaking to other clinicians, and upon research, I found that this course could be used for clinicians’ CE (continuing education) requirements.

While some of the explanations were illuminating, I found the app’s free resources much more helpful. 

What I Learned

As I became more familiar with the guided meditations, I began feeling prepared to meditate on my own. With the help of the app’s meditation timer, I was able to meditate independently. The timer begins and ends with the ringing of a bell. This bell helped me to effectively transition out of whatever task I had been focused on, and into meditation. Some days, when I was more stressed or scattered, I still chose to go with a guided meditation video, but more frequently, I found myself enjoying meditating on my own. This is not something that I would have been able to do effectively before using this app.

After using the app, I found that I was more focused and productive with my time. Ironically, stressing about how much I had to do was actually taking away my ability to accomplish a task. With mindfulness and meditation, I am better able to focus and complete each task efficiently and calmly.

Pros and Cons

While I was very pleased with the many features of the UCLA Mindful app, there are a few factors to consider before signing up.

Final Thoughts

To be frank, if I were to re-do this whole experience, I would not have enrolled in the MAP class. While it was informative, I did not find that it was worth the time or money. I was searching for a tool, not a technical explanation. That being said, if I were a mental health professional, I probably would have enjoyed using this course for a continuing education credit. 

Instead of taking this class, I would have stuck to the many free resources that this app offers. The “Getting Started” tab prepared me to begin the basic meditations. In addition to these features, I found myself enjoying some of the podcasts while driving. These were almost as informative as the course and completely free. Surprisingly, the most helpful services for me were some of the free guided meditations, podcasts, and the timer. Moving forward, I will continue to use those instead of the MAP classes. 

Going into this review, I had hoped to find an outlet to relieve some of the everyday stress that I experience. Instead, I have implemented a life skill that helps me to consciously prevent stress from seeping into my mind, my body, and even my sleep. I will be encouraging everyone to give this app a try.