Review: the buddhify 2 app
It’s Wednesday, so let’s have some mid-week wellbeing on a budget. This is a quick review of the meditation and mindfulness buddhify 2 app.
First things first, the price of the app has gone up recently, and it’s now £1.99 from the iTunes app store. However, you do get plenty of features with it and it works out far cheaper than most related books, audio books and courses.
When you open up the app you get an attractive looking main page which provides you with a rainbow wheel of coloured segments that represent your options. These start with all kinds of situations that you might find yourself in, such as having trouble getting to sleep, taking a break at work, travelling or exercising. You tap on the relevant segment and it opens up to reveal one or more guided mindfulness exercises, and you can then choose to either swipe over the titles for more information or just tap to start the program.
Different narrators run you through the structured exercises, lasting mostly between five and 11 minutes and generally specific to your location. Depending upon what you’ve chosen, there may be instructions to ‘sit back and watch your thoughts’ or or guidance about awareness and focus on your body and your senses. There may also be some instructions about your body position, posture, or your breathing, if you select certain exercises.
Trying out a few of the different exercises within this app would give you a good all-round start with learning how calm the mind and so on, as it appears to link into many different techniques ranging from yoga breathing to buddhist-like detachment from the everyday flow of thoughts. I liked the variety of what was on offer, and if you’re new to this sort of thing then it could be helpful with finding the specific types of techniques that work best for you.
In addition to the colour wheel of exercises, there’s a timer with an alert at the end that allows you to take a ten-minute meditation break. This is a handy feature, and once you have the hang of it you could consider doing ten minutes of self-guided mindfulness each day – even this small amount of designated time can make a difference over the course of a week or two.
You also get a stats page which keeps track of your activities and also allows you to subjectively rate how you are feeling. This might help to keep you motivated if you like charts, facts and figures. All in all, it’s very easy to understand and navigate, and it appears to have been deliberately designed to be friendly and casual in tone rather than flat and esoteric.
I haven’t been through all of the options yet, but there’s enough to keep going for quite a while before boredom might set in. The real acid test will be whether I keep using this app a few weeks down the line, but I’ll come back and do you an update about continuing use at some point.
In a nutshell, if you’re looking for an aesthetically pleasing way to get into the regular practice of meditation and/or mindfulness then the buddhify 2 app is a good option.
Has anyone else tried this mindfulness and meditation app? Let us know what you think about it.
You might also be interested in this recent article about various free and cheap mindfulness resources.
