A Roundup of Our Favorite Apps for Getting Your OM On
The top apps that will help you begin your daily practice today.
My students often ask me how to take their yoga and meditation practice on the go. Thanks to my favorite apps, I’ve been able to salute the sun around the globe as I pursue my travels. I can even open the apps at home in Los Angeles when I just need some solo time to breathe by the ocean.
I’ll introduce you to some of my favorites. Download and begin your daily practice today!
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Yoga Wake Up
Studies have consistently shown that traditional alarm clocks disrupt sleep patterns and leave people feeling groggy throughout the day. This led LA locals, Lizzie and Joaquin Brown, to create Yoga Wake Up. I’m proud to have guided several featured meditations on the app!
Yoga Wake Up uses yoga audio sequences and meditations to wake you more peacefully and energize you throughout your day. Its soothing features provide an easier transition from dreamland into reality.
Featured as one of Apple’s “new apps we love,” Yoga Wake Up offers users over 100 wakeups and meditations you can do from bed. There are also wakeups you can do with kids!
The app is free to download in the App Store and offers up a handful of free wakeups. To unlock all content, you must purchase a subscription for less than the price of a coffee. Yoga Wake Up offers a 7-day free trial for the subscription, which is also available as an annual purchase with a discount. New wakeups are added each week.
YogaGlo
YogaGlo is a wellness platform with over 4,000 professionally-filmed online yoga and meditation classes taught by the world’s leading instructors. For just $18 a month, YogaGlo makes it easy to practice from anywhere.
photo courtesy of YogaGlo
Classes range from 5 to 120 minutes and the app offers over 11 styles of yoga and meditation. This inclusive and empowered community welcomes experts and novices alike to enhance their minds and bodies. YogaGlo is compatible with all streaming devices, such as Apple iOS, Apple TV, Android, and web. It’s my favorite app for yoga videos on the go.
YogaGlo has recently launched some amazing new offerings:
- Spiritual Graffiti: Finding Your True Path with MC YOGI
- Self-Care for Women: Practices for Resilience and Grace with Elena Brower
- Morning Ritual: Wake Up to Create Your Day with Normandie Keith
- The Complete Cross Trainer with Tiffany Cruikshank
And what’s more, the Apple Watch offers a great way to start and stop exercises, track exercise duration, and monitor heart rate during each practice so you can contribute to your Activity Rings and meet your daily goals.
Downloading the app is completely free. To continue your practice, you’ll need to subscribe to YogaGlo for only $22.99USD/month purchased with your iTunes account.
The Breathing App by Eddie Stern
Eddie Stern, a yoga teacher, author and lecturer from New York, created the concept and drew the blueprint for this app based on resonant breathing.
Resonance is the scientific name that describes what happens when our heart rate, heart rate variability, blood pressure, and brainwave function come into a coherent frequency. It occurs spontaneously when we breathe at a rate of six breaths per minute (instead of our usual 15-18), and is the rate of breathing that Buddhist monks and Yogis naturally enter into while meditating.
There have been hundreds of scientific studies performed on resonant breathing since 1963, which show a wide array of benefits, including:
- Increases pulmonary function
- Lowers blood pressure
- Has positive applications for anxiety and depression
- Increases resiliency
- Increases the ability to handle stress
- Leads towards emotional balance
- Resonant breathing is like a stress reset button.
Resonant breathing is like a stress reset button. And as founder Eddie Stern explains: “I could not find something that was simple, well designed, and could help me do one, simple thing: regulate a proper resonance frequency of six breaths per minute. So I decided to create one myself. I was looking for something that would help free my mind from the need to measure everything, and just help guide my breathing for a few minutes each day.”
The Breathing App available now for free on iTunes.
Download it here!
Whichever app resonates most with you, try to use it daily – consistency is everything.
Fern Olivia is the founder of Thyroid Yoga® and Ajai Alchemy.
Combining her education in Biomedical Engineering with her studies in yoga and integrative nutrition, Fern Olivia has created Thyroid Yoga®, a unique approach to supporting thyroid health.
In addition to teaching, retreats, events, and speaking on the topics of holistic health and self-expression, her course is a best-seller on MindBodyGreen and she trains wellness leaders and practitioners in her Thyroid Yoga® training, now available internationally. Fern Olivia is also the founder of Ajai Alchemy, an all organic essential oil fragrance brand specifically formulated with synergistic hormone balancing and aphrodisiac benefits.
Through her authentic storytelling, media platforms, and new TV show, Sensual Intelligence, Fern Olivia has inspired a mass movement of conscious self-expression and holistic health.
