Here at The Mindful Stoic, we love experimentation and exploration when it comes to mindfulness and meditation. I’ve participated in meditation retreats, temple stays, and have some limited experience with guided meditation apps and audio tracks. But this is the first time I really dove deep into a comprehensive subscription-based meditation app such as Headspace. I hope for this Headspace Review to serve as an overview of its strong points and its areas of improvement. I should note that we have no affiliation with Headspace. This review is just our attempt to make meditation more accesible.
Pros and Cons
Before drilling down into the plethora of features Headspace has to offer, let’s take a classic Pro vs Con snapshot of the overall experience
|
Pros |
Cons |
| Incredible selection and diversity in the guided meditations, courses, sleepcasts, and much more | Buffering not a non-issue (but ability to download in advance if you’ll be without a connection) |
| Quick ‘Singles’ meditations for a short break | No course on public speaking (surprising as this is such a prevalent fear and since their selection is otherwise so comprehensive) |
| Full-length courses for an in-depth educational experience beyond a single meditation session | Introduction to each exercise can get repetitive at times (although we think this is hard to avoid) |
| Male and female voice options | Male/female options are limited to a select few exercises |
| Ability to choose from different durations of the same exercises | |
| An obvious expertise in mindfulness and meditation |
Let’s get more granular with our Headspace review and look at the Top Features
The Guided Meditations
When describing Headspace’s guided meditations, two words bubble up immediately: Quality and Variety.
It’s evident that the Headspace team has kept their users’ best interest in mind at every stage of development. The audio quality is flawless HD, which is good because anything less would be distracting. The facilitators have been carefully chosen for their soothing, spacious and conscientious voices. As mentioned above in Pros and Cons, we appreciated the fact that there are female and male voice options, but ideally we’d have them for each and every recording. Finally, we were overall soundly impressed with the content curation and the expertise evidently displayed therein.
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It’s clear that the Headspace team has taken care to ensure their guided meditations broadly fit within what we’d expect from mindfulness and meditation based on a Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) model. However, we also thoroughly appreciate that they do not adhere too rigidly to ‘classical’ meditation techniques. With courses such as ‘Productivity’, ‘Coping With Cravings’, and ‘Creativity’, it’s clear that they’ve also made an effort to explore new applications for classical mindfulness and meditation skills.
This brings us to the astounding variety of courses and exercises offered, which is the other characteristic we appreciated most. The best way for our Headspace app review to show you the immense variety is to enumerate the different types of exercises and expand on each one a bit.
A Headspace review of immense variety
- Meditation courses and ‘Singles’ – in durations from 1 to 20 minutes, on topics from anxiety, to sports recovery, to patience. This is really just to name a few as there are dozens of courses and singles on meditation.
- SOS – short 3-minute guided exercises for emergency situations such as panic, losing your temper, and pain.
- Timers – for customized lengths of guided or unguided sessions.
- Techniques – practical explanations of meditation techniques both familiar and unfamiliar: body scan, visualization, noting, skillful compassion, common obstacles, and more.
- Sleepcasts – soothing storytelling to lull you to slumbertown.
- Winddowns – guided meditations meant to help you switch off before bed.
- Nighttime SOS – for those times you wake up feeling unnerved.
- Sleepscapes – sleep music and sleep radio for even more lullabies.
- Physical exercises – all sorts of physical exercise routines ranging in duration from 10 to 45 minutes. High production value with a person on video to guide you through the motions.
- Performance mindset sessions inspired by NBA and WNBA athletes.
- Focus – focus music, soundscapes and focus exercise for when you need to block out ambient distractions and concentrate.
- Social sharing and progress tracking to let your friends and yourself know how far you’ve come.
- More – group meditations, ‘wake up’ messages when you first turn on the app, and more still.
How are the advanced courses?
We thought that the advanced courses would be a good test for Headspace’s value in the long run. We found that the main difference between the basic courses and advanced courses is that the latter contained a lot less commentary and guidance, leaving more open space for the meditator to be on their own. It’s arguable that this intermediary between meditating unguided and using a guided meditation app such as Headspace is somewhat unnecessary.
However, where the advanced courses may have lacked structural utility, they made up for in tackling the hard problems of meditation and mindfulness. Knowing that the audience is looking to progress beyond the basics of breath, the facilitator walks us through difficulties like recognizing the difference between helpful planning and unhelpful planning or realizing that anxiety is unavoidable and even important.
Are all Headspace meditations the same?
With so much variety, it seems likely that the exercises may get repetitive. We can say that with dozens of guided meditations, it is true that the opening minutes of some sessions can seem a bit repetitive. But because of the inherent simplicity of meditation, so often solely focused on the breath, we think this is an inevitable challenge in offering diversity in a meditation app. We applaud the Headspace team for avoiding the temptation of reusing scripts verbatim to keep things relatively fresh across so many different exercises.
Sleep as a strength
We really enjoyed the sleepcasts and wind-downs. The story telling in a soothing voice is an excellent alternative to reading to put yourself in sensory experience conducive to falling asleep. We were surprised by the quality of the storytelling. It’s evident that the Headspace team went to great lengths to find some top authors of short stories to contribute to this production. The stories are rich in sensory detail and are careful to avoid excitement while remaining immersive. It’s also cool that you can toggle the volume heavier on the voice or the ambiance according to your preference.
Areas of improvement
Soundscapes for focus – Although they claim to be ‘3D recorded’, the ambient nature sounds seem to be a bit unnatural. With that said, I’m no expert in sound engineering and I only have ambient nature sounds videos from YouTube as a point of reference. The Headspace soundscapes do the trick when it comes to blocking out distractions while working; and without becoming a distraction themselves.
Is Headspace worth the price?
The annual subscription to Headspace, including all the features mentioned in this Headspace review, is $69.99 USD after a free two-week trial. If you’d rather go monthly, Headspace is $12.99 USD per month. Student and family pricing are also available.
So is it worth it? Affirmative. Here at The Mindful Stoic, we’re big believers in turning mindfulness and meditation practice into more of a lifestyle, much like physical exercise is for so many people. The biggest obstacle to harnessing the power of mindfulness in daily life is remembering to practice it. The more reminders and prompts we have, the better. And considering that its variety and quality are its strongest points, we think the Headspace subscription can be a valuable tool to keep things fresh and explore new horizons. It could even serve as a motivator if at times you feel that your practice has stagnated.
It almost goes without saying that Headspace could be an invaluable tool to someone new to the practice. But with anything moderation is key. It’s a cliché statement but one we really want to emphasize. Guided meditations and apps can provide enrichment, but don’t let them overtake your practice. Make sure you take time to meditate unguided and naturally, as guided meditation can alter valuable experiences that you can only have when you are truly alone with your thoughts.
Headspace review bonus tip
Of course the app can be used on any device (tablet, smartphone, PC), but my personal favorite way to use Headspace was with my Echo Dot (Alexa device) using the Headspace skill available here. I don’t associate meditation or sleep with my phone or computer, so rather than adding more screen time to my day, I was thrilled to be able to simply sit down and say “Alexa, ask Headspace for today’s meditation” or “Alexa, ask Headspace to help me fall asleep”.
We hope that this Headspace review can help you make a decision either way if you were considering a meditation app and we hope to review other major meditation and mindfulness apps in the near future.