Mental Health and Wellbeing

Mental wellbeing fluctuates from moment-to-moment, day-to-day and month-to-month. There's no ‘normal’ when it comes mental health, there is only what is best for you.

Mental health and wellbeing is just as important as physical health. While physical health involves ensuring you are eating well and exercising, mental health and wellbeing means ensuring your mental state is healthy and that you’re taking care of your emotions and moods, in the best way you can.

Being mindful of how you are dealing and coping with the emotions and stresses of day-to-day life can contribute significantly to your overall mental health and wellbeing. Mindfulness is the ability to assess what your mental health is like and being aware of what you can do to improve and develop this. By becoming mindful you start to notice what is normal and what isn’t. Through this you can find ways to improve your mental health and wellbeing.

"Most of us have issues that we find hard to let go and mindfulness can help us deal with them more productively. We can ask: 'Is trying to solve this by brooding about it helpful, or am I just getting caught up in my thoughts? Awareness of this kind also helps us notice signs of stress or anxiety earlier and helps us deal with them better." - Professor Mark Williams, former director of the Oxford Mindfulness Centre.

With this in mind, the team here at TEA+ have been looking into FREE meditation apps available to help us develop the important skill of mindfulness. 

1. Beeja - Beeja Meditation

- Meditation for different functions such as grief, creativity, stress and anxiety relief. This allows you to personalise your meditation depending on what you want to get out of each session and what your mood is when you begin. 

- ‘Burn your emotions’ allows you to write down your current emotions and thoughts and then, ‘burn’ them. This shows an animation of your emotions being crumpled up and knocked away with a bat, helping you visualise your problems, in hope that better feelings will take their place.

- Colour mood tracker that allows you to track all of your emotions and moods, not to mention, you can also view your stats page, where you can find what percentage of different moods you've been experiencing. This journal style section allows you to write about these moods, meaning you can look back on your previous entries to see what you were worried about and how you went about changing that. 

2. Calm - Calm Sleep Meditation

- Mood tracker that enables you to add ‘tags’ to your moods such as family, work and relationships, so you can see causes of stress and track what's helping to remove those negative feelings.

- Sleep stories, there are a selection of stories for you to choose from with the idea of helping you get to sleep on a night. Relaxing stories read aloud to you (who didn’t love a bedtime story as a child).

- Music selected for you to help you relax, such as soundscapes, playlists, nature sounds and so much more!

- Guided meditation and breathing sessions, with different lengths for you to select depending on how you’re feeling and the amount of time you have. 

3. Headspace - Meditation made simple

- ’Helpful Animations’ designed and made to give you tips on how to improve your meditation techniques.

- ‘Courses’ to help with different moods and emotions such as anxiety, sleep, productivity, daily challenges etc…

- 'Sleepscapes' with multiple choices to help aid sleep that allow you to explore and find out what works best for you and your mind.

- You can add your ‘buddies’ and link them with your Headspace account and help each other achieve positive mindfulness.

4. Stop, Breathe & Think - Guided Meditation

- Emotion tracker with a before and after mediation option so you can see which types of meditation work best for different moods and emotional challenges. 

- Personalised recommended courses and meditations for you based on your daily check up in the app. 

- Daily check up of both your physical and mental health, along with wellbeing. A weekly and monthly overview shows how your health has fluctuated through the tracker. 

5. Breethe - Meditation and Sleep

- Aims for what you want to get from meditation. Whether that is weight loss, overall happiness, focus, stress relief and much more. 

- Meditation reminders to help solidify routines and help with a daily mental health and wellbeing focus.

- ‘Music therapy’ such as nature sounds, relaxing playlists, soundscapes etc...