Amazing App: HealthyMinds

 A Free Meditation App from HealthyMinds Innovations (HMI) hopes to help calm your anxiety surrounding COVID-19, the election, and everyday personal/professional stresses.

 

The HealthyMinds Program App teaches you how the mind can be trained to be more focused, calm, and resilient through meditation training. It's available for anyone to use as a day-to-day tool navigating life in school, the workplace, or even relationships with friends, family or significant others. In the App you can choose from traditional sitting meditations or active on-the-go meditations when you're walking, taking the subway, or even driving - plus you can choose how much time you have, from 5 - 30 minutes. There are also meditations for dealing with specific stresses like COVID-19, election, working remotely, or going back to school.

The Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and their non-profit, HMI, are both led by Neuroscientist Dr. Richard Davidson. He's spent years researching the science of well being. Dr. Cortland Dahl joined his team and used his PHD thesis to create a framework of four pillars to scientifically train the mind; called ACIP  (Awareness, Connection, Insight, Purpose) which the app is centered around. He is also the voice of the app!

I had a chance to do an interview with Jocelyn Harmon, Vice President of Marketing at HMI, to learn more.

1. Why is it important for everyone to think about their mental health?

• Mental health includes our emotional, psychological, and social well-being. Even before Covid-19, our society was suffering from increased stress, anxiety and depression. Now with the stress of almost a year’s worth of a world-wide pandemic, involving health fears, financial constraints, increased parental exhaustion and stress, social unrest, and a culture that is growing more divisive by the day, society is suffering from a full on mental health crisis. In fact, according to a recent Kaiser Family Foundation Tracking poll from July, 53 percent of U.S. adults reported that their mental health had been negatively affected due to worry and stress over the pandemic – up from 32 percent reported in March. 

It’s also important to remember that Mental health doesn’t just affect how you feel, it affects how you act toward others, including how emotionally reactive you are when it comes to weathering major events, such as a pandemic

2. How can the Healthy Minds Program App help people with a variety of different backgrounds and needs?

• We’ve received feedback from individuals with a lifetime experience of traditional meditation techniques and those without any experience at all, and the feedback is always the same: this program is highly accessible for everyone. One thing that makes our app accessible is that it was created by a nonprofit, and is fully supported thanks to the generosity of our donors. Unlike other apps that may have a tacked on subscription, you can access 1,000s of hours of meditation and podcast style lessons on our program, for free. Additionally, we offer multiple ways to practice (on-the-go or seated), multiple teachers with varied backgrounds and experiences, and a guided path to support your journey along the way.

As one of our meditation teachers, Ronné Wingate Sims states on our website, ““What’s exceptional about The Healthy Minds Program app is that it’s both inviting and accessible no matter where you are on your journey toward well-being. Whether you’re new to meditation, seasoned in the practice or fall somewhere in-between, there’s something here for everyone.”

3. What sets it apart from other mental health apps?

• The Healthy Minds Program is a shot in the arm for your mental health, that doesn’t leave you guessing, but offers a hands-on, deeper journey for times of unrest and beyond. It’s a fully realized program for well-being providing real relief for users including: stress management, the ability to develop a deeper understanding of oneself and the mental relief that comes from well-being and resilience. The app utilizes our ACIP framework. The framework focuses on four pillars that have been studied in the lab and have been demonstrated to improve with training: awareness (attentiveness to one’s environment and internal cues such as bodily sensations, thoughts and feelings ), connection (appreciation, kindness and compassion), insight (fostering curiosity and self knowledge), and purpose (understanding your values and motivations).

• Other areas of difference include:

• Built by scientists - because they’re the experts. The Healthy Minds Program was developed by the very ground-breaking neuroscientists who first brought the powerful effects of meditation and contemplative practices on the plasticity of the brain to the world. 

• A Powerful Blend of Classical Meditation Techniques, Cutting Edge Research and the latest in habit formation understanding. This is meditation 2.0 - taking classic techniques, the latest scientific learnings on well-being and habit formation skill building for a step-by-step approach that works for both the novice and the experienced practitioner.

• Made for you: the customizable approach to well-being. The Healthy Minds Program provides a guided path to well-being that meets you where you are, whatever you are feeling. Our program offers a step-by-step process, with podcast style lessons along the way to explain the skills you are gaining. You’ll also receive regular updates on your progress through our proprietary measurement tools - so you can learn in real-time whether or not the program is effective.

• Bigger than Ourselves (or any one product): Changing the World one mind at a time. Our founder, Dr. Richard Davidson, believes we have a moral imperative to help the world learn how to train their mind - relieving suffering of millions, creating better communication across the globe and continuously informing how to improve upon these well-being skills for generations to come. 

4. What are some other things people can do for self-care as we head into winter, especially when considering the effect that COVID-19 is having?

• Stop the spiral, and find calm. Avoid doom-scrolling, and ruminating on the negative. The human brain has evolved to detect change. So, when things turn out differently than we’d hoped, we can easily start to dwell on the negative. In this manner, the brain has a negativity bias. Any time your thoughts are running through multiple scenarios, it’s a good time to take a breath and slow down. One of our first Covid-19 specific meditations, “Calm in the Midst of Chaos,” is perfect for this moment. As you find yourself picturing only the worst for this upcoming winter, remember, those are just thoughts, not reality. Take a breath, do the practice and move on to something you CAN control.

• Take control of something. Make a plan now for how you will be keeping up with your mental health needs in the winter months.

• Embrace Hygge. Hygge (Pronounced “hoo-guh”) is a Danish and Norwegian word for a mood of coziness and comfortable conviviality with feelings of wellness and contentment. Leaning into the coziness is a great way to embrace the positive of cold weather. Go for a socially distanced winter walk, light candles and cuddle up under a blanket with someone from your quarantine pod, make hot cocoa. 

• Adapt your current exercise plan to the cold weather. Is this the year to adapt your activities for outside? 

• Schedule something to look forward to in the midst of winter. While you probably can’t travel far, maybe there’s a small change of scenery you can plan for January, or you can save up for a purchase to enjoy in the dark days post-holidays and pre-spring.

• Make small, achievable plans to support your mental health weekly, like a “weekly resolution.” This can be simple, like “every Monday I’m going to meditate,” or “I won’t pay attention to the news every Tuesday.”

• Increase your connection meditations. Many of us have been able to enjoy some form of safe social connection throughout the warmer months and fear the increase of impending isolation when outdoor activities are reduced. But thanks to connection meditations, you can feel connected, even when you are separated. In fact, our founder, Dr. Richard Davidson, has always maintained we should call it “physical distancing” not “social distancing” for this reason. Try out Dr. Davidson’s Our Common Humanity practice, or this practice  which supports appreciating the strangers you see each day (like the grocery store employees or your postal worker).

Increase your actual connections. Don’t retreat into further isolation because it’s harder to get together with friends and family. Continue to safely see your network either virtually, through bundled up outdoor activities, or just a regular phone call. Isolation and loneliness can be devastating to your mental health, so try to nurture your connections, even if your instinct is to hibernate.