The app is great, and because you can read about it on their
website or explore it for yourself, I’ll just share some of the features
I use in my meditation.
Timer
My most frequent use of the app is for timing my morning
prayer. I’ve prayed morning and night, personally and with my family, pretty
much all my life. The reason I first got into meditation almost ten years ago
was to improve my prayers. I knew God heard me, but there wasn’t the communion
in my prayers that I wanted. I hoped meditation would help me add that
dimension to prayer—and it has. (Perhaps I’ll post about prayer another time.)
There is something about sitting with my ten-minute
morning-prayer timer that helps me to just stay there after the laundry list of
thanks and requests is done. I don’t even look at the timer while praying, and
it doesn’t chime at the end. I think it’s just creating that space in time that
helps me give myself permission to stay in my Sanctuary and simply be thoughtful
with God. I go through my mental prayer roll of those who need Their blessings
and comfort. Then my questions turn more thoughtful. I ask for advice in the
projects I’m undertaking, or talk to Him about my intention for the day.
The
following is part of a journal entry about five months after I began my
meditation practice ten years ago.
April 15, 2010
As
I continue to ponder the use of meditation, I really think it is valuable in
improving prayers. In a conversation
with God, listening is the most important part.
But almost every time I’ve stopped speaking during a prayer to listen,
my mind wanders away to dozens of distractions.
Meditating has begun to train my mind to be quiet and just listen . . . I
think my meditation will evolve as I practice it more to help me learn the
language of the Spirit and to become a part of my prayers.
When I’m done praying, I often find that I’ve gone over the
timer’s ten minutes. Just as often, I’ve stayed under ten minutes, and that is
fine too. However much time I spend thanking, asking, listening—communing—it
feels just right.
The timer is a good tool for any meditative process. In
addition to my ten-minute preset for morning prayer, I also have an hour preset
for yoga, fifteen minutes for silent meditation, and ten minutes with their
“zen guitar” ambient sound. The app has many background sounds and timer
notifications to choose from, though I choose silence for most of mine. (I also
am one of the tiny minority of people who don’t have any music playlist, but
Kent has enough music in his collection to listen for months straight, so he
balances us out.)
Journal
Somewhat hidden in the app is a journaling feature. Go into
Profile, then Settings and scroll down to the “More” options to select Journal,
Logs & Stats—and then you have more options for the journal! I’ve used it
to track some of the guided meditations that I’ve especially liked. I have
other journals in my life, all of them handwritten, but this part of the app
could be good for a daily brain dump, especially using the microphone. The
journal doesn’t seem very robust, but maybe it doesn’t need to be. If you’re a
journaler, try out this feature and let me know how you like it.
Where Insight Timer really shines is its collection of
guided meditations from hundreds of teachers. The teachers tag their
meditations with various criteria: topics covered, whether there is background
music, what type of meditation it is (I use a lot of the ones for sleep), etc.
This is where you have to explore and see what types of meditations you are
drawn to. When you find one you like, you can rate it and bookmark it to return
to. You’ll also find teachers that you connect with, and then check out their
other meditations. If you really like their content, you can donate to any teacher
to support their work.
I like to bookmark intriguing meditations and then give them
a listen to decide if they stay bookmarked. Those are the ones I return to repeatedly.
The app manages your bookmarks well so you can sort your favorite meditations
by length, topic, recently bookmarked, etc.
The following are some of my favorite guided meditations on
Insight Timer:
·
“Morning Ritual” by Jason McGrice – 10 min.
·
“Honoring Life” by Sarah Blondin – 9 min.
·
“Short Calming Meditation” by Charlotte Watts
– 7 min.
·
“Breathing Meditation” by Jack Kornfield – 9
min.
·
“Meditation Made Easy & Enjoyable” by
Matthew Young – 10 ½ min.
·
“Breath Awareness Meditation – Counting” by
The StillPoint – 11 min.
·
“Guided Meditation for Deep Sleep” by Cory
Cochiolo – 27 min.
·
“Gratitude Meditation” by Sarah McLean – 14
min.
·
“Guided Chakra Meditation” by Anika Patel – 9 min.
·
“5 Times More” by Kelly Sullivan Walden – 11
min.
·
“Working With Anxiety Guided Meditation” by
Angela Marie Patnode – 10 min.
Finally, one of my favorite features of the app is its
community building. The home screen shows how many people have meditated around
the globe on any given day. I love being a small part of the positive energy created
by people seeking peace and guidance on this planet. Even more fun, at the end
of any session, the app shows the people who meditated with you. First, you see
your Insight Timer friends, the people you’ve connected with on the app. Next
you see people in or near your town. I love finding a stranger near me, and
thinking that I might run into them in real life sometime. Third are the people
in the same meditation groups with you. I belong to a few groups, but I don’t
check in very often. About twice each year I look to see what quotes or talks
or discussions are going on in those groups. Lastly, the app shows everyone
else who used the app to meditate with you.
The home screen also shows what guided meditations your
connections are listening to. I’ve occasionally found some favorites to
bookmark there. For example, Sam in Park City, Utah befriended me on the app.
She and I often meditate together in the morning, and I’ve found a couple
morning meditations through her.
Besides simply seeing your fellow meditators, you can thank
or message those who allow it through their permissions. I like to thank about
half a dozen people per session. Sometimes we’ve used the internal app
messenger to ask each other about our chosen tag lines. There is one meditator
in South Africa who regularly sends me a beautiful message to send thoughts of
kindness. It’s a safe and lovely community, and you can be as involved in it—or
not—as you like.
Whether you’ve meditated for years or you want to just give
it a try, I recommend the free beginner’s course on the app; it's by one of my favorite teachers. I hope you’ll find, as I have, that this app is a great tool
to develop meditation practice, and therefore your mind, spirit, and connection
to God.
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