Often on our Bali yoga retreat we encourage guests to take a little break from their smartphone and devices. These have become such a predominant part of everyday life, and it’s lovely to switch off, disconnect, and take a break. Our devices can often be a cause of stress- the constant notifications and reminders of emails, updates, messages and other tasks always pulling us out of the present moment, and into a world that exists in the palm of our hand. While this constant distraction can disrupt our equilibrium, our smartphones can be used in a multitude of helpful ways too!
There are a rather dizzying array of health and wellness apps that are now easily downloadable that can help you do anything from track your sleep patterns, find healthy recipes and meal plans, offer yoga classes, measure your heart rate, count your daily steps, track your monthly cycle and so much more. We may wonder how we ever lived without all of this information being spoon fed to us! If you are concerned with the amount of time you already spend online, try and challenge yourself to delete any apps that could probably be described as insignificant (that steal time away from you) and replace them with some of our favourite and helpful app suggestions below.
Every week on our Bali yoga retreat we meet women who are looking to improve their wellbeing, find easy ways to create healthy daily habits, and find support to create sustainable change. While our dependance with our smartphones may not always be positive, these apps are a terrific way to educate yourself more about your own unique body and mind and discover new pathways to balance and vitality.
Happify
Happify is a brilliant app that focuses less on the physical body, and more on our emotional and mental health.The app, designed inline with research around mental health factors and trends, is designed to help you overcome stress and negative thinking patterns and help you to build better emotional health and mental resilience. Happify offers effective tools and programs to help you take control of your feelings and thoughts. The activities can be used anytime, anywhere, and even short slices of time have been shown to produce quite incredible results in relation to stress and happiness levels in users.
Find out more here – https://www.happify.com
Yoga Wake Up
This app is the world’s first yoga alarm clock! Upon waking each day, it inspires you to wake up with an intention, and with the option to do a short yoga or meditation sequence from bed (sound tempting?!). You can choose from a variety of options from slow morning stretches from under your covers, to more invigorating movements to help you spring out of bed. Yoga Wake Up is designed to help you start your day from a place of mindfulness and positivity. World renowned teachers are there to guide you through your daily routines, and you can also track your progress from day to day. It also offers beautiful guided meditations designed to help you drift off to sleep at the end of your day also.
Find out more here – https://www.yogawakeup.com
Sleep Cycle
Sleep is such a crucial element in our overall well being. It helps the body to rest and repair, it affects growth and stress hormones, our immune system, appetite, breathing, blood pressure and cardiovascular health. It is also essential for maintaining good brain health, and is a huge factor when it comes to anti-aging. Tracking your sleep with a sleeping app can be fascinating and can help you see exactly what kind of sleep quality you are getting each night. Sleep Cycle not only tracks your quality of sleep, but also your sleeping heart rate, REM and times you are restless throughout the night. One of its best features is that once you have set your alarm, it will wake you up during your lightest sleep phase in the morning, ensuring that you wake feeling well-rested, rather than being dragged unwillingly from the depths of your sleep!
Find out more here – https://www.sleepcycle.com
8fit
8fit is perfect for those who aren’t huge fans of working out in the gym but are still looking for a good workout that can be done in the comfort of your own home. This app offers you individualized custom workout plans that are suited to you fitness level and goals. The workouts are focused on HIIT (high intensity interval training), meaning you can work out in quite a short duration of time, and still receive all the benefits of a great workout. 8fit also allows you to track your progress and offers daily challenges and tips for extra motivation. The app also offers healthy and nutritious meal plans designed to help you meet your fitness and health goals.
Find out more here – https://8fit.com
Mend
Mend is a self care app specifically designed to help you get through a breakup without having to do it on your own. The app offers day by day guidance that includes progress tracking, journalling and audio trainings. Mend is the most popular app when it comes to dealing with matters of the heart, and studies have shown that the app can help you mend from a break up 58% faster! Sometimes it can be hard to open up to other people during a painful breakup, the app is like your companion in your pocket and merges scientific research with wellness experts to help guide you through your break up journey.
Find out more here – https://www.letsmend.com
Clue
While menstruation was once a topic that no one wanted to talk about let alone track, these days, women are empowering themselves by becoming more intune with their cycle, and discovering the wide range of benefits and insight that can be gained from this awareness. Clue is one of the most popular cycle tracking apps and helps you to learn more about how the various stages of your period affect you physically, mentally and emotionally. The app will help you to track and predict your most fertile window, when your period is due, and stages of PMS.
Getting to know your unique body better can help you to understand things like moods and cravings, and also when you are the most productive, when your skin is at its best, or why changes in your sleep pattern occur. With over 10 million women worldwide using the app, it really is a terrific tool for any woman wanting to connect with her body on a deeper level.
Find out more here – https://helloclue.com/period-tracker-app
MyFitnessPal
This is commonly regarded as one of the best apps around for tracking and motivation. Ranked as the #1 Health and Fitness app on iTunes, this app encourages you to monitor your diet and food intake through a user-friendly database that offers nutrition information for over 5 million different foods. MyFitnessPal can be a trusty sidekick when you are wanting to feel more in control of your food choices.
Find out more here – https://www.myfitnesspal.com
Streaks
Streaks is a fun and helpful app that helps you to form good habits and create new healthy routines that serve you. You can choose up to 12 tasks that you want to complete each day, and when they are completed, your streak is extended. The idea is that working on some form of goal or task every day helps you form a new habit. If you break the chain, then your streak returns back to zero. This type of daily streak is perfect for something like quitting smoking, walking the dog, or finding five minutes everyday to meditate. Of course, some goals are not for every single day, so the app allows you to customise your goals, for example – working out three times a week, avoiding alcohol five days a week, or having a juice fast one day a month.
Find out more here – https://streaksapp.com
WaterMinder
Do you regularly get those 8 glasses of water in every day?! Staying hydrated is more important than most people realise. With our bodies around 70% water, keeping hydrated is essential for everything from our brain health or our digestion to our immune function. Even being slightly dehydrated can affect our mental clarity, our blood sugar levels and our emotions. WaterMinder helps you to track your water consumption and remind you throughout the day to stay regularly topped up. You can view your history and see how you are achieving your hydration goals over time. This is a simple easy app to use and will help you keep you motivated and mindful all day long.
Find out more here – http://waterminder.com
Yoga Studio
Yoga Studio by Gaim offers a huge collection of high quality yoga classes that vary in level from beginner to advanced and ranging in length from 10 minutes to full 60 minute classes. You can choose a theme, such as selecting a focus on strength, balance or flexibility, or classes that focus on topics such as hip opening, shoulder strength, yoga for runners or yoga to improve posture. If you have a more advanced practice, you can also choose to create your own custom flows by building classes one pose at a time, or in mini sequence blocks. Yoga Studio allows you to download the classes so you can do them anywhere without having to rely on wifi. The app also allows you to customise your classes further by selecting background music, or pre scheduling your classes on your calendar. All classes are filmed professional in HD and utilise world class yoga instructors- right at your fingertips!
Find out more here – https://www.yogastudioapp.com
Yum by Yummly
Hands up foodies! Yum by Yummly offers the most powerful recipe search engine and has millions of users worldwide. Whether you are looking for inspiration for your work day lunches, looking for new recipes for your kids, or searching for a recipe with ‘wow factor’ for a special occasion- you will find it here! You can also keep all your favourite recipes in one place and the app will also offer you suggestions for recipes based on your favourite foods, tastes and search history. Yummly’s search filters also allow you to search by cook time, course, cuisine, occasion, diet, nutrition and more. You can also lock in your dietary preferences to make searching for that perfect recipe even easier. This smart app can schedule recipes to your calendar for certain meals, create your personal shopping list, and offer tutorials for extra help. Basically, it will do everything except actually cook the meal for you!
Find out more here – https://www.yummly.com
Oh She Glows
If you’re looking for plant recipes- this is the app for you! Oh She Glows comes from the lovely Angela Liddon- a vegetarian chef and author based in the UK. Her recipes are not only gorgeous to look at, they are simple, user-friendly, delicious and good for you too! This app is a great way to start adding more plant based recipes to your diet and are sure to please even the most carnivorous of friends and family! There are over 140 recipes, and 120 of these are also gluten free. Think healthy ‘Mac n Cheese,’ yummy veggie burgers, sustaining super salads, burrito bowls, Teriyaki noodles, heartwarming soups and dhals, plus smoothies, snacks and desserts. Each recipe has a brief description, directions, a list of tips, and nutritional information. You can also save your favourite dishes so they are easy to find again next time.
Find out more here – https://ohsheglows.com/app
Find Me Gluten Free
For our gluten free friends, this handy app allows you to find restaurants and cafes within your location that are gluten free or gluten free friendly. Once you login, you can view ratings and reviews, view menus, get directions, and call places all from the app.You can plan ahead by entering the destination you are heading to which is perfect when you’re about to embark on a trip, or find places near your current location. The app takes away the stress that often comes with eating out when you have dietary requirements, and with over 3 million users, you are sure to find some new favorite cafes along the way with reviews and tips from your new gluten free community!
Find out more here – https://www.findmeglutenfree.com
Insight Timer
This meditation app is the queen of apps when it comes to peace and serenity at your fingertips. One of the first of its kind, Insight Timer has over 15,000 guided meditations to choose from, all listed in categories to help you find what you’re looking for. Plus, they are all free to use! You can select the time you wish to sit for, and any theme you wish to focus on such as sleep, de-stress, inspiration, love, grief and many more. Over 30 languages are offered, or you can choose ambient sounds instead of talking. You can also set a timer so you can mediate in peace without worrying about drifting away for too long! One cool function is that the homescreen shows you how many people are meditating with the app at that particular time all of the world! The classes are suitable for all levels, you can save your favourite ones to your library, and for a small extra fee you can download as many meditations as you like so you can have them anytime (such as when you fly!)
Find out more here – https://insighttimer.com/meditation-app
Jetlag Rooster
This app is certainly for all you jetsetters! If you are a frequent flyer, Jetlag Rooster helps you to easily adapt to your new timezone by getting you prepared in advance. All you have to do is input your trip details and you’ll get back a simple sleeping and waking schedule for the days leading up to and after you arrive to help ease the hassle of jet lag. It also offers helpful suggestions such as diet, naps and exercise that can help you adjust to your new time zone quicker and easier. Perfect for those not wanting to lose any holiday time!
Find out more here – https://www.jetlagrooster.com
My Ayurveda
My Ayurveda is the perfect app for those looking to learn about the benefits of Ayurveda in regards to your specific dosha or body type. There is plenty of information and recommendations for your personal constitution, nutritional guidelines, and even a recipe book with 80 Indian and vegetarian meal ideas. If you are interested you can also learn about Ayurveda history and philosophy. There is a handy glossary to help out with any unknown Ayurvedic terms too! Aside from diet, the app also covers everything from self massage to breathing exercises, to yoga and detox.
Find out more here – https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=My+Ayurveda
Da Surf Engine
For anyone looking to find the perfect ways to suit your level of surfing skills, this app takes out all the hassle of driving around searching for that ideal surf break! Da Surf Engine allows you to search for your perfect wave based on style, ability, season, geography and more. The useful app is full of helpful information and allows you to search over 8000 surf breaks around the globe. You can search for surf and swell in your immediate location, or you can plan your next surf trip abroad! Da Surf Engine ensures you have less time on land and more time in the sea! Once you set up your profile, you can also find surfer buddies all over the world.
Find out more here – https://www.dasurfengine.com/
Tourlina
This app is certainly one of our favorites! Tourlina is an app designed specifically for women that connects fellow travelers wherever they are around the globe with common interests and trip goals. Simply enter your vacation plans or trip idea and discover a travel companion who is also interested in travelling alongside another woman. It can often be hard finding a close friend or family member that wants exactly the same out of a trip that you do, or is even interested in venturing to the same location as you are. While travelling solo is always a terrific option, sometimes its also lovely to share the journey with someone else. Every new user is screened to ensure that safety comes first, and this isn’t a dating app- it is designed to inspire new friendships between like-minded women with a gypsy spirit. So whether you’re looking to trek through the Australian outback, happily eat your way through Italy, explore the Amazon, try rock climbing in Thailand or roam the high streets of London- Tourlina will find you your perfect travel companion, and perhaps, a new friend for life.
Find out more here – http://tourlina.com
PackPoint
Do you love travelling but hate packing?! Do you always get to your destination realising you have forgotten something, or perhaps, have overpacked?! Packpoint is a female travellers best friend! The app users your travel information to customise a packing checklist designed just for you. You fill in where you’re heading, the time of the year, how long you’re going for and any specific activities you have planed, and it will suggest everything you need from clothing to essentials to things that may come in handy that you had never even thought of. Never forget anything again, or, never pay extra for oversized baggage again!
Find out more here – https://www.packpnt.com