Meditative Activities Should Not Cost Anything

As a strong believer in the prioritization of self-care, this is totally relevant.

I have been searching for a new meditation app ever since MyLife a.k.a. Stop, Breathe, and Think discontinued its service. I relied on it a lot throughout my college years.

Technically, I don’t need an app to be able to meditate but it can be a good guide to use for beginners or to maintain focus, especially if you’re looking for more than just using a timer. But some of these apps can be great motivators if you’re looking to make a goal of meditating every day.

I heard that Calm was a very well-received meditation app so I decided to finally install it, but I was extremely disappointed to learn that nearly 99.9% of their exercises were locked behind an annual subscription that was quite overpriced. The only free exercises were the simple breathing ones.

Even my Fitbit app has some mindful exercises but only two of them are available to me and I don’t want to do the same things over and over.

I didn’t even bother with the HeadSpace app either because it likely has the same issues as Calm.

This is self-care we are talking about, this shouldn’t be something we have to pay for. Right now we live in a world where there is still very little support out there for people with mental illness, many of them often see a doctor and are just given a prescription for antidepressants or benzodiazepines and are sent on their way. Even so, some of these people don’t have insurance and can’t pay for that medication.

It can also take some effort for people to find the motivation to practice self-care, and it becomes even harder when you find a useful tool, only to find out that you have to pay to use it. Sometimes it reaches an extreme level to a point where a lot of homeless people I see, are often ones with mental illness and addiction because they can’t afford to get the help they need and keep a roof over their heads.

I get it, these apps are companies and they need to make money somehow, but locking almost all of your content behind a subscription paywall is just demanding money. I would be fine if they put maybe half of their content free, and the rest you pay for, especially if some of it is narrated by celebrities like LeBron. But seriously, if you’re locking everything behind a paywall and only 2 – 5 activities are available for free, it’s basically sending a message saying sorry this app isn’t for you if you won’t open your wallet.

Access to self-care in all its forms should be a human right, not only something that people who want to pay, should have access to.

I found a new meditation app called Smiling Mind and it’s free for now, I also still use Finch which I’ve had for a year now and the activities are very basic. One of my Tree Town neighbours somehow got sponsored by a guardian so they have Finch Plus, therefore, all of their neighbours have it as well without paying. I might write about that app later.

That’s my two cents on this, there are some things in life that shouldn’t be locked behind a subscription, hell, there are a lot of things I believe shouldn’t, as you know.

👽Emily