Four New Apps to Keep You Mindful

The Mindful editors share their latest app discoveries — and a major electronics company launches a well-being initiative.

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AccessNow

Available for iOS and Android

Maayan Ziv, a Canadian photographer with muscular dystrophy, created AccessNow, a crowdsourcing app that shares accessibility information—from wheelchair-friendly parking and washrooms to Braille signage—for storefronts and businesses worldwide. Ziv says she’s a regular person “who’s interested in going out and doing things in life. And so is every other person who has a disability.”

Expectful

Available for iOS and Android

Expectant and new moms, typically putting self-care last, face high levels of stress. Expectful provides 10- to 20-minute meditation practices for each stage of pregnancy and early motherhood.

Bravo Tango Brain Training

Available for iOS, Android, and Google Assistant app on Google Home

A former Air Force psychologist collaborated with National Geographic on the Bravo Tango Brain Training app to help veterans relieve stress. The voice-controlled app responds to the user, guiding them through exercises for muscle relaxation, focusing, breathing, grounding, visualization, and interpersonal connection. It makes self-care tools more accessible and available, whenever vets need them.

WeCroak

Available for iOS and Android

If you often forget how short life is, WeCroak is the app for you. Five times a day, it pings you with a pithy quote reminding you you’re going to die.

Buy our phone… but put it down

LG Electronics USA, the American subsidiary of the global electronics giant that manufactures televisions, smartphones, tablets, and more, has launched a social responsibility initiative with mindfulness at its core. Its Experience Happiness platform aims to increase “happiness skills” among young people by 2021. Toward this end, LG has partnered with the Greater Good Science Center, whose research into the “science of happiness” has led to the understanding of six learnable skills to living a fulfilling life, and Inner Explorer, a nonprofit organization that creates and delivers mindfulness practices to classrooms for grades pre K-12.

The initiative “will allow us to help further the science of happiness and work with our grant partners to deliver proven skills for sustainable happiness to America’s young people,” said subsidiary president and CEO William Cho.

On March 20th, to coincide with the United Nations International Day of Happiness, LG will host a “virtual field trip” where experts from Greater Good Science Center will introduce students to the science of happiness and how it’s a trainable skill. The 30-minute video will be shown to 200,000 students across classrooms participating in the Discovery Education curriculum, but it’s also available online for free.

This article was adapted from the April issue of Mindful magazine.

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