Table of ContentsView AllTable of ContentsGetting StartedMindfulnessSleepPros & ConsFinal Thoughts
Table of ContentsView All
View All
Table of Contents
Getting Started
Mindfulness
Sleep
Pros & Cons
Final Thoughts
I’m in a stressful season of my life—and I’m sure I’m not alone. I’m in the midst of studying for my board licensing exam, working on a large personal writing project, and navigating an overall constriction of my time, resulting in some pretty substantial stress. I also have a guilty pleasure that I’m ashamed of: I’m a doom-scroller, especially before bed. Rather than avoiding blue light, turning off the television, and cracking a book, I open my phone and scroll through Pinterest, various news outlets, Reddit—whatever I can get my hands on. While I prescribemindfulnessandsleep hygienerecommendations galore to my therapy clients, I often fail to follow my own advice.
Tired of feeling stressed out and exhausted, I was eager to see if a month of using theInsight Timerapp could help me out. It’s ameditation appavailable for iOS and Android that targets sleep andstresswhile promoting total relaxation. I’ve triedplenty of meditation appsin the past, many of which I’ve found rather generic, so I was curious to see what set Insight Timer apart. Above all, I was hoping to find something that would help me develophealthier habitsquickly. Keeping in mind that mindfulness meditation can decrease stress and enhance sleep, I eagerly jumped into the app.
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Getting Started With Insight Timer
On its website, Insight Timer dubs itself the #1 app forsleep, stress, andanxiety. It offersbreathworkandmindfulnessexercises, bedtime stories, guided visualizations, soothing music tracks, multi-day courses on wellness-related topics (think along the lines of manifestation, tarot, and connecting with your spirit guides), talks with wellness experts, and even podcast episodes. Its name is derived from its most simple function—to serve as a timer for meditation where you can set the time, ambient background sound, interval timer bell sound, and ending timer bell sound.
There is a free version of the app that provides access to over 146,000 guided meditations, talks, podcasts, and music tracks. However, it doesn’t allow access to any of the app’s courses, offline listening, or the option to rewind or fast-forward. You can opt for a free seven-day trial of the paid version.
I was interested in getting the full experience, so I chose the premium Member Plus subscription.
While the website states it costs $9.99 per month or $59.99 per year, I couldn’t find an option for a monthly subscription when signing up. So I shelled out the $59.99 and embarked on my pursuit of destressing.
Building a Mindfulness Practice With Insight Timer
Insight Timer
Below the quote were five different emoticon faces I could select, ranging from a dark blue frowny face to a deep green smiley face, and above the faces was the question, “How are you feeling?”
I didn’t realize this initially, but it turned out this is a form of amood tracker, allowing me to track how my moods were each time I reached for the app. Since this wasn’t clear to me at first, I often skipped over it (there was a tiny button at the bottom that read, “skip”). When I did rate my moods, I was then presented with a page that read, “Why do you feel ___?” and the blank would be filled in with the mood I selected.
For example, if I was having a bad day and clicked the dark blue frowny face, I was presented with the question, “Why do you feel awful?” Below the question were various buttons I could click, includingfamily, food,spirituality, travel,finances, and more.
I liked that I was able to provide more detail as to what could be influencing my mood on any particular day.
On the landing page of the app, there are various options to choose from—a meditation timer, sleep exercises, courses, exercises targetingworkplace stress, and then one that simply says “Breathe.” This was confusing—when I clicked it, I was only shownbreathworkoptions. I had assumed I would be shown general mindfulness offerings, as breathwork felt a bit too intense for me. This led me to fumble around the app while searching for beginner-friendly mindfulness andmeditationfeatures.
After looking around for a minute or two, I headed to the search function of the app, which was conveniently located in the navigation bar at the bottom of the screen. As soon as I clicked it, I was taken to a page that had a search bar at the top of the screen and below that said, “Explore.” Underneath “explore” were eight categories to choose from: Beginner, Meditation, Breathwork, Sleep, Music, Yoga, Live Events, and Courses.
I went ahead and ventured into the stress and anxiety portion of the app. There was a pleasant array of options—guided meditations, soothing acoustic Irish music, and evenyoga. Exercises ranged in length from one minute to over an hour. The longer exercises were generally limited to soothing music tracks. The majority of exercises hovered between 10 to 30 minutes. Throughout my month of testing out exercises, I opted for ones that were shorter than 15 minutes. The only exception to this is when I played relaxing music in the background while I made lunch or got ready for my day.
My favorite exercise was a 10-minute long guided meditation titled ‘Self-Compassion for Your Inner Parts.’
An exercise that didn’t work for me as well was a 15-minute talk called “The Stress Prescription: Turn Stress into Ease.”
The content of the talk was fantastic, well-researched, and easy to digest. However, the format of listening to a talk wasn’t the best for me.
It was essentially a mini-podcast, so it felt like I was consuming more content. While there isn’t anything wrong with that, I need to zone out and breathe, rather than sit and think, when stressed. In the final four minutes of the talk, Dr. Close does lead listeners through a mindfulness exercise, but I personally would have preferred to just get into the exercise.
Tackling My Sleep Hygiene
When it was time for bed, I ventured from the homepage to the sleep section app. I could choose from sleep music, soundscapes, bedtime tales,sleep meditations, and sleep exercises for children. I love that you can do as many activities in the app as you like and if you feel like you’d prefer a curated selection of tracks to choose from, the app has themed playlists available.
There were also courses available. The courses ranged from five days to a full month and consisted of educational audio you listened to once a day. Some of the course topics included building a bettersleep routine, how to beginlucid dreaming,yoga nidra, and even mindfulness techniques for children. Each daily session was short, ranging from as quick as five minutes to about 30 minutes, depending on the topic at hand.
While some course lessons are experiential and would includemindfulnessand sleep-enhancing exercises (thinkbreathing techniquesand guided visualizations), I was much more drawn to the various sounds and bedtime tales.
Since I take in so much content on a daily basis, the courses weren’t my preference, but I see how they could be perfect for someone who really wants to understand some of the science behind their sleep patterns and general wellness.
On my first night using the app, I opted for a bedtime tale. Here is where I could have been struck with some decision fatigue due to the volume of available bedtime tales. However, I quickly settled on a 20-minute-long retelling of Rapunzel, reaching for some childhood nostalgia. I pressed play, set it to “sleep mode” (which stops the track after it ends and locks it so you don’t run down your phone battery), and laid my head on my pillow.
It began with soothing ambient tones that played in the background for the duration of the track. I immediately felt my eyelids get heavier and was shocked at how quickly my body responded to just the sound of the tones. Then, the narrator began speaking. I found her cadence annoying—every word was slow and drawn out to the point where it was distracting from the content. Despite my annoyance, I was becoming more and more relaxed and figured something must be working. It couldn’t have been more than 10 minutes before I fell asleep. Night one was off to a great start.
My husband isn’t a fan of bedtime tales, but he does enjoy soothing sounds to fall asleep to. This led me to choose calming wave sounds—there was a lot to choose from, so I clicked the first one I saw and was swiftly lulled to sleep. Another time, I chose soothing ambient tones. Again, I was falling asleep within 10 minutes or less.
For someone who manages to stay up an extra hour and sometimes two scrolling on my phone, I was pleasantly surprised to see how quickly I fell asleep.
Even with the annoying Rapunzel narration, I was consistently falling asleep quickly. The app was doing exactly what I’d hoped—it broke my nasty phone habit and helped me get some sleep. Even my husband was hooked.
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Pros and Cons
While I loved my experience with Insight Timer, your mileage may vary. Keep in mind these pros and cons when determining if this app is a fit for you.
Huge selection of exercises to choose from
Can access much of the app for free
User-friendly navigation
Affordable pricing
ConsDespite the affordability, the billing options can be confusingFree trial is only a week longFree version doesn’t allow access to the full app
Despite the affordability, the billing options can be confusing
Free trial is only a week long
Free version doesn’t allow access to the full app
Insight Timer’s mindfulness offerings can be generally overwhelming—there are thousands to choose from and for the novice meditator, it may feel intimidating to make a decision. Interestingly enough, I didn’t feel this way when checking out its sleep exercises. I attribute this to sleep exercises being generally more approachable. After all, who doesn’t want to hear a bedtime tale or listen to some ambient sounds?
Once I got the hang of the app, I found it to be a great resource in my toolbox and my sleep hygiene was transformed.
That being said, it didn’t turn me into a daily meditator after a month. However, my goal in using the app wasn’t to spend the rest of my life meditating every single day. I simply wanted to destress as needed and Insight Timer helped me do that. Besides, in a culture of always needing to do more, maybe the greatest win is to turn to the support you need when you need it instead of feeling like you must add in another wellness practice on a daily basis. Plus, if you struggle to remember to use the app, there’s an option to set reminders, which I found super helpful.
1 SourceVerywell Mind uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read oureditorial processto learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.Shadick NA, Sowell NF, Frits ML, et al.A randomized controlled trial of an internal family systems-based psychotherapeutic intervention on outcomes in rheumatoid arthritis: a proof-of-concept study.J Rheumatol. 2013;40(11):1831-1841. doi:10.3899/jrheum.121465
1 Source
Verywell Mind uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read oureditorial processto learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.Shadick NA, Sowell NF, Frits ML, et al.A randomized controlled trial of an internal family systems-based psychotherapeutic intervention on outcomes in rheumatoid arthritis: a proof-of-concept study.J Rheumatol. 2013;40(11):1831-1841. doi:10.3899/jrheum.121465
Verywell Mind uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read oureditorial processto learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.
Shadick NA, Sowell NF, Frits ML, et al.A randomized controlled trial of an internal family systems-based psychotherapeutic intervention on outcomes in rheumatoid arthritis: a proof-of-concept study.J Rheumatol. 2013;40(11):1831-1841. doi:10.3899/jrheum.121465
Hannah Owens, LMSW
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