My Spiritual Starter Kit: The Apps and Tracks That Kept Me Showing Up
When I committed to a year of daily meditation in December 2020, I had no idea where to start. This is not a guide from someone who sat cross-legged on a mountaintop and figured it all out. This is from someone who meditated every single day for a year…in bed, on the floor, in a dedicated “meditation room” that was really just a spare bedroom with a bench and a blanket.
I downloaded apps, deleted apps, re-downloaded apps. I found guides whose voices made me roll my eyes and others who made me cry within sixty seconds. Some mornings were transcendent. Most were ordinary. A few felt like a complete waste of time, and I did them anyway. (That’s the whole secret, actually. You just keep showing up.)
These are the tools that helped me do that. (By the way, no links or affiliates. I just want to share!) The apps I tried, a few tracks I kept coming back to, and a little bit of what happened when finally, after twenty years of being told to just sit with my eyes closed, I actually did.
Welcome to the experiment.
The Apps
Insight Timer — Tried and True
This was, and still is, my main meditation app. I used it in the beginning mostly because it was free, but I now pay the yearly subscription, as well as donate to individual teachers. It has a massive library searchable by many filters (length, topic, music only, no music, religious, secular, etc.) and thousands of teachers from around the world. When it went down for updates, I really had a mini-freak out. Great for newbies or zen masters.
Calm — The Famous One
Apparently it’s the most downloaded meditation app, but I just didn’t connect here. It has a polished interface, celebrity narrators, and is fairly easy to navigate. I tried it briefly while Insight Timer crashed but unfortunately, I did not jibe with the one teacher I tried. I was not interested in having Lebron or Camilla Cabello lead me in a meditation, so I probably didn’t give it a fair shake. It could be worth a trial, especially if you want a more beginner-friendly, secular experience.
Aura — The Algorithm
This app uses your listening history to surface tracks for you, though most tracks skewed short (3–5 minutes), making it hard to go deep. Oh wait, it just took me several days to navigate the interface and find how to sort by time. Duh. User unfriendly or user error? One feature Aura has that I’d like to see on Insight is that the app plays a little more space music (w/ ocean, birds, etc) quietly at the end of each track. A nice touch. I’d consider paying for this one as I did have a few very profound moments with Aura’s teachers.
5 Tracks Worth Finding
1. “Increase Focus, Clarity & Positivity — Energy of Sound (Insight Timer) A music only track that I still come back to. One of the first tracks to invoke in me incredible imagery. In life in this moment, I was feeling mired, my internal light dimmed, but this imagery was very powerful. From the journal: “I see a figure with a rod of sunshine blasting out of their ass, running around just so joyful. Pretty sure that was me. It was profound and moved me to tears.”
2. “Learning to Surrender” — Sarah Blondin / Live Awake (Insight Timer) Blondin is in a category of her own with extremely prosaic guided meditations that hit home in almost every track. This meditation reframed surrender not as giving up, but as releasing what’s blocking you so the universe can do its work. Very profound stuff. From the journal: “I saw my own fear of failure, of writing, of doing, as almost a physical thing impeding me. Can I just set that aside and get to the heart of the work?”
3. “Things I Wish Someone Had Told Me” — Sarah Blondin / Live Awake (Insight Timer) Another 5 star masterpiece from Blondin. Her very first line: “I wish someone would have told me all I needed to do was sit with my eyes closed.” My sensei told me exactly that — twenty years before I listened. This one really resonated with my base need to do this entire experiment. It just hit home at a vulnerable moment. From the journal: “To prove a point, I burst into tears at the end.”
4. “Healing & Raising Vibration” — Kenneth Soares (Insight Timer) One of my early favorite teachers that has a hypnotic voice, soothing cadence and compelling imagery. This shorter track with drums, chants, and solfeggio tones guides you to your soul tribe around a fire, building a swirling ball of green light filled with your intentions — then releases it like a million seeds into the world. It sounds wild, but it worked for me. From the journal: “One (shard) landed right in my heart chakra.”
5. “Gratitude as a Magnet” (Aura) A simple, grounding track that reminded me: mind, body, and spirit are three equal parts — and we let mind dominate constantly. Meditation is the tool to find the other two. From the journal: “To sit in the now, to just be — that is what meditation is.”
The Journal: Writing It Down
I did the entire year in longhand. Four classic, hard cover Moleskine notebooks, 5” x 8.25”, filled front to back over twelve months. There is something about pen on paper that feels right for this kind of work. The hand slows the mind down just enough.
I’ll be honest: I also tried typing. During the experiment I decided to learn, and promptly developed tendonitis in both hands the moment I introduced the pinky into the equation. My body definitely had opinions about that plan.
After the year was over I discovered the reMarkable tablet, a device that genuinely replicates the feel of writing on paper in a way that truly has to be experienced to be believed. (is that from their marketing materials?) The added bonus is it can convert your handwriting to text. I use it today and it has been a revelation. (And the pens…don’t even get me started on pens. That’s a whole other conversation.)
The point is: the tool matters less than the habit. Paper, tablet, voice memo, the back of an envelope…whatever gets the thoughts out of your head and somewhere you can return to them.
So, are you ready to get started?