Learn the mindful art of meditation through carefully-crafted seven-minute exercises
Price: Free (IAP subscription)
Version: 2.4.1
Size: 19.2 MB
Seller: 7Mind GmbH
Platform: iPhone and iPad
Mindfulness and meditation have become a bit of a boom area for iOS apps – and rightly so. But with the market dominated by Headspace, it can seem like there isn’t much room left for alternative meditation apps. 7Mind Meditation is one such app: its approach focuses on introducing the user to different branches of meditation through seven-minute exercises and seven-day courses. Let’s find out how 7Mind stacks up against the competition.
7Mind offers everything you’d expect from an iOS meditation app. It begins with an introductory course (“Foundations”) which introduces you to the basic principles of meditation, like breathing and visualizations. From there, it sets users loose on its four courses: Stress/Anxiety, Well-Being, Performance, and Family.
On top of the app’s introductory sessions, 7Mind offers four courses for users to choose from
Each course is made up of several sub-courses. The Performance course, for instance, consists of four parts: Productivity, Confidence, Creativity, and Purpose. Each one of these parts offers seven meditations and is designed to be used over an entire week. As you’d expect from a guided meditation app, the soothing tones of your meditation expert – in this case, Jonathan Lehmann – calmly walks you through the entire seven-minute exercise. The courses are even introduced with a video from Jonathan, in which the aims of the meditation are carefully explained.
Individual courses in 7Mind are introduced with a video from Jonathan, which is a nice touch.
The seven-minute limit in 7Mind is another great feature – when you launch 7Mind, you know exactly how long an individual meditation is going to last. This stops any potential worry or anxiety around fitting the meditation into your daily schedule from seeping in.
As you’d expect, users can pause meditations, skip their intros, and end sessions early if need be
On top of 7Mind’s courses are a large number of individual, one-off meditation exercises called Singles. These aren’t part of the app’s longer courses and instead cover a range of bespoke topics like vacation, emotions, and nature. These individual meditations are a nice addition to 7Mind, and are something users of the app will likely return to.
So, for the killer question — how does 7Mind compare with rival Headspace? Well, undoubtedly content is the biggest factor which separates the two. As an older, more polished app, Headspace has the benefit of having had more and more meditations added to it over the years. And its price — of $75/£75 per year — reflects this. On the other hand, 7Mind offers a really good selection of meditations for a slightly lower annual fee of $53/£53.
The app’s “Singles” are especially good, and offer one-off meditations which users are likely to return to
Usefully, you can download 7Mind and unlock its premium service free of charge for (you guessed it) seven days, which gives you enough time to work through an entire course and to decide whether this is the app for you. For most people, 7Mind offers everything they could want in a meditation app — it’s well-designed, offers a good selection of meditations, and is easy to use for beginners. Perhaps more hardcore users looking for an even wider range of meditations should take a look at Headspace’s more premium offering, but 7Mind is a very solid middle ground.