Our Favorite Apps to Help You De-Stress

It’s no surprise that wedding planning (and life in general) can be stressful. When left to our own devices, we often over-plan, overthink, and even overreact. Managing life’s stressors is essential to being peaceful, calm, and happy. Here are some of our favorite apps to help you unwind, relax, and refresh.

Meditation has been proven to help reduce stress, improve sleep, and increase your focus; essentially improving overall well-being. Practicing meditation and mindfulness takes just that, practice—and that’s where Headspace comes in. With a 10-session free beginner course and more targeted meditation guides available via subscription, this app will guide your mind to a point of relaxation and peace in any calm or quiet area.

This “environment enhancer” features over 3,500 sounds to choose from to help you select your preferred background noise to soothe and calm. Ambiance also enables the user to customize their own mixes while setting custom timers for a predetermined amount of time. Find a comfortable spot, close your eyes, and let it all go as you relax to ambient, light noise.

Sometimes all it takes is a shift in focus to something simple for your mind and body to chill out a bit. Tapping into visual relaxation techniques, Bubbles works well for fussy toddlers in need of a distraction, but equally well for adults. Lose yourself for a few moments by popping bubbles or making them bigger. It sounds so simple, but when life can get crazy, simple may be all you need.

The Yoga Nidra Deep Relaxation Practice offers three options for 10, 20 or 30-minute deep relaxation guidance through the Yoga Nidra method, which claims to be scientific and systematic in inducing relaxation and sleep. Helpful in managing both insomnia and in increasing focus and clarity, the app uses ancient principals to help users develop calmness and peace that can be carried through the day.

Created by a team of psychologists and researchers, and based on the foundations of both Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and mindfulness, Stress Tracker makes you think about the process of stress and stress-release by tracking your mood and its level, as well as the source and symptoms of your stress. By doing so, you can evaluate trends and insights to help handle your triggers while also providing a six-point checklist that can help diffuse and relieve stress on demand.

Jotting down your thoughts and ideas is one of the simplest ways to organize your thinking and clear your head, but we don’t always have time to sit down with a pen and paper to really hash things out. Momento is a smart journal that transforms journaling, making it easy to use whether you’re on the go or are taking a much-needed time out. You can store notes, photos, videos, places, people and events all within a handy app. It’s also a great tool to use when reflecting on happy times and past experiences, as memories can be quite comforting.

Rooted in the Zen belief system of living in the moment, Buddha Board is an app that will let you create a drawing or art on the screen and then slowly “let it go,” watching it fade and disappear. It is through this process that it is believed one can develop more of an ability to be present without being concerned about outcomes themselves. By working on “letting it go,” you might find yourself becoming more peaceful, mindful and even forgiving.