Exercise isn’t my thing – I wish it were – but it’s just not. Sure, I can occasionally jog or do yoga in my living room, but I’ve never been engaged enough to join a gym or keep doing it.
For that reason alone, I’ve never been particularly interested in Apple’s Fitness Plus service. It’s a great idea to keep fit, don’t get me wrong, but personally I’ve never liked it yet. One of the latest updates caught my attention immediately – Guided Meditation Classes.
Meditation is something I try to find time for every day. We live in a hectic world and with the constant pace and pressure that comes with it, we all need to take time out to pause and calm down. Arguably, it is just as important as exercise, considering it improves your overall wellbeing, and it’s great to see Apple recognize it.
(Image credit: Apple)
Fitness Plus has already offered Mindful Cooldowns – a short meditation session to help you cool off after your workout. Now that special meditation classes are added monthly, you can focus solely on your mindfulness and easily integrate the sessions into your daily routine, whether you are exercising or not. You can choose from nine guided meditation themes depending on your mood, including purposefulness, kindness, gratitude, awareness, creativity, wisdom, calm, focus and resilience. For each, you get a guided experience with the Fitness Plus trainers, which can last five, 10 or 20 minutes.
While you can access Fitness Plus on an iPhone, iPad or Apple TV, you can now also access these classes in audio form in the new mindfulness app on the Apple Watch. That means you don’t have to be home to meditate: you can do it on the train or even in the office.
With the watchOS 8 update, the Breathe app is updated to become a mindfulness app. It will come with breathing exercises, a new type of session called Reflect, and access to the Fitness Plus guided meditations. You can hear the sound of each class through bluetooth headphones. If you like to meditate on the go, you can now track this with the workout app.
(Image credit: Apple)
The guided meditation sessions are led by a group of mindful cooldown and yoga trainers that you may have seen on Fitness Plus. Each trainer offers a different style and tone so you can find the one that suits you best or keep things varied. A new meditation program for beginners will also be introduced to provide a basic understanding of the technique before starting the class. Because of this, these courses will work for you whether you are new to meditation or already experienced.
Personally, I can’t wait to try these sessions out. I usually only meditate for five to ten minutes at a time, so maybe it encourages me to do it longer. Who knows, maybe I’ll try a few fitness classes too.
Apple Fitness Plus is $ 10 / month; Guided meditation will be available on September 27th.
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