Mindfulness Coach

US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA)

About this app

Mindfulness means noticing and paying attention to what is going on in the present moment, without passing judgment on it. Mindfulness has been shown to be effective for reducing stress, improving emotional balance, increasing self-awareness, helping with anxiety and depression, and coping more effectively with chronic pain.

Mindfulness Coach 2.0 was developed to help Veterans, Service members, and others learn how to practice mindfulness. The app provides a gradual, self-guided training program designed to help you understand and adopt a simple mindfulness practice. Mindfulness Coach also offers a library of information about mindfulness (for example “What is Mindfulness?”, “How to Anchor Your Attention”), 12 audio-guided mindfulness exercises and a growing catalog of additional exercises available for free download, goal-setting and tracking, a mindfulness mastery assessment to help you track your progress over time, customizable reminders, and access to other support and crisis resources. Mindfulness Coach is free, doesn’t take or share any of your personal information, and doesn’t require add-on purchases.

Mindfulness Coach was created by VA’s National Center for PTSD.

Ratings and reviews

Great app and even though I have only been using it for a couple of weeks it has helped me. I do wish though that in "Build Expertise" I could mark favorites. For example, in "Mindfulness for Difficult Emotions" it would be beneficial for me if I could mark "Strategy for Painful Emotions" as a favorite. Also, I think it would help me to be able to highlight parts of the readings in what I need to reread over and over in "Build Expertise" because of my poor memory.

I wish more mental health apps were like this and not have all their features locked behind pay walls. Because that's what someone needs when they need help :p. It's most likely because it's sponsored through the government but that's okay. The best mindful meditation app I found so far the walk-throughs are very helpful. It's like a mini self-help book.

Mindfulness Coach is a great app - it combines straightforward teaching with a very usable interface and simple styling. While it has a variety of different meditions, there aren't too many like other meditation apps, so if I want to try something new I'm not overwhelmed by choices. And as a person on a tight budget the price is ideal.

What's new

* fixed a bug that was affecting Practice Now on some devices