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

Very helpful, but has a separate save function. If you don't save at least once a week, you chance losing all your progress. Not your mental progress, just on the app. :-) There are many mindfulness exercises to choose from, along with practices and educational materials to read. The voice for the exercises is soothing & mellow. I've used this app for 5 years & highly recommend. The book "Chop Wood, Carry Water" is also great, esp for those who hate sitting still. It's mindfulness on the move!

I like that there are readings to help understand mindfulness. And it goes in levels so you can add more concepts as you go. You can choose how long to meditate and keep adding time. And you can set goals and reminders, and track progress. Haven't had any problems with it. The voice that leads the meditation is nice, other app voices have put me on edge, so this is a relief. I notice now, when my thinking is getting chaotic and I need to bring it back and breathe

Most apps make you go through a bunch of very specific to a particular concern guided meditation, with no ability to customize, And usually end up having to pay for anything more than just a couple free ones they have. This app is very straightforward, you can adjust the time, the voice is guiding but not overly woo woo and only an intro/outro. It's mindfulness not a meditation, and they emphasize the practice aspect of it. Very real and approachable.

What's new

* bug fixes and performance enhancements