Peacefulness app for iPhone and iPad

I have a friend who would rather do just about anything besides meditate. She says she tried it once and it made her want to pull all her hair out and run screaming down the hallway. Maybe you can relate. Or maybe you have a short attention span, and the thought of sitting still for more than a few minutes intimidates you. As a brain injury doctor I treat a lot of patients with short attention spans and other cognitive impairments. The truth is, meditation isn’t for everyone. Maybe it isn’t for you. That’s why I made this app.


— Simpler than meditation, simpler than yoga

Five years ago I started a weekly group at a brain injury rehabilitation center in Texas. I wanted to see if I could stretched the idea of meditation to make it more accessible to the people I was treating. Drawing from the sacred traditions of Asia and from the literature on mindfulness, I developed a suite of exercises with brain-injured people in mind. I called it Peaceful Habits.

The seven exercises are simple and tangible on purpose.

. . . breathe mindfully
. . . relax the body
. . . enjoy tea mindfully
. . . hear peaceful music
. . . walk mindfully
. . . be with wild birds
. . . meditate

Unlike traditional meditation, these practical exercises are less about sitting on a mat and more about how you plug into the everyday world around you. It’s a learning-by-doing approach. These are not exotic exercises. They require no special equipment. And they’re easy to grasp, which makes them useful for anyone, with or without a brain injury. I designed them to be as accessible as possible to the largest number of people. I’ve taught the exercises to children with attention deficit disorder, and to the elderly, and to people who had no idea what day it was or where they were. Anyone can learn to become more peaceful. Anyone.

— How it works

Select one of the seven exercises from a menu on the main screen. Then select a duration, 1 to 60 minutes. This establishes your daily practice goal for the week. INSTRUCTIONS for the seven exercises are provided. You can schedule a daily REMINDER. When you open up the app, the TIMER is pre-set to the duration of your practice. Of course, it’s up to you to actually do the exercise. This isn’t some kind of magical peacefulness device. Peacefulness is something you work at. This app helps you do that. Each time you complete your daily practice, the HABIT TRACKER records your progress. The results are stored and are available for REVIEW.

Habits have the best chance of taking root when there’s a juicy REWARD involved. Here, the reward is a three-second animation. After you’ve completed your daily practice, a gray cartoon face on the habit tracker floats over and checks off the daily circle next to it. As it floats sideways it brightens from gray to yellow, and its expression curves upward into a smile. It’s really cute, especially at the end when the smile pops peacefully into place and a bright, sparkling chime sounds. It literally brings a smile to your face. On second thought, maybe it is a magic peacefulness device.

— Meditation Training Wheels

Think of these mindfulness and awareness exercises as elementary stress management or relaxation techniques, coping strategies for anxiety and irritability, or as attention-training exercises. This down-to-earth approach takes the structure of a daily meditation practice and breaks it down into building blocks more suitable for beginners — how to notice the breath, how to relax the body, how to be grounded in your environment, how to be mindful of your senses. Practicing these exercises is like learning the ABCs of mind-body training. Once you get the basics down, you can build a more formal daily practice from there.