Goodbye, Headspace. Hello, Oak.

I’ve been meditating for 21 days in a row now. It’s far too early to see any improvements made as a direct result of the practice. But after my initial decision to build this mindfulness habit, a couple of things have changed. So, as promised, here’s an update about what has been happening so far.

Day 1-10

I decided to start my day with meditation. This is not required, I simply chose to do so because early morning is the best time to fit in a mindfulness practice to my schedule. There were two main reasons for this:

1. Focus: At 5 am, when I wake up, I’m usually not groggy, and very alert. This means I can give this practice the focus it requires.
2. Environment: Because I live in the middle of the city, things tend to get unbearably noisy outside after the early hours of the morning. I wanted my experience to be as distraction-free as possible.

I’ve realised that it’s important to set small goals and achieve them in the early formative days of a habit, so that’s what I did. Headspace conveniently offers a 3 minute version of it’s basic meditation routine. I chose this, and from 5:02 am to 5:05 am everyday this was in my schedule.

If you’re familiar with Headspace, you’d know that after the free trial of 10 days, you’re required to sign up for a paid subscription in order to continue. On the 10th day, I was not convinced what Headspace offered was worth $7.92 a month.

So I started looking for alternatives.

Day 11–15

It turned out there was indeed a way to stay in the Headspace ecosystem a little longer without paying, while increasing the intensity a little bit. This was by going through the same 10-day program again, but this time following 5-minute version, in place of the shorter, 3-minute one.

I did this for 5 days, until I discovered Oak.

Day 16–21

Oak is an app developed by Kevin Rose (of Digg fame.) It’s completely free of charge. The most basic form of meditation it offers is guided mindfulness meditation. It also gives you room to practice meditation unguided. This, I believe is for the more experienced practitioners, and certainly not for me at this stage.

Perhaps what I like most is the fact that the app plays a sound track in the background while you meditate. There’s a variety of tracks to choose from. I’ve found the breathing exercises quite useful, too.

I have only totaled about 2 hours of meditation, and it’ll be unfair to reach a conclusion about its benefits or the lack thereof based on this very limited experience. Although my original plan was a 30-day challenge, I realise now that it won’t be enough.

I’m hoping to continue beyond 30 days, and you’ll hear from me every now and then about my progress.