The Balance is a personal finance website that simplifies complex topics like work-life balance, money hacks, career advice, and small business tips. The site is a part of the Dotdash Meredith family and reaches 19 million unique viewers per month.
The app’s head meditation coaches are Ofosu Jones-Quartey and Leah Santa Cruz, who bring together their experience in mindfulness, yoga, and neuroscience to guide you.
What is The Balance?
Headquartered in New York City, The Balance is an American website that simplifies personal finance topics and news. It is part of the Dotdash Meredith family of websites and currently reaches 19 million unique monthly viewers in the US alone.
The company aims to empower thoughtful financial decision-making for all stages of life, from building a career and buying a home to saving for retirement and growing a small business. The site features content from 70 expert writers who cover topics like personal finance, investing, money hacks, and career advice.
A Better Balance is an organization founded by Dina and Sherry to create a level playing field for mothers and all caregivers in America by combating the care crisis, driving public education, and advocating for fair and supportive work-life policies.
Who is The Balance Meditation App Right For?
The Balance app aims to provide the closest experience to having a personal meditation coach. At the beginning of your journey, the app walks you through questions about your meditation experience and goals. Then it builds a personalized meditation program on demand for you. Over time, the app surveys you again to ensure the meditations remain perfectly suited to your needs and goals. For example, if you decide to change your focus to learning how to cope with grief or ease loneliness, the app will ask you to answer some short questions and then present you with a new meditation on demand.
The app also offers a library of meditation courses that cover topics like Anxiety, Breaking Habits, Sleep, Concentration, and SOS. Each course contains ten meditations that range from three to ten minutes each, making them easy to fit into your daily schedule. Courses can be selected by the Today tab or through a search bar where you can find meditations based on the time of day, your favorites list, and other recommendations from the app.
Each daily meditation on the Balance app starts with a brief survey asking how you are feeling and letting you select your narrator. After this, the meditation session begins with a brief introduction explaining which mindfulness technique you will practice. This is a great way to help the beginner learn what each of the different types of meditations entails and why they are helpful, earning Balance 3.5 stars in this category on our scoring criteria.
If you want to explore on your own, the app has a ‘Singles’ section with one-off guided and unguided meditations. These are designed to help you energize, relax, deal with stress, fall asleep, and more. The app even has a collection of sleep sessions, including wind-downs and white noise options, to help you get a good night’s rest.
While the app is a bit pricier than other meditation apps, it offers one of the longest free trials we’ve seen for any app for an entire year. It also promises to create a curated user experience and offers reports showing how many mindful moments you’ve practiced. This type of tracking can be motivating to develop mindfulness skills that can sometimes feel repetitive.
How Does The Balance Meditation App Work?
The Balance is a new player on the meditation app scene that offers users a more personalized experience than the two most prominent players, Calm and Headspace. Upon signup, the app asks users to answer questions about their current sleep and stress levels and their goals. The app then assembles programs that develop specific meditation skills like breathing, awareness, and visualization. A calm and soothing audio guide accompanies each program.
The program section of the app also allows users to track their mindfulness minutes and daily streaks, which may encourage continued engagement. The program also includes a variety of innovative experiences, including vibration-based immersive meditations and interactive visual meditations that allow you to follow an animated circle with your finger as you breathe.
Overall, the program feature of Balance is quite impressive and helps users develop a solid foundation in meditation as it breaks down the practice into concrete and trainable skills. It also tracks your progress and rewards you for your successes, which can be a great motivator to keep at it.
Compared to Headspace, Balance is a bit lighter in features; however, it does offer a good range of stand-alone meditations and additional sleep options such as ‘Before Sleep,’ ‘Fall Asleep,’ and five white noise options. It also has different breathing exercises and offers a few sleep stories.
As a note, the app does not include any meditations that address more severe anxiety or depression symptoms, so it should only complement therapy with a licensed therapist or psychiatrist in your area. That said, the app has high user satisfaction and many positive reviews in the App Store and Google Play.
Unfortunately, the Balance App is not without issues; a few users report it does not load. The most common reason this occurs is a poor internet connection, so you must ensure your phone or tablet is connected to a reliable Wi-Fi network before downloading the app.
Does The Balance Meditation App Have Any Limits?
The Balance meditation app has a lot to offer regarding features and content. However, it is limited in comparison to some of the other top meditation apps. For instance, it does not have as many meditation courses, and the selection of stand-alone mindfulness sessions is small. Additionally, the app does not include yoga or meditations geared towards specific health issues such as anxiety or depression symptoms.
Despite these limitations, the Balance app still earns four out of five stars when it comes to customer satisfaction and ease of use. Users appreciate how simple it is to get started and the generous one-year free trial. In addition, users can access knowledgeable meditation coaches that help them improve their life through mindfulness and meditation.
To help beginners start a meditation habit, the Balance meditation app has an entire course called “Foundations” that guides them through the basics of mindfulness and meditation. The app’s head meditation coaches, Ofosu Jones-Quartey and Leah Santa Cruz are experienced teachers that guide learners of all levels through the practice. The app also includes a podcast called “Well Balanced,” which shares tips for improving stress, sleep, focus, and mood through mindfulness and meditation.
Several meditations can be found in the Balance app, including course-based programs like “Plans” and “Singles.” Plan-based programs teach a variety of different mindfulness techniques over ten unique sessions. The app also includes several individual mindfulness meditations that address various concerns, such as anxiety and stress.
Another great feature of the Balance meditation app is its ability to track progress over time. The app records each meditation session you’ve completed and will notify you when to move on to the next session in a course-based program. This way, the app helps you stay motivated to stick with your meditation habit. The app also shows you your total meditation time and which mindfulness skills you’ve practiced most frequently.
