High Tech Stress Relief

Technology has been blamed for draining our energy, for increasing stress levels, and being a major distraction to spiritual search. Of course it can be all that but it can also be quite the opposite if you know how to use it correctly.

Health-conscious techno geeks are working hard to bring us the best of stress-reducing applications that can be used on the smart phones to relax, meditate, do yoga, and increase mindfulness. Here a list of the most recent bliss-out apps that you can use on your iphone and blackberry:

1. Know Thyself – ‘What are you feeling right now?’ That’s what the iPhone AWARENESS app ($4 on iTunes) asks up to 22 times daily. A gentle gong prompts you to record your emotions at that moment, enabling the app to generate monthly and yearly report on your emotional and behavioral habits and to identify potentially unhealthy patterns. The app also offers breathing exercises, meditation videos and inspirational quotes.
2. Let Go Off The Mind and Be – Simply Being application created for iphone and blackberry encourages you to let go of the mind and “simply be”. Choose a 5, 10, or 15 minute meditation with the Simply Being theme. This simple meditation gently encourages the mind to let go of its usual focus on tasks at hand, the future or past, and be easily in the present moment. With this app, you have the option listen to the meditation with or without music. Application created by Meditation Oasis for $.99
3. Strike A Balance – Try yoga without having to contort in front of strangers. At yogalearningcenter.com, $8 a month gets you access to dozens of instructional videos for multiple skill levels. Ranging from one minute to more than one hour, the videos can be sorted by benefits (such as circulation or relaxation), and can play on your iPhone and iPad.
4. Set The Mood – Make a multimedia feel-good playlist. At moodstream.gettyimages.com, set the dials from happy to sad, calm to lively, and humorous to serious, and the site will create custom stream of music, video clips and images to match your mood
5. Create an Ambiance – Calmbiance provides 14 soothing sounds and images from nature, helping you to mask unwanted background noise and rest, sleep or perform yoga and meditation in peace – all for $3.99. You can customize the interface, use timer to set the length of the session and finally achieve a desired level of deep relaxation. Works on blackberry
6. Catch Some Zzzz’s I Shhh. The Relax and Sleep app (free from Android marketplace) has some more than 30 relaxing sounds – acoustic guitar, the ocean, a beating heart – to make you calm. You can layer several sounds into one soothing soundtrack and set a timer to shut it down after you nod off.
7. Let It All Out – If all else fails, break stuff. Smash Room app for iPhone ($1 natenai.com) let’s you take out aggression on virtual goods such as a coffee, a vase, and yes, a smartphone, without having to apologize or replace anything. Pick one of the 25 virtual rooms, and begin the destruction