Meditation has helped relax people for thousands of years, returning them to their daily routines with a sense of calm.  You may find that the same smartphone that aids your Internet addiction offers the path to daily peace. Modern technology has developed many supportive tools for people who want to meditate. Guided meditation apps can be a perfect introduction to the practice because they require nothing except a few minutes of your time and a comfortable and quiet space . Read on for the best apps to help you in your calming practice.

Aura - With Aura every day, you get a new, personalized, three-minute meditation. The same meditation never repeats; according to cofounder Daniel Lee, and Aura’s teachers are constantly recording new meditations for you to try. Aura target stress, anxiety, and depression with it's simple app.

Calm - Relax with Calm, free,  simple mindfulness meditation app to bring more clarity, joy, and peace of mind into your life.  You can select background scenery and sounds (mountain lake, ocean ways, raindrops ), set a timer, and chill out for a few minutes.  Calm is not the best app out there for learning meditation, but it is good to take a break and enjoy a calm moment.

Insight Timer - This free app is an alarm that times your mindfulness practice and links you to a worldwide community of meditators using “  With beautiful Tibetan singing bowls and endless meditations to choose from,  Insight Timer is the fun, connected way to support your meditation practice.

Mindfulness Daily - This 40-day program offers a short daily session in mindfulness and compassion that includesguided meditation via an app.  In less than 15 minutes a day, you’ll receive a lesson and guided practice taught by two of the world’s most widely respected meditation teachers, Jack Kornfield and Tara Brach.  After you register, you’ll be sent the link for the course – you can start at any time.   And you can sample the first lesson for free.

Healthy Living (by EWG) - The Environmental Working Group wants us to know what we’re putting in our bodies, so they created the Healthy Living app that makes he product health and safety ratings for over 200,000 food and cosmetics productsa click away.   This free app allows you to scan a product,  review it's rating and pick a better choice. Products are rated based on three elements: nutrition, ingredient concerns and degree of processing.

Headspace (on the go) - This app provides 10-minute meditation sessions, with the first 10 days available free of charge. (Then, you can choose a subscription. The annual option offers the best rate, $7.99/month.)  The app provides animations about how the mind works and tips on how to sit and breathe. It also allows you to set meditation reminders and track your activity.

The Mindfulness App - The practices are guided by Catherine Polan Orzech, who teaches MBSR at Thomas Jefferson Hospital in Philadelphia. The in-app store provides sessions by top meditation experts like Jack Kornfield and Jon Kabat-Zinn. The app comes with guided meditation practices of 3, 5, 15, and 30 minutes in length. There’s also a silent meditation option and a brief body-scan practice. Like most meditation apps, you can customize your meditation and track your progress. 

Meditation Timer - Meditation is deceptively simple and Meditation Timer also beautifully simple. This app excels in ease of use. Pick a length of time to meditate, set reminder noises for starting and ending your session and you’re ready to meditate.   Plus it's free!

Pigment - Time for a coloring break.  Pigment is a digital coloring book that is for adults more than kids.  Take a break and relax with this coloring book app that lets you color like you would on paper.  With 11 different kinds of pencils, markers and brushes, and an unlimited number of colors to choose from you will be amazed.  And you can share your creations, and even print them out.

Relax Melodies -   Relax Melodies is a lot more than just melodies. The app features stunning natural scenes and is easily navigable to a variety of meditations. One of the app’s top features is that you can combine many sounds for a customized experience. Tune this app to nature sounds, binaural beats (which have been studied for positive brain effects), guided meditations, and more. Meditations focus on improving aspects of your life like creativity and awareness.

Sleep Meditations for Kids -   This is a superb high quality children's meditation app by leading yoga teacher and Montessori teacher Christiane Kerr. The guided meditations (the app comes with four meditation stories, extras can be purchased) are designed to relax children and get them ready for bedtime.

Smiling Mind -  This app helps the 7-to-18 crowd tackle everyday stresses developed by psychologists and educators to help bring balance to people’s lives. The hope is kids are more focused in school and develop healthy sleeping habits. It's free and adults can use try it too!