Mindfulness Meditation Course for Clinicians, Staff, Survivors

Support for Daily Meditation Practice “Insight Timer” app

Barbaranne Branca, PhD ABN

A great support for daily meditation practice is the use of a meditation app, which you can download onto your phone. Many apps are available: Insight Timer, Calm, Headspace are a few. I suggest Insight Timer--it has many features, is free, appears to be exceptionally well-managed, and is always evolving.

Let’s get started! Instructions will be given for android phones. If you have an iphone and have questions, please ask; they are similar to one another.

GETTING STARTED ON ANDROID PHONES

• Go to your phone’s app marketplace. • Download Insight Timer

• Register to make your free account • Once you are registered, you will see a screen with the following menu options on the

bottom: o “Today” “Meditation” Timer” “Courses” “Profile”

o • Fill out your profile. We will return to the Profile page later.

FINDING AND SAVING MEDITATIONS: BASIC

• Choose, i.e., touch, “Meditation” at the bottom of your screen.

• Once you have selected “Meditation”, you will be able to scroll down and see the several

offerings for the day. Offerings change about every other day.

Today, these are the new offerings: Manage Your Stress and Anxiety Stress and Anxiety Practice for Teens Short Mythical Story: The Cultivators Meditations on Gratitude/Nature The Journey to Peace: Day 19 Personal Transformation: Cultivating Gratitude & Elevated Emotions Prayers from the Gradual Path of Tibetan Buddhism Well Being At A Special Place 5 Minutes to Parenting Patience Listen to Your Heart Inner Light Practice Reconnect with Your Soul In Peace Our Turn For Couples: Of One Heart Your Clairvoyance Practice/Third Eye Activation

Mindfulness Practice Beyond Blame

As you can see, there is a vast range of topics from which to select.

Let’s examine one meditation as a model of how you would respond to or understand any of the meditations.

There are two pages for each meditation. This is Page One or Screen One of a “new” meditation for the day. The meditation is entitled “The Garden in Your Mind.”

Page One: a. On the top half of the page is a photo. In the lower left half of that photo, the length of time for this practice is given: 18 m. b. Under the photo, on the extreme left, is the rating given by subscribers for this meditation: 4.1. A 5 is the highest rating a meditation can receive.

c. Next to the rating on the left side is the creator/author of the meditation, in this case, Onne Kierkels.. Initially, this will have little salience; later, you may start to have favorite speakers and want to automatically listen to/save that meditation. d. Under the length of time and author, is the title of the meditation, in this case: The Garden in Your Mind. Obviously, the title allows you to skip meditations which you know do not interest you and to choose meditations that do. By the way, many of the meditations for children are also good for adults--I particularly like bedtime stories. If you have children, they are lovely to do together. e. Below the title is a two sentence incomplete synopsis of the meditation. f. Under the synopsis is the category to which this meditation belongs; for this meditation, it is Kids Sleep.

Page Two: To get to page two of the meditation, click or tap on the photo.

In order to explain the features of Page Two, the photo of Page Two had to be cropped; the very top of the picture is cut off. . There are many features on this page.

• To save a meditation that you like: In the upper extreme right hand corner, there is a small black outline that looks like a ribbon or a square attached to two “hanging down” isosceles triangles. When you press it, it turns black. That means that you have saved this particular meditation.

Later in the instructions, I will explain how to retrieve this meditation .

• Next to the save icon, is a square of 9 dots. Click on that icon.

At the top, in the center, is a photo of the author, the author’s name and the title of the meditation. Under that are 3 rows, each with 3 buttons to press: “share”, “journal”, “donate”, “bookmark”, “private message”, “sleep mode”, “listen offline”, “repeat mode”, “playlists. You notice that “bookmark” for this meditation is white--meaning that I have bookmarked or, saved for ongoing use, this meditation. If I am using a sound meditation, I may choose “repeat mode”, so that the meditation will play continuously. Sometimes, I find a meditation that I want to share, a meditation that seems to “fit” exactly for what is going on in someone’s life. I am very careful about sharing, using judgment as to whether this is really something my friend would be receptive to and find useful.

Return to Page Two. After the two icons in the upper right hand corner, there is the title, the length of time of the recording, the number of stars the meditation has been awarded, the number of people who have listened to the recording, and lastly, the type of meditation, in this case, “guided”.

Under that information is the same photo as on Page One, but with a symbol in the middle of the photo: a triangle in a circle. Press that, and the recording starts.

Beneath that are three lines of text. The text is still incomplete; there is a boldface invitation: “ Read more.” Continue to scroll down the page. The 5 star rating appears, followed by comments people have made. This meditation has 6 reviews. Following

that is information about the author and other meditations that are available from that author.

Return to the Page Two photo. Click on the words: “Read more.” You will find additional pertinent information regarding this meditation. The top half of the page has a broad overview of the meditation; the second half has a summary of what is being offered.

For instance, it says “CONTAINS” and under that it says “Ending bell (or similar sound)”.

Over time, I have found that I really want my meditations to have an ending sound and I like to know that ahead of time.

Return to the Profile page. Here is a copy of my profile page.

Across the top are five icons: a circle with a head in it, representing My Profile, a bell indicating Notifications, two conversation balloons for Messages sent to me, the “@” symbol for Friend Requests, and a “gear” symbol for settings.

On my profile page, after a brief summary introduction, there are three sections: Activity, Friends 111, and Groups 26. Under Activity, the display shows that I recently friended someone, meditations I listened to, and so on.

The Groups are one of the treasures of Insight Timer. I belong to 26 groups. There are many many more groups--there is something for everyone. They are fun, interactive, helpful, and supportive.

Notifications will contain communications from people you have friended, notices of new meditations created by teachers, information about milestones you have achieved.

• The middle icon, a circle with a “comma” coming out of it, or a “speech bubble”, is for Messages. Messages can be between people you have friended or met in groups or from well-wishers. Often, people who have meditated at the same time as you, will send a well-wishing message, such as “Thanks for meditating with me”. This is where you can send messages to others, either friends or someone you wish to just send a well-wishing message to.

It will be stored under Bookmarks on the opening page (where the words Today, Meditate, etc are. All your saved meditations will be there.

• Return to the opening page.

• There are multiple features available to you on this first page • Everything you have bookmarked/saved is accessible here. • “Last Played” is a very helpful feature. Perhaps you found a meditation that really

helped you to fall asleep but forgot to “bookmark”. You can find it in “Last Played” and bookmark it there. Note: only the last few days are saved.

• Broad categories, such as “meditation”, “music”, talks”, “sleep”, “love”, are available. A selection of the most frequently used sessions on those topics will be at those locations.

At the bottom of this page, notice “Timer”.

• For those of you who wish to meditate in silence, choose “Timer”. • Choose how long you wish to meditate or “duration”, if you wish “interval bells” during

your meditation (very helpful to keep you alert), the addition of “ambient” sounds, and whether you wish an “ending bell”.

Last, but definitely not least, are the courses. In fact, the courses are one of my favorite features!

• The courses button will take you to the many and diverse courses offered. They are

modestly priced from ~$5 to ~$20. It keeps track of which courses you have purchased and It remembers where you are in a course.

I use Insight Timer everyday, sometimes twice a day. It has been an invaluable support. I hope that you will also find it so.