These Amazing Self-Care Apps Will Help You Live A Happier Healthier Life

Here at Culture Trip, we love a good app. We use apps to travel savvier, save money while we’re abroad, dress better and even make new friends—but what about self-care? Because we get that life (unfortunately) isn’t all about jetting off on glamorous holidays, we’ve rounded up our favourite self-care apps to help you feel your best all the time.

Remente

Remente is a free-to-download personal development and mental wellbeing app. “Currently, efforts in mental health are focused on healthcare rather than wellbeing and preventative care. Remente aims to change that by providing a tool that users can use to improve and balance their lives at any time, from wherever they are,” founder David Brudö told Culture Trip.

The app combines psychology with brain and mental training to help users reach their full potential and lead a healthier lifestyle. Whether your aim is to improve mental wellbeing, mindfulness, stress management, personal or professional relationships, Remente guides you through every step in order to make your goals a reality.

Remente was devised using techniques from cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), offering features that allow users to track their moods, and set long and short-term goals in eight areas: love and relationships; health and fitness; career and education; personal development; family; friends and social life; fun and recreation; and finances. For premium users, the app also boasts digital courses on everything from relationships to mindfulness, productivity and stress management.

Remente is free to download on the App Store and Google Play. In-app products are available from £3.49 to £43.93 per item.

HeadSpace

With 17.5 million downloads across 190 countries, the HeadSpace app delivers new, daily guided meditation based on teachings that co-founder and former Buddhist monk Andy Puddicombe learned during the 10 years he spent studying meditation and mindfulness in monasteries across Asia.

Teaching the basics of meditation and mindfulness, each daily HeadSpace pack is supported by a host of content, including animations, articles and videos in a playful, quirky style. Along with daily meditation guides, Headspace also offers condensed, bite-sized meditations for users with busy schedules, and SOS sessions to support subscribers in those meltdown moments.

HeadSpace’s first series, The Basics, is free. After that, via subscription, Headspace offers more than 550 hours of original content tailored to the specific needs of each user.

Aloe

After raising more than $50,000 in a successful Kickstarter campaign, the team at Aloe are building a free iOS “self-care check-in and reminders app that brings essential self-care tasks together in one place.” The app will help everyone—particularly those living with mental or chronic illness, autism or ADHD—by making sure tasks such as drinking water, brushing your teeth, eating and snacking or taking time off from social media are getting done regularly.

Users, called ‘Aloe buds’, get gentle self-care reminders according to their needs and lifestyle. The app will feature a ‘reflection space’ where users can answer three simple questions: “How was your day?”, “Who is one person who makes you happy?”, and “What is one thing you’ll do for yourself tomorrow?”.

Aloe will also have an an opt-in ‘supportive social network’ community where users can interact by sending each other virtual flowers or tending to virtual ‘community support gardens’. According to Aloe’s Kickstarter page, “the app does not replace mental health care, but it can be a valuable—and free—tool to help fill gaps where needed.”

Aloe will be free in the iOS App Store for download from January 2018.

Sleep Cycle

The Sleep Cycle alarm clock app tracks your sleep patterns and wakes you up during light sleep, which “feels like waking up naturally rested without an alarm clock.” By tracking your sleep cycles, the app purports to help you to feel more well-rested and less groggy.

According to the Sleep Cycle site, the app “uses sound analysis to identify sleep states by tracking movements in bed. Sleep Cycle uses a wake up phase (30 minutes by default) that ends at your desired alarm time. During this phase, Sleep Cycle will monitor signals from your body to wake you softly, when you are in the lightest possible sleep state.”

Sleep Cycle is free to download and use on the App store and Google Play.

Good Blocks

Good Blocks is a “gamified training app designed to improve your self-esteem, body image, social anxiety and mood by training your mind to quickly and automatically reject negative thinking and adopt more adaptive, flexible thinking.”

Based on cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), users throw away negative (bad) thoughts and pull positive (good) thoughts towards them. By playing, users “learn to automatically detect, identify and react to your thoughts in a way that enhances mood and general functioning over time”. The app aims help users “change the way you think about yourself and the way you perceive the world.”

Good Blocks is free to download and use on the App store and Google Play.

Since you are here, we would like to share our vision for the future of travel - and the direction Culture Trip is moving in.

Culture Trip launched in 2011 with a simple yet passionate mission: to inspire people to go beyond their boundaries and experience what makes a place, its people and its culture special and meaningful — and this is still in our DNA today. We are proud that, for more than a decade, millions like you have trusted our award-winning recommendations by people who deeply understand what makes certain places and communities so special.

Increasingly we believe the world needs more meaningful, real-life connections between curious travellers keen to explore the world in a more responsible way. That is why we have intensively curated a collection of premium small-group trips as an invitation to meet and connect with new, like-minded people for once-in-a-lifetime experiences in three categories: Culture Trips, Rail Trips and Private Trips. Our Trips are suitable for both solo travelers, couples and friends who want to explore the world together.

Culture Trips are deeply immersive 5 to 16 days itineraries, that combine authentic local experiences, exciting activities and 4-5* accommodation to look forward to at the end of each day. Our Rail Trips are our most planet-friendly itineraries that invite you to take the scenic route, relax whilst getting under the skin of a destination. Our Private Trips are fully tailored itineraries, curated by our Travel Experts specifically for you, your friends or your family.

We know that many of you worry about the environmental impact of travel and are looking for ways of expanding horizons in ways that do minimal harm - and may even bring benefits. We are committed to go as far as possible in curating our trips with care for the planet. That is why all of our trips are flightless in destination, fully carbon offset - and we have ambitious plans to be net zero in the very near future.