Insight TimerAPP REVIEW

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Insight Timer

Thank you to SEPNZ member Andrea Marchand for the recommendation and help with the analysis of the “Insight Timer” app. Andrea has had extensive use of the app and provided invaluable information for this review.

What is it?

“Insight Timer" is an app for mediation and mindfulness practice and is promoted as a comprehensive and award-wining app for helping people de-stress, reduce anxiety, improve their sleep and generally deal with the stresses and strains of everyday living! It has several categories and lengths of meditations, adding new ones every day with over 20,000 free ones to choose from.

Who is it for?

The categories most relevant to patients and athletes are for sleep, mindfulness, healing imagery, breathing, performance and pain. Examples of patients who may benefit are those with chronic pain, poor breathers, poor sleepers, the generally stressed out, those with known depression or anxiety, or athletes who are trying to optimise performance. The vastness of this app allows anyone to find what type of meditation or mindfulness practice suits them.

Seller: Size: Category: Compatibility: Languages: Age rating: Copyright: Price: Insight Network Inc 87.4 MB Health & Fitness Available for iOS 11.0 or later and Android . English and 10 more 4+ Ó 2019 ONYX Apps Free or $99 for a year –with extra courses.

Are there special categories for athletes?

For athletes - find the "Performance in Sport" and "Sport Science" sections - under Meditations > Motivation > Sport - along with several topics relevant to sport psychology, i.e. breathing, imagery, visualization, and selfconfidence. Andrea recommends guided meditations by teacher Josh Crist who provides interviews relevant for sport and athletes.

For injuries - under Meditation > Pain, there are specific ones for physical healing and pain release.

What are Mindfulness and Meditation?

Mindfulness has its roots in Eastern meditational practice and this practice helps to direct attention to the present experience on a moment-to-moment basis. Meditation exercises encourage individuals to engage in nonjudging awareness of their internal experience occurring at each moment, such as bodily sensations, cognitions, emotions and to environmental stimuli, such as sights and sounds.

Latest research and our role regarding the mental health of our athletes

Meditative approaches have been shown to reduce anxiety, stress and neurobiological markers such as cortisol, epinephrine and norepinephrine (Noetel, Ciarrochi, Van Zanden, & Lonsdale, 2017), and despite requiring further investigation mindfulness training appears to be a promising strategy for athletes. Recent studies have reported significant improvements to athletes’ mental state with 4–6 weeks of mindfulness training and in wheelchair basketball players, 8 weeks of mindful mediation utilizing a smart phone app attenuated the rise in cortisol associated with a competition period (Keaney, Kilding, Merien, & Dulson, 2019).

Reviewing this app has felt like perfect “timing” as our scope of practice as physiotherapists continues to extend as primary contact health professionals. This includes improved mental health awareness and appropriate referral of our patients as we provide a holistic, multi-disciplinary approach to the care of each individual. This approach is especially important with elite athletes as a recent BJSM systematic review has shown that the prevalence of mental health symptoms and disorders ranged from 34% for anxiety/depression in current athletes and 26% for anxiety/depression for former elite athletes (Gouttebarge et al., 2019). Our incredibly privileged role amongst athletes, sports teams and patients puts us in the perfect position to utilise and recommend apps like “Insight Timer” and also allows us to never miss a moment to ask, “Are you OK?” to any of the people we care for.

Pro’s

• User friendly interface is easy to understand and makes meditation accessible.

Con’s

• Cost $99/year for full access to all aspects of the app.

App lets the user choose from MANY free options to trial and find the right fit for each individual. •

Some of the voices are quite irritating so my advice would be to explore the app to find the most appropriate instructor for you!

Meditation and mindfulness are more mainstream these days with good evidence to support benefits to health and mental health, as discussed above, so people shouldn’t feel embarrassed about using it.

There is a huge variety in the app and courses are divided into different topics, lengths of time. People can explore around the sections and see what is relevant and save favourites to "Bookmarks".

References

Gouttebarge, V., Castaldelli-Maia, J. M., Gorczynski, P., Hainline, B., Hitchcock, M. E., Kerkhoffs, G. M., . . . Reardon, C. L. (2019). Occurrence of mental health symptoms and disorders in current and former elite athletes: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Br J Sports Med, 53(11), 700-706. doi:10.1136/bjsports -2019-100671

Keaney, L. C., Kilding, A. E., Merien, F., & Dulson, D. K. (2019). Keeping Athletes Healthy at the 2020 Tokyo Summer Games: Considerations and Illness Prevention Strategies. Front Physiol, 10, 426. doi:10.3389/ fphys.2019.00426

Noetel, M., Ciarrochi, J., Van Zanden, B., & Lonsdale, C. (2017). Mindfulness and acceptance approaches to sporting performance enhancement: a systematic review. International Review of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 1 -37. doi:10.1080/1750984X.2017.1387803