AdWeek shared some key insights from meditation apps Calm and Headspace following both companies' frenetic and successful 2020s.

Calm

• Calm reached 100 million total downloads and 4 million paying subscribers in 2020.
• Calm saw its Election Night ad spend on CNN as a major risk, but one worth taking due to the amount of anxiety and stress caused by the election.
• According to iSpot, Calm had 241.7 million TV ad impressions from the beginning of September through Election Night, worth about $1.4 million.

Headspace

• Headspace says downloads doubled in mid-March and five times as many companies as usual reached out about support for employee mental health.
• The company emphasized brand partnerships and free offerings for those suffering during the pandemic. This included a partnership with Hinge, and free premium accounts for the unemployed and those living in New York.

While a consistent meditation practice can lead to better sleep, meditation often won't help us fall asleep, according to clinical psychologist Dr. Jason Ong. He told Seth J. Gillihan on the "Think Act Be" podcast that using meditation as a tool to get to sleep at night can backfire, as it puts pressure on us to complete a task and might encourage us to put in too much effort, waking our minds up. Instead, Dr. Ong suggests maintaining a consistent meditation practice during the day, then trying to bring the calm quality of mind to bed.

Here are some newly-published guided meditations for you to listen to over the weekend:

• Tara Brach — Cultivating a Courageous Heart
• Raphael Reiter — Deep Transcendence
• Gil Fronsdal — Breathing with Pleasure
• Wu Wei Wisdom — Focus & Inner Balance
• Jake Woodard — Guided Meditation for Grounding

Tip of the Week — Attach a visual

This isn't a traditional visualization exercise, but a technique to use that might make your moments of calm and clarity easier to recognize and remember. At various points during my meditation — if I can remember to do it — I'll create a quick visual representation in my mind of what I'm feeling. If I've managed to find a place of quiet reflection, I'll simply let a visual come to my mind, like a starry nightscape, or a pleasantly rippling stream. If my mind is wandering and unsettled, maybe I'll picture a cluttered bookshelf or a dusty mirror. The idea is not to think about the perfect representation or force a visual if none appears, but to visualize the state of the mind at the current moment so that you can recall it at a later point. Those serene, settled moments will stand out even more once you can visualize them in the mind.

Many forms of meditation may provide benefits to cardiovascular health, according to a recent study. An analysis of surveys of more than 61,000 people found that those who practiced meditation were less likely than others to have high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, and heart disease. The researchers believe that most forms of meditation have a "common underlying mechanism" that helps provide the benefits. This is primarily related, they say, to the relaxation response, when the body does not feel stressed or threatened.

More:

• In general, researchers believe that meditation helps lower stress, which in turn lowers blood pressure.
• Lower stress individuals also tend to engage less frequently in unhealthy behaviors, such as binge eating and drinking.