To celebrate today’s World Meditation Day, Apple Watch users can earn a new limited-edition award for the occasion. As usual, Apple celebrates through Apple Watch challenges historic days and engages its users in monthly health activities.
For example, on Valentine’s Day, Apple celebrated Heart Month by awarding anyone who completed a 30-minute workout to fill their Exercise ring on February 14. Now, to get this exclusive Apple Watch award, users need to record five mindful minutes or more with the Mindfulness app or any app that adds mindful minutes to the Health app.
It’s possible to find a variety of mindfulness practices on Apple Fitness+. If you have a subscription, you can try them directly on your Apple Watch or with your iPhone, iPad, or Apple TV. Apple also offers free mindfulness and breathing practices through the Mindfulness app on the Apple Watch.
Apple says that Mindfulness is a state of active, open attention to the present. “When you’re mindful, you observe your thoughts and feelings from a distance, without judging them as good or bad. Instead of letting your life pass you by, mindfulness means living in the moment and awakening to experience.”
With the current iOS 17 and watchOS 10 releases, Apple focused even more on mental health awareness. iPhone and Apple Watch users received several new features in this software cycle.
The Health app now lets you log your state of mind by scrolling through engaging visuals to help you select how you’re feeling at that moment and during the day overall. In the Health app, it’s also possible to see your state of mind and how it could correlate with lifestyle factors.
With a new Mental Wellbeing section, you can even log how anxious or depressed you feel. This will help you understand if you need to pursue medical help or not.
All of this data is combined with a new Apple Watch Series 6 (and later), Apple Watch SE 2, or Apple Watch Ultra tracker, available with watchOS 10, which identifies how much time you spend in daylight thanks to its ambient light sensor.
Lastly, the Journal app also helps inspire you with on-device machine learning to write about activities you engaged in, photos you took, people you met, places you visited, and more. Here are three reasons why you should start journaling today.
That said, even if you don’t use the Mindfulness app daily, why not take five minutes to earn this exclusive Apple Watch award today?
