MeditationOptions.com
Explore a growing collection of free meditation and mindful-movement apps, each with its own approach to calming and awareness.
Choose a Free Meditation
Use these practices directly in your browser. There is nothing to buy, and no account or sign-in is required.
Nine-State Apps
Explore practices organized around Wind, World, Fire, Left, Self, Right, Water, Other People, and Ground.
Apps, Videos, and Resources
Find mobile apps, meditation and movement videos, Tai Chi resources, and project credits.
Apple Apps
Free apps for iPhone, iPad, and Mac
Android Apps
Free apps on the Google Play Store
YouTube Videos
Meditation, mindful movement, and app videos
Chen Tai Chi Website
Tai Chi information and resources
Sources and Credits
Project acknowledgments and references
For Windows and Steam apps, search for Mind Body Aware Games LLC.
About Kevin and the Apps
Countless people have helped me, especially my family, teachers, and friends.
In seventh grade at Bowditch Middle School in Foster City, Marge Cole became my first computer science teacher. We used Apple II computers. In high school, I began asking, “Humanity has some serious problems. What can I do about it?”
After college, I worked in software maintenance at Spectra Renal Management in Fremont. During this period, after intensive meditation and other difficult experiences, I was diagnosed with schizophrenia. I later returned to school to study graphic design.
Over time, I combined Tai Chi, computer programming, and graphic design to create apps and videos that help people explore body and mind awareness. Recent advances in artificial intelligence have helped me refine this work further.
My lived experience with Mr. Ropa and Peter Sage
Mr. Ropa is the name I use for a voice I experience as part of schizophrenia. Peter Sage is the name I use for the delusional experience that the universe speaks to me. Although these experiences can interrupt my thoughts, they have also influenced my creative process and the way I understand the apps.
The Four, Five, and Nine-State Model
A recurring structure behind many of the meditation and movement apps.
The Four Energies
Water, Wind, Fire, and Ground draw on Stuart Heller’s adaptation of Miyamoto Musashi’s language of five rings. Space—or Center—creates a fifth state.
Viewed from the side, Fire combines up and forward, Wind combines up and back, Water combines back and down, and Ground combines down and forward.
Strategies and Boundaries
The four energies can be understood as strategies, habits, rings, or responses. Ground does not simply mean the floor; it can also represent the shield or personal boundary that living beings, people, and groups maintain.
This model is related to—but not identical with—the familiar fight, flight, freeze, and fawn framework.
- 1 · Wind
- 2 · World
- 3 · Fire
- 4 · Left
- 5 · Self
- 6 · Right
- 7 · Water
- 8 · Other People
- 9 · Ground
Nine States of Experience
The nine-state version adds Left, Right, World or Environment, and Other People. Together, the states form a balanced three-by-three structure with Self at the center.
How the Apps Use It
Many apps divide experience into distinct categories and gently change the focus every twenty seconds or so. The intention is to encourage flexibility rather than remaining fixed in one state.
The same structure also works naturally in three-dimensional projects such as the original Inner Kung Fu game and later 3D apps.