She’s an app!
The Clarity App – improving the lives of women through mindfulness, relaxation and sleep.
I came across Clarity on my research wanderings and am excited to share her with you. I’m designating her a ‘she’ because she’s designed by women for women and it just sounds friendlier somehow. 😊
The brief description of her online is:
The best Mindfulness App for women: Clarity empowers women to practice self-care to ease them into their 30’s, 40’s and 50’s gently. Breathe and Relax…
Doesn’t that sound good?
Mindfulness
Mindfulness has become a buzzword in recent years and for very good reason. It’s particularly beneficial for busy women who have a tendency to take care of everyone else and put themselves last. Then as we reach our late 30’s and go into our 40s perimenopause creeps up and it becomes so much harder to deal with it all.
The symptoms of mood swings, hot flushes, anxiety, low libido (and 20-something others) can hit us like a big Mack truck with many of us feeling like we’re going mad. If any of this sounds familiar I hear you, it’s familiar to me too!
Becks Armstrong
Clarity has been created by an Australian living in London, Becks Armstrong. Becks is a women’s health specialist. She had a clinic in Bondi Junction for many years before her husband’s work took them to London about 10 years ago.
I tracked Becks down to discover more. She’s a delightful woman who’s not only a women’s health expert but a business whizz as well, having worked with many tech startups in London.
“Women’s mental health is my priority,” she says. In fact, it’s her life’s work. She creates personalised guided visualisations (and wrote all of the scripts for Clarity), is trained in acupuncture, Chinese medicine and mindfulness and is a highly experienced doula. As a doula, she has an 80 percent success rate in turning breech babies.
In 2017 Becks noticed a lack of solutions for women going through perimenopause and menopause. As someone who helps women with this life stage, I can vouch for a void when it comes to knowledge and awareness of perimenopause let alone helpers. That said, things are changing with more and more women speaking out and lots of tools becoming available. Let’s hear it for enlightened times!
“We need more women doing the research,” says Becks. “We’ve had male gynaecologists for hundreds of years but as experienced as they might be, they’re never going to know what it feels like to give birth to a baby, have a period or go through menopause.”
Not one to sit back and observe Becks created Clarity. “If I’d known what I was getting into I probably wouldn’t have done it,” she says. But you and I can be very glad she did.
Tell Us About Clarity
Clarity is a beautiful piece of technology and takes us through a free 10-day introduction to the fundamentals of mindfulness, breathing and sleep hygiene.
Other features include 20-minute background sounds of forest birds, ocean waves, campfire, thunderstorm and car rain wipers, a star icon allows you to input your symptoms and it returns recommendations and ‘an apple a day’ will give you tools to help with your libido. I love the 1, 5 and 10-minute breathing sessions (for me, breathing is guaranteed to calm me down) too because I can always find one minute.
So, what exactly is mindfulness?
I took the liberty of taking this from the Clarity Blog as Becks is the expert here:
Mindfulness is a gentle practice that teaches you to pay more attention to your thoughts, feelings, and the world around you. It involves sitting or lying in silence and focusing on your breathing and the sensations in your body and it can be as long or as short as you want it to be. Even just taking three long, mindful breaths can make a difference in how you feel.
When done regularly, mindfulness can bring about many benefits such as decreased stress and anxiety, improved sleep (disturbed sleep can disrupt hormone balance and blood sugar levels), and even a reduction in menopausal symptoms.
If you’re in perimenopause you can feel like you’re losing your mind and these things have all been shown to help. “The evidence is insane,” says Becks.
Apps
Many of us are using apps to monitor so much in our lives: exercise, food, weight, favourite clothing brands, money, travel – you name it! You gotta love the convenience. There are a number of mindfulness apps on the market but Clarity is designed specifically for women by women and it’s got some pretty wonderful features.
It’s amazing how simple it is, all it is is stopping and paying attention to your breath and how your body’s feeling and you can practise it anywhere at anytime. It isn’t mandatory to wear leggings, sit cross-legged on a yoga mat and chant ‘ooooommmmm’.
I love this app.
It’s such a good tool and helps to slow down your heart rate, reduce your blood pressure, improve your memory and help to manage stress and anxiety. You can start off with just two minutes a day. Becks says the ideal is 10 minutes a day, but you can build up to it. It’s about consistency and finding what works for you.
So all in all Clarity is pretty brilliant but so is what’s coming next! Becks is working on a symptom tracker for women in perimenopause/menopause that works a bit like a period and/or fertility tracker.
“It will track daily symptoms and triggers and include all the common symptoms so you can monitor what might trigger you to have – say – a hot flush,” says Becks. “You’ll also be able to add your own symptoms. It will also track your exercise, sleep and ask you if you’ve done – for example – your mindfulness for the day. The app will be validated by the Imperial College of London and is about a year away.”
How much does Clarity cost?
Clarity has plenty of free features and a paid subscription depends on where you are geographically but in New Zealand/Australia it’s around $12-$13 per month.
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Thanks for stopping by!
Yours in health & happiness 😀
