Aura Health launches meditation app for people who can’t sit still for long

As someone who considers themselves to be into meditation, I don’t meditate very often. I’ve had Headspace on my phone for over a year at this point, but I’ve probably used it fewer than 20 times. In the last couple of days, I’ve been trying out a recently launched meditation app for iOS called Aura.

Aura’s bread and butter is short, three-to-seven-minute meditations based on your current mood — be that stressed, anxious, happy or sad. Other meditation apps tend to focus on longer, at least 10-minute-long meditations. Aura also collects data around demographics and age to better understand what types of meditations certain people are looking for.

“We’re trying to build intelligence around how to make people happier,” Aura Health co-founder and CEO Steve Lee told me. “Most people really have a hard time forming a habit around meditation and building a foundation for that. We’re playing around with the shortest possible amount of effort it takes to make it a habit while receiving the benefits of meditation.”

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Aura is free to use if you’re just into one, three-minute meditation a day. Premium users, who pay $12.99 a month or $7.92 a month if they buy the full year in advance, get access to seven-minute meditations and can access them more than once a day.

There are currently about 200 meditations available, which Aura Health serves up to you based on the mood you say you’re in.

“We’re fundamentally an intelligence company,” Aura Health co-founder Daniel Lee said. “We’re leveraging machine learning to personalize every session for users.”

Aura Health is currently bootstrapped, but the company says it’s open to raising funding in the future. Other companies in the space, like Headspace and Calm, are pretty well funded. Headspace has raised over $30 million and Calm has raised $1.5 million.