Calm app that was named as iPhone app of the year in 2019 by Apple inc. is an online meditation application that was co-founded by Michael Acton Smith and Alex Tew in the year 2012. In 2019 Calm joined the billion-dollar club by being valued at $1 Billion by raising $116 million. The app features meditation tools as well as sleep aids. The top investors in the company are Creative Artists Agency, Sound Ventures owned by Ashton Kutcher, and Venture Partners.

The app is free for the first 7 days and then asks for a medium ranged subscription price. It has a Calm Blog that offers tips related to meditation and wellbeing. The most popular feature of the app is the Daily Calm where thousands of people from all around the world come together and start their days with a 10-minutes session with different themes and topics every day. It has a collection of more than 100 Sleep Stories that helps people sleep at night peacefully. The genres for the sleep stories vary from childrens tales, scientific articles, literature, essays, and more. The app also has a collection of Sleep Music which is soothing.

About the founders

Michael Acton Smith

Currently residing in San Francisco, California, The US he graduated from the University of Birmingham in the year 1996. Before co-founding Calm, he was the CEO of Firebox.com for 6 years which he also founded, and he was the founder, Creative Director, and Chairman of Mind Candy for 16 years.

Alex Tew

Alex currently resides in San Francisco, California, The US. Before co-founding Calm, he founded Million Dollar Homepage, was the founder and CEO of Pixelotto for 1 year, Co-founder and CEO of PopJam for 3 years, and Project Manager at Monkey Inferno for 11 months.

How Calm came into being

The app at this stage has an excruciatingly high amount of positive reviews on both the App Store and Play Store. Michael who founded Mind Candy was focused on online gaming. After its release in the year 2003, the venture raised $10 million in funding. After Moshi Monsters, a game made for kids, upsurged and then down surged as mobile phones and tablets became common, Michael thought it was the end of the world for him. He suffered from constant headaches, insomnia, and exhaustion. He was dealing with self-worth issues and took the failure of Moshi Monsters entirely upon himself.

Acton and Alex met each other on a boat for the first time. Alex Tew needed to raise money for college and to do so he created a website called million dollar homepage and sold each pixel on the website for $1 for advertisement. Genius. Aston knew about Alex from all the news articles floating around about him and they eventually ended up friends and then housemates.

Alex Tew introduced Aston to the world of meditation and they shared a taste for business ideas, neuroscience, and philosophy. They purchased calm.com in the year 2012 so that they can create products that help people relax. They put in ideas like relaxing sound effects and soothing videos on the table but they knew something was missing. As Moshi Monsters revenue fell, Acton took a solo trip to the Australian Alps to collect his thoughts. Acton practiced meditation and that is when it clicked. Acton came to an agreement with the fact that meditation need not be an elaborate event as it was merely about neuroscience. He realized how much it can benefit people and be relevant to everybody.

Acton and Tew found a group of developers and started to work on the Calm app. The early years and journey were long, they didnt do very well in the early years and a lot of investors abstained from investing in the company. This shook their firm ground and forced them to question if they were on the right track until Venture capitalists decided to back their decisions. After spending from their own pockets and finally making the business profitable, the app broke out in 2016 as people started taking mental health more seriously.

The company that worked in a one-bedroom apartment has now expanded and has grown to 40 employees and they start their day by meditating for 10 minutes. Acton beautifully said that this is the closest he has come to find an instruction manual of the human brain.

Calm Team

Calms business model

Calm was initially labeled as a tool for Developers in the Silicon Valley who were hyperactive. It had relaxation classes from Maggie Richards, who is a meditation teacher from the UK, in its initial days. It eventually expanded and started including classes that were specifically designed for work performance, stress, and poor sleeping. Calm offers introductory lessons for free and then has a concept of a monthly subscription for accessing the entire archive. Calm struggled and had to cut off staff in the early years. 2018 was the year when the meditation app started making serious money. The app even received a certain amount of backlash for monetizing meditation.

Calm introduced Sleep Stories and drew in celebrities like Harry Styles, Matthew McConaughey, Lebron James, and Stephen Fry to narrate fictional or original stories. Calm also announced a workplace service similar to its competing app Headspace. Calm has also started publishing stories in languages like German, French, and Spanish. In the year 2013, Calm garnered revenue of $0.1 million.

Calms Valuation

Calm in the year 2018 had a valuation of $250 million and in 2019 it shot up to $1 billion making it enter the unicorn club. Calm has 0.03 million paid subscribers in 2013 and it subsequently increased to 0.75 in2017, 1 million in 2018, and 2 million in 2019. The Calm app had a total of 0.2 million downloads in 2014 on the application stores like App Store and Play store, which increased to 35 million in 2018, 40 million in 2019, and 60 million in 2020.

Calms future goals

Headspace that rolled out in 2018 became the leader of the mediation applications but Calm managed to fight its way to the top. There is a lot of competition in the meditation and wellness business. So calms next strategy is simple: multiplying down on building a select library of content voiced by famous people and striking new sorts of organizations to carry this substance to millions of additional users in the disconnected and offline world. To set themselves apart they are focusing on increasing the celebrity content. Calm marked a selective three-year deal with b-ball genius LeBron James, who will be highlighted in a forthcoming arrangement of 10-minute inspirational wisdom sessions on subjects including overseeing feelings and looking after equilibrium, as per the organization in the month of December.

Calm struck an association and procured a minority stake in XpresSpa which is a spa lounge that expands its business to 52 locations across 25 air terminals, giving Calm endorsers a free 10-minute back rub and a spot to purchase Calm-marked products. Calms content can already be streamed on America Airlines flights and from January 2020, it will also be available inside Novotel hotel across 60 countries.

Calms Competitors in the Market

Headspace is hands down one of the best meditation applications out there in the market. It has more than 60 million members after its release in the year 2010 and is used across 190 countries. It offers a 10-part basics course which is free and helps the individual to get into the practice of meditating regularly. The application offers different techniques like body scanning noting, etc. that an individual can practice even outside meditation. The co-founder Andy Puddicome who narrates these meditations is probably one of the reasons why it garners so many users. He has a very soothing, warm, and assuring voice. There are also mini and focused meditations that are suitable for situations like when you are anxious, flustered, stressed, etc.

This app helps users chill and relax using natures relaxing sounds. It has different sounds that help people differently along with guided meditations. Portals audio can also be mixed with other apps so that you continue relaxing while listening to a podcast or reading your favorite book.

The app offers meditation as short as five minutes and is focused on reducing stress and calming the mind. The app offers personalization as it asks the users to choose topics that are interesting to them. The application is absolutely easy to use, modern and clean, and has a lot of free content.

The most unique feature of this application is that asks how you are feeling before you start meditating both physically and mentally. This information is then used to recommend yoga or meditation to the user.

The guided reflections are definitely no-nonsense, which we discovered unbelievably invigorating. Just as being asked how frequently youve contemplated previously, why you need to reflect and how youve been feeling recently, you can likewise set suggestions to guarantee you never miss a meeting. Pay the membership and youll get more than 500 guided contemplations just as various bundles, from the nuts and bolts to programs focused on execution, and connections.

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Calm: Taking Mindfulness to the next level - Techstory

Certain truths seem inimitable, like: Age is just a number.

Wrong! Age is a word.

Friedrich Nietzsche helpfully explains in Human, All too Human (1878), Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies.

Postmodernist, post structuralist, post Life Jim, but not as we know it. 2020 has been a year where many grand narratives have weakened, waned and died. A year when that which many never imagined came to pass, and brought a friend with it. Summers in the armpit heat of the Tropics, separation from loved ones over space, and often too, over time, prolonged exposure to those same loved ones in quarantine. Some lighter losses- The Guardian reports that women have ditched the iVenus and the hot wax, going au-natural in the body hair department- Yes kids, Mummy is doing Movember Some harder losses- many lives have been taken by the virus. For those its touched, its been tough. This is life.

COVID has changed the way many of us view life. 2020 has been a year of re-evaluations. Like some horrible, inverse countdown, the uncertainty rises with the years of the fledgling century. What does it mean to be an expat in the middle of a global pandemic? What does it mean to be grounded, literally, to a breed of wanderlusts? What does it mean to be good in a world gone mad?

Thankfully, there is a whole field of thought which suggests that this may be a move towards an honest appraisal of life, rather than away from it. The idea that telling someone what we want and how we feel is easy seems pretty straightforward. This is at the heart of many stories, a hero pursuing a goal at all costs- the goal ever present and unwavering, like a mosquito in the bedroom in the depths of night. But simply opening the mouth and declaring the feeling or intention may be more difficult in practice than in theory.

Culture and nurture play a huge role in determining the things people feel able to speak openly about, and those which must be hidden away behind the skeletons in the closet. Missteps in communication of an authentic and honest truth begin early, when children are not allowed to speak openly about their feelings, or to express them in the authentic ways known only to the young- screaming, hissing, biting, punching, tearing, crying and whining. Angry retaliations, or fragile pleas for quiet by parents similarly quietened in their own childhoods quickly teach children to hide or modify natural impulses to chew on each other or explore their full lung capacity at a supersonic pitch. Slowly, slowly, educational and childhood theories promote positive emotional nurturing for apprentice humans.

Bad communication has its roots in the feeling that you cant be truthful, and tolerated, and loved. Alain de Botton, philosopher and author writes in The School of Life; An Emotional Education, (2019). Habits formed in infancy and early childhood, can and do become hardwired into the cognitive operating system, however, and as with so much in life, it is harder to unlearn something than it is to learn it, just the same as you cant un-fry an egg. Worldviews are nurtured in the womb, their roots reach far deeper than most are willing to believe.

So whats all this got to do with truth, and with me, you might well ask? What have these dishonest babies got to do with anything?

As 2021 draws near, certain inequalities still exist in our global societies of which we are all aware. And yet, as a species, we are quite unable to stop ourselves from tripping over the same rock twice. Your average, garden human is hardwired to believe certain versions of reality by around five years of age. Implicit biases and ways of being form the basis for all future understanding. There are no facts, only interpretations, adds Nietzsche in On Truth and Lies in the Nonmoral Sense, (1873), calling this tendency to pan the happenings in the physical world through subjective knowledge sieves perspectivism.

Culture is the non-biologicalor social aspects of human life.Itrefers to the way we understand ourselves as individuals and as members of society, including stories, religion, media, rituals, and even language itself. This demonstrated itself amply in 2020 when more collective cultures enjoyed relatively shorter lockdown times than their more individualistic counterparts, valuing the greater good over individual rights.

Unfortunately, extensive levels of individual freedom also allow for the corresponding degree of poor choices and freedom to indulge in misguided behaviour.

And yet, surely if there is any truth, it is that there is good inside all people. And everyone considers themselves to be good. So what then, are the narratives that sustain practices of hate and prejudice in our global human culture? It can only be a story that is held to be as true as your name, your hair, your mother tongue? The very words that allow us to articulate our experience in the world? A story that paints other groups at bad, or less or wrong in some unpardonable way.

2020 has taught me some things about truth.

Step 1. Think.

Step 2. Think about what you thought about.

Bad information leads to bad choices. In the information age, it has never been easier to seek out knowledge, to update the cerebral software. Culture encapsulates and engenders all that we know. Lack of a proper awareness of this fact leaves us lost in a sea of interpretations.

In the face of an increasingly unpredictable world, its comforting to cling to that which we know to be true. Rioters and voters and people suffocating under the weight of these truths have taken to the streets in unprecedented numbers in 2020. They reclaim the right to mandate over their own bodies, the right to breathe, the right to be.

Hegemony, political or cultural dominance and authority over others, means that the ones who walk among us with souls that shine a different light from the dominant culture spectrum are subordinate to the mainstream.

Diversity is dangerous. Different is deadly. Back with Ug The Caveman in the Palaeolithic era, this made sense. Evolution had no space on the bus for dead weight.

It still doesnt. Diversity is the spark that makes the human race electric. Understanding that the old ways may not be the best ways can be liberating.

There are plenty of stories weve outgrown, stories like women being denied the vote on account of sex. Its 100 years ago this year since universal suffrage was granted in the U.S. Little has been made of this monumental shift in worldview in the media. Women in Saudi Arabia were granted the right to drive a car in June, 2018 and its been just 1 year since abortion was legalised in Ireland.

If we are to look at how the dominant narrative about women and womens rights has evolved over a century, its clear that once the hegemony absorbs new knowledge, change is possible.

Taking a deep breath and admitting that this has been a batplop crazy year, that life is sometimes blind jump into the abyss, that no one really knows their ass from their armpit- this can liberate all of us. Or thats my interpretation. Nietzsche would warm again making absolute judgements either way.

As Jeremy Goldberg said, Courage is knowing it may hurt and doing it anyway. Stupidity is the same. Thats why life is hard.

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Asking Ourselves What is truth in a Post-COVID World? - The Nanjinger

There are two mind-blowing moments in Jean-Paul Sartres 1944 play No Exit (Huis clos). The first is when we realise that the three well-dressed, well-mannered people, conversing in a living room in the style of the Second Empire are dead souls gathered in hell. The second is the famous line lenfer, cest les Autres or hell is other people.

I dont believe that man is, by nature, a social animal. To be honest, I believe the opposite. Not my quote Albert Camus. Heres another: All existing societal structures are artificial and inadequate for an individual being. Also not me, but the remarkable Russian philologist Mikhail Bakhtin, the forefather of intertextuality. I agree with both views, however, and I believe that society, even the most liberal and advanced, restricts our individuality to such an extent that we can only ever hope to realise a tiny fraction of our authentic selves.

Lets consider one of the most important decisions of our lives: choosing a profession. This is how the process is supposed to work. First, I look deep into my heart and decide what my dream is. Once Ive identified this dream, I set out to find a job that represents its perfect embodiment. Then I look hard and I persevere and, unfailingly, there comes a day when I find it. If this sounds like rubbish, thats because it is. Anyone who has looked for a job knows that the process is exactly the reverse: I dont start with a dream, I start with a list of available options. I see what jobs are out there, how much they pay, what their prospects are, and where my limited abilities might realistically fit in.

Now, for arguments sake, lets consider a scenario where I do have a dream and a talent to go with it. I am a prodigious orator: I have a gift for rhetoric, I can rouse the crowd to fever pitch and I have the power to convince. I am determined to make a living out of this gift, and so resolve to become a trial lawyer. I feel elated: from now on, my life will be one long, uninterrupted realisation of a dream.

So what are my next steps? Oh, a minor matter of seven years of studies, more years of junior legal work, nights in the archives, meetings, admin, office politics. All worth it, you might argue, as, one day, I will get to stand in court and stun the jury with the power of my word. Except that, by the time I do this, my original passion would have been trimmed and moulded to a barely recognisable shape. The consummate trial lawyer I may one day become will no longer be me, but a product of extensive compromise between me and the societal structures in which I operate.

In The Ego and its Own the German philosopher Max Stirner writes that thousands of years of civilization have obscured to us what we are. If you think thats pessimistic, wait until you read Mikhail Bakhtin, who posits that society was built without the knowledge of the fact that I exist, and, as such, it annihilates me.

Although annihilates may be too strong a word, society certainly restricts me most obviously through its laws. The laws that, I hasten to add, I did not vote for. But the country voted for these laws, you might retort. Yes, but I didnt, so how does this help? Law is the product of peoples will, you might go on. But is there really such a thing? As people, we are just an assortment of contradictory consciousnesses, each pursuing her own interests and beliefs.

If laws restrict me, morality does it more. Be good, be kind, save the world, work hard, love your family, your neighbours and your fellow human beings. Through the imperative to comply with moral codes Stirner referred to these as higher essences, absolute ideas, bigger truths society creates an artificial we and forces us to act (and think, and feel) in ways that are not our own. Because do I really owe anyone my love? And does love work through obligation?

Unlike the laws, I dont have to abide by moral codes: they wont lock me up for not loving my fellow men. But God forbid that I should admit it! Because can you imagine what they will say? They, other people, les Autres.

I cannot think of an influence more malevolent, more poisonous, more corrupt than the influence of other people. Our need for their approval, our wish to look good in their eyes is the single most powerful instrument of distortion of personality. Bakhtin writes that another is a source of infinite violation of my own I. Each day, l live in anticipation of her criticism, her mockery, her contempt and so my actions, my thinking, my whole presentation to the world bear the painful marks of her opinion. Eventually, I stop being myself and I become other peoples definition of me.

And if only these were the people who mattered. But no, when it comes to external validation, anyone is fair game. After meeting death by the firing squad, on his first day in hell, war deserter Joseph Garcin (No Exit) looks down on earth and sees his old newsroom, his comrades pulling on their cigars and talking about him. They call him a coward and they smirk with contempt. He cannot live with this, Garcin, not even in hell. So he turns to Estelle. He asks her to believe in him, to tell him that he is good and brave. He begs her, he implores her, he promises her his love. Thats right, Garcin turns to Estelle, the woman who tied a stone around her newborn babys neck and drowned it in the lake. Trust in me! Garcin implores her. Estelle refuses, and his hell begins.

Is there a solution? A way to resist societys evisceration of my authentic I? Not according to Bakhtin who, towards the end of his life, became resigned to the hopelessness of our situation. Max Stirner was more optimistic, however, as he thought he had found the answer in egoism.

I do nothing for Gods sake, I do nothing for Mans sake, but what I do I do for my sake, Stirner writes. Love, virtue, common good, family, patriotism, kindness, respect for fellow men an egoist does not care. For him, these are abstract ideas, distant theories invented by someone else. What have they got to do with him? The only power that motivates an egoist is himself: he is his own guide, his own justification, his own truth.

This is a fascinating proposition through sheer provocation, if nothing else (The Ego and its Own was published in 1844). But it has problems. For example, how do several billion egoistic truths interact in reality? Who decides which truth is right and which is wrong? Stirner has no answer to that, simply saying: take whats yours if you cant, you are weak.

Another problem is Stirners blanket egalitarianism. Everyone is unique, even the born shallow-pates, who, he happily concedes, form the most numerous class of men. The shallow-plates should also be left to do as they please, according to Stirner and it is easy to see just how bad this idea is. Then its the general feel of his prose. Stirners depiction of an egoist is not without literary talent, and the image he creates on the pages of The Ego and its Own is, frankly, that of an asshole whereas most of us would much rather deal with a nice guy.

The problem with nice guys, however, is that you never know at what point they will crack. Soaked in moral codes and doctrines, the nice guy tries hard to be good. I can always count on him to buy my raffle ticket, and to cover up for me when I mess up at work. But the raffle ticket costs two quid. What if it cost fifty? Would he be still committed to the cause? And would he still protect me if his own career were at risk? Its easy to be nice when nothing is at stake, we can all do it. But as soon as the nice guys own interests are threatened, watch his niceness quickly vanish and crude egoism take its place. As a source of motivation, egoism is really hard to beat.

If it looks like I have painted a gloomy picture of a world without decency, honour, kindness and compassion, this is not the case. Stirner writes: I love men too, but I love them with the consciousness of egoism; I love them because love makes me happy.

There is a passage in For Whom the Bell Tolls in which Ernest Hemingway explains Robert Jordans decision to fight for the Spanish Republic by his desire to join something bigger than himself. I always found this line surprisingly weak, as it comes in sharp contrast to everything else we learn about this masterfully developed character. Namely, that whatever Robert Jordan did, he did for himself.

And this finally brings me to Nietzsche, who picked up where Stirner left off in elevating egoism to the level of philosophy. In a welcome departure from his predecessors egalitarianism, however, Nietzsche writes that the value of egoism depends on the value of him who possesses it. It can be very valuable, it can be worthless and contemptible. In other words, there is egoism and there is egoism. There is the basic selfishness of everyday man whose fumbles are directed at getting a nicer job and a bigger house and there is the egoism of Robert Jordan, who lives with courage and honour, who fights for a cause and dies for a cause not out of respect for the concept of virtue but because doing so gives him joy.

For Nietzsche, egoism is an exceptional instinct of an exceptional individual, of the noble spirit strong enough and wise enough to devise his own rules, of the man who can rightly say: I serve the higher interest of mankind not for its sake, but for my sake.

Although the idea of living a decent life through inner compulsion, rather than a nod to morality, is strong and viable, the rest, I am afraid, is a fantasy. In my entire life, I met two people whom I would trust to devise their own rules. Two. The rest would quickly descend into Lord of the Flies. There are certain societal frameworks we simply cannot live without: laws, systems, standards, procedures. Nietzsche would argue that these are only required if man cannot know himself what is good for him and what is evil. Well, to be honest, many men dont. And even if we did, would we really want to live in complete, unbridled freedom, with no guidance, no benchmarks, devising our path from scratch every single day?

Does this mean that our only option is to side with Bakhtin and watch, in mournful resignation, how, year after year, society chips away at an ever larger chunk of our personality? Society lets us realise only a tiny fraction of our authentic selves: I said this before, and I maintain it.

At this point, however, I should probably add that this problem is largely theoretical simply because most selves do not possess much by way of authenticity, and, on a day-to-day basis, there is not a large pool of uniqueness for society to suppress. And for the majority who look at life and wish for a nice job, a nice family and a nice weekend hobby, the frameworks and structures that society provides can play a good organising role. Furthermore, if we take advantage of societys intellectual and creative heritage, we might not realise our authenticity but we could realise something better. Cicero would not need seven years of university studies to win cases in court: such is the nature of genius that it flourishes on its own but for everyone else, a top law degree could enhance their abilities in ways they could never manage alone.

For better or worse, we are stuck with society, its standards and rules, its collective les Autres (otherwise known as public opinion), and its general resentment of anarchy. So perhaps the wise thing to do is forget about Stirner and Nietzsche and limit our displays of egoism to basic day-to-day stuff. After all, we wouldnt want to get on the wrong side of other people.

And yet I find Nietzsches utopia of high egoism breathtakingly splendid. A spirit thus emancipated stands in the midst of the universe with a joyful and trusting fatalism. Nietzsche wrote this about Goethe. He might have written this about himself. Because he was, in fact, the perfect egoist, his own Dionysus, his own Zarathustra and there he stood, and there he fought, intrepid, unrelenting, oblivious to consequences, unheeding to any voice that was not his own, that fiercest of creatures, that rarest of men. A man with the courage to be himself.

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In defence of egoism - TheArticle

In todays episode of the Telos Press Podcast, Camelia Raghinaru talks with Robert Miner about his article Human Joy and the Subversion of Work/Play Distinctions: A Note on Adornos Minima Moralia2.84, from Telos191 (Summer 2020). An excerpt of the article appears below. If your university has an online subscription to Telos, you can read the full article at the Telos Online website. For non-subscribers, learn how your university can begin a subscription to Telos at our library recommendation page. Purchase a print copy of Telos191 in our online store.

From Telos 191 (Summer 2020):

Robert Miner

For those intrigued by the notion of joy and its place within a human life, Theodor Adorno is unlikely to be the first thinker that comes to mind. For many, he will not come to mind at all. This is unfortunate because Adorno was keenly sensitive to the importance of joy and its dialectical relation to both suffering and joylessness. Like any brilliant aphorism, Minima Moralia 2.84 demands that its reader explicate what it contains in highly compressed form. The following note will do just this, illuminating the aphorisms claim that joy and mind have been expelled equally from both work and amusement, so that blank-faced seriousness and pseudo-activity hold sway.

The aphorism begins with a single word: Timetablea reminder of the sign under which we tend to live. It proceeds as follows:

Few things separate more profoundly the mode of life befitting an intellectual from that of the bourgeois than the fact that the former acknowledges no alternative between work and recreation.

The proposed contrast between bourgeois and intellectual will not strike todays reader as an obvious one. Many of those whom contemporary culture regards as intellectuals or thought leadersto use a particularly noxious term that has acquired currencyseem entirely bourgeois in their mode of life. Some thinkers in Adornos own time saw the point clearly. Leo Strauss, for example, uses intellectual as a term of abuse. For him it names neither the philosopher who embraces the radicalism proper to free thought nor the statesman who, however limited as a theorist, has the practical wisdom required for governing. The intellectual in Strausss usage tends to be either a sophist, notable for his verbal cleverness, or a theorist who is reasonably adept at conceptual manipulation, but blind to the unacknowledged assumptions that direct his thinking. He is not a philosopher, statesman, or scholar.

To avoid misunderstanding Adornos proposal, we must put aside the pejorative sense of the term intellectual. Adorno is well aware that many of those regarded as intellectuals are bourgeois, precisely because they operate with a strict dichotomy between work and play. But such intellectuals are counterfeits, pale imitations of the higher type: One could no more imagine Nietzsche in an office, with a secretary minding the telephone in an anteroom, at his desk until five oclock, than playing golf after the days work was done. For intellectual to be more than an abstract label, it must be reserved for those who live a certain mode of life, one befitting an intellectual. What is this mode of life? The aphorism supplies a negative description: it acknowledges no alternative between work and recreation.

In order to understand this denial more clearly, we might compare it with aphorism 94 of Beyond Good and Evil, which supplies its positive correlate. There Nietzsche writes: A mans maturityconsists in having found again the seriousness one had as a child, at play. The bourgeois bifurcation of work and play, far from being grown-up, is essentially immature, a case of arrested development. The alternative to the dichotomy between work and recreation is the integration of seriousness and play, an integration that Adorno takes Nietzsche to exemplify. Without some such integration, our prospects for anything worth calling joyas distinct from an assortment of pleasuresseem dim.

If particular intellectuals fail to live in the manner that befits them, it is often because they have been too quick to accommodate themselves to the conditions of late capitalism, taking for granted the dominant oppositions between work and play. The case of the genuine intellectual proves the possibility of living in a manner that is not determined by these oppositions. Adornos point, however, is not that only the intellectual can live such a life. The possibility of overcoming strong work/play distinctions extends to any form of life in which work conforms to a negative criterion: Work that need not, to satisfy reality, first inflict on the subject all the evil that it is afterwards to inflict on others, is pleasure even in its despairing effort. By this somewhat paradoxical formulation, the aphorism intends to suggest the possibility of work that is at the same time pleasurableand so retains an essential element of play. When work is painful, it is typically because it is work conceived as labor, whose etymological connection to suffering should always be kept in mind. So long as work is meaningless, involving little more than the exploitation of laborers who have nothing to show for their suffering, it will be experienced as painful. Work, however, that is not labor in that sense always carries with it the possibility of being pleasurable, even in its despairing effort. To the extent that it is not judged by the criterion of success or failure at producing something external to itself, such work is simultaneously play. It is enjoyable in itself, regardless of whether or not it succeeds in accomplishing some objective imposed from without.

Such autotelic activity, undertaken for its own sake, is the natural home of joy. Moreover, it suggests the possibility of a certain type of freedom. Its freedom is the same as that which bourgeois society reserves exclusively for relaxation and, by this regimentation, at once revokes. It follows that bourgeois souls are perfectly capable of recognizing the kind of freedom characteristic of the mode of work that is not opposed to play. They have had some taste of such freedom in their leisure activities. What they cannot see is that some things that are correctly described as work can also possess the freedom of play. For the bourgeois conception, the strict opposition between work and play is an unalterable fact, not some questionable idea with a particular genealogy. Just as bad interpretations think they are the only interpretation, or regard themselves as something other than interpretations, the bourgeois conception of the work/play relation supposes itself to be the only possible conception. For those to whom the bourgeois conception is self-evident, nearly every human activity is classified either as done for work or done for pleasure. Consider one example: that of reading. If someone in the grip of the bourgeois conception catches you in the act of reading a text that seems demandingone that requires attention and is not obviously amusingshe will assume that you are reading for work. In the most earnest of tones, she will ask if you ever read for pleasure.

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The Telos Press Podcast: Robert Miner on the Division of Work and Play in Adorno's Minima Moralia - Telos Press

Ubisofts Assassins Creed series is one of the worlds best-selling video game series. Featuring settings ranging from Ancient Greece to the French revolution, Assassins Creed: Valhalla, released last month, takes the player into the mind of Evior, a viking raider who invades England.

Little about Assassins Creed is unique or new: many games feature historical settings, with or without time travel; there are countless third-person action and action role playing games and the entire video game industry is preoccupied with making each game look and sound better than the last.

Even Assassins Creeds signature stealth action gameplay, which allows the player to sneak past foes, set ambushes, and avoid notice or eschew subtlety and rush in with a battle-cry, was first deployed by Eidos Thief: The Dark Project, in 1998.

First appearing in 2007, the franchise has spanned a dozen big budget PC and console games and inspired mobile tie-ins, comics, novels, board games, a film and a forthcoming Netflix live action series. So whats its secret?

Part of it is the varied settings, stretching from Ancient Egypt to Renaissance Italy to the near future. But the real secret sauce, Id argue, is in the motto of the in-game Assassins: nothing is true, everything is permitted.

Assassins Creed plays fast and loose with history, simultaneously putting huge amounts of effort into the reproduction of historical architecture and styles while also staging an endless war between the Assassins, who fight for the freedom of all humanity, and the Templars, who believe peace can only be achieved when everyone is under their thumb.

The game enables the protagonist to put on an in-game headset known as an Animus device an interactive history simulation. Rather than a time machine, the Animus uses the plot device of genetic memory. Protagonists can access their ancestors memories through their DNA to justify diversions not only from history but also possibility.

Like the play within the play in Hamlet, no-one really dies in an Animus simulation. This is an accepted fact of the plot. The goal isnt to fix the past, but to learn from it, and apply that understanding within the world of the game. This gives players consistency in terms of the series world and overarching plot, while also allowing each game to explore a different historical setting.

Small twists on familiar game-play paired with diverse settings have kept fans hooked as the games moved from 15th century Venice to 18th century Boston, to 5th century BC Athens, and beyond. Theres a different chapter of the eternal war between the Assassins and the Templars to relive in each game, a new Animus simulation.

In an era where games, from indie hit Undertale to military shooter Spec Ops: The Line, ask players to consider the consequences of their actions, the Assassins Creed games ask the player to identify with groups often seen as the bad guys. Assassins, pirates, and invaders are the heroes here.

The player can engage in assassination, piracy and colonisation without hesitation because its only an Animus simulation.

The actual historical Knights Templar are hard to get a grip on. Prominent in the 12th and 13th centuries, they fought brutally in, and profited greatly from, the Crusades. The order was later disbanded on false charges of heresy, with some burnt at the stake for confessions extracted under torture. More recently, they have grown popular with conspiracy theorists and white supremacists.

Read more: Knights Templar: still loved by conspiracy theorists 900 years on

On the other hand, the Hashashins, the historical Assassins that inspired Assassins Creed, are infamous. This Ismaili sect was active at the same time as the Templars, but in Persia (modern-day Iran) and Syria, far from the Crusades. Often incorrectly described as a cult of pot-smoking killers without fear or remorse, the motto nothing is true, everything is permitted has been attributed to their founder, Hassan-i Sabbh.

Slovakian-Italian author Vladimir Bartol collected rumours and created salacious details about the Hashashins in his 1938 novel Alamut. In it, stoned Assassins were carried to a hidden garden full of beautiful women and told they were seeing a vision of paradise.

Assassins Creed took its motto from Bartols novel, but Bartol was actually quoting Friedrich Nietzsche. The first recorded instance of the the maxim nothing is true, everything is permitted is in Nietzsches Thus Spoke Zarathrusta(1883).

In this philosophical novel, Nietzsche develops his concept of the endless return, of living the same life over and over. Thats exactly what players do in the Assassins Creed games.

Read more: Explainer: Nietzsche, nihilism and reasons to be cheerful

In Assassins Creed: Valhalla, the life you are living over is that of Evior. The player controls Layla Hassan, a modern-day Assassin, as she inhabits Evior, and he or she (the game lets you choose or periodically swap genders based on those genetic memories) re-stages the Norse invasion of the British Isles.

Eviors back-story and motivations are textbook: s/hes the orphan who needs to prove their worth, beat a nemesis and save their community. Its a rubber stamp that leaves the player free to go i viking, raiding coastal settlements and camps, butchering any opposition, pillaging valuable goods, and using them to establish and fortify a Norse settlement in England.

Read more: What does the word 'Viking' really mean?

Being an Assassins Creed game, the player also has the opportunity to infiltrate English cities, assassinating foes and rivals before quietly slipping away or cutting a gory swath to freedom.

Fandom is all about wanting new experiences that make you feel the same way you did when you first became a fan. Its a challenge for creators to provide something fresh and interesting but faithful to what fans already know and love.

Assassins Creed has worked this out: each version of the game is absolutely familiar, but makes that familiarity feel new.

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Assassin's Creed: after 13 years, 12 games and a ton of sales, what's the secret to the franchise's success? - The Conversation AU

Now, as Shakespeare said, is the winter of our discontent.

Covid keeps on coming, creating a third wave of infections that put the earlier upswells to shame. We are hunkered down, tired out, fed up, and strung out. People fret and businesses suffer.

What is an entrepreneur (last time I looked, entrepreneurs are people, too, subject to all the slings and arrows of human experience) to do during a dark moment like this? How can an emerging business move forward when everything is locked down?

Every entrepreneur is unique and every business different, but here are a few thoughts on how to traverse terrible times.

Focus on your core.

In challenging times, startups should cut away all the clutter, pare back big dreams, and pay attention single-mindedly to their core. This means core activities, like lab research and software development. Or core customers: keep every buyer you have today satisfied, occupied, and ready to expand in the future. It means paying attention to your key team members and to your most critical investors. Make a list of essentials. Tighten that list down to only the most central requirements. Pay attention to those. And leave everything else for later.

If you cant act, prepare.

In some cases, with all the restrictions now in place, action is impossible. You cant go to the office. The lab is shut. The customers are closed. The factory is inaccessible. The supply chain is sundered. In this case, be the farmer in winter: Paint the barn. Clean the root cellar. Muck out the stalls. Do all you can to prepare and improve your foundations so that when action becomes possible again, you can take the greatest advantage of it.

Remember the Shawshank Redemption.

In this classic story, an inmate chips away at a wall with spoons day after day for years. The task of escape seems impossible, ridiculous. But they persist. Imperceptibly, they make progress. Until one day, unimaginable when he began, the prisoner is free. Be that guy. Do what you can no matter how small. Keep the faith. Believe in yourself, your plan, and your tomorrow. Even if progress is minuscule, that is still progress and worthy of your effort.

Recognize that winter ends.

Vaccines are here. In Britain, inoculations began yesterday. In the US it may be weeks before they begin. But that is weeks, not years. The Covid crisis should ease over the spring and some degree of normal socialization should return by summer. It has been a long, dark nine months, but the end is in sight. Take a deep breath, adjust the heavy pack on your back, and just keep doing. Even if you cant see it yet, the brilliant sunshine of the summit is only a few switchbacks ahead. Truly, this nightmare is almost over.

Dont forget yourself.

Focus on your team, your customers, your prep, your tech. But dont forget to focus on yourself. You are human, too. All of this is taking a toll on you, as it is on all of us. Stay as close as you can to those you love. Reach out and do the things that bring you joy and comfort. Workout. Eat and drink so your body and mind are ready for the marathon ahead. Cut yourself some slack; in one way or another, all of us are a bit off our game during this conferment.

Nietzsche said, that which does not kill us makes us stronger. In our current malaise, this is literally true.

Be strong.

Reprinted by permission.

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Covid and the Winter of Our Discontent - AlleyWatch

As we celebrate the release of David Bowies seminal recordHunky Dory, which arrived 39 years ago today, we thought wed rank the iconic album from our least favourite to our most cherished track. It may well have been the moment that David Bowie finally fulfilled his potential, but that doesnt mean the record is perfect from start to finish.

That said, in an album filled with some of Bowies best pop work, it may be more difficult than you think to rank the songs from worst to best. The album remains the breakthrough record for Bowie and saw the then-24-year-old finally make his name. While the success of Space Oddity in 1969 had afforded the Starman some fame and acclaim, it wasHunky Dorythat really set him on his path to becoming a bonafide legend.

In the record, Bowie set out his blueprint for success. He would take the kaleidoscopic influences he fell upon and which fell upon him during the previous decade, tie them up together in a neat bow and deliver them with a charismatic smile. If theres one thing thatHunky Doryis, its an introduction to an icon. It should be the first place you send any Bowie virgin not least of all because of the vast range of songs and styles.

Here, we rank them all for you so that you can be as efficient as possible with your David Bowie adoration. Yes, we know. These kinds of articles are essentially just one persons opinion in an ocean of opinions. However, we like to think of ourselves as Bowie experts here, so maybe well surprise you, or maybe, just maybe, youll disagree with our rankings.

A few rules to note, for any ranking article we avoid bonus tracks or any remixes. We also try to listen to the albums on shuffle so that we avoid falling into the traps of clever producers.

Without doubt one of David Bowies more opaque songs, in fact, it never warranted itself a title, the song remains as a leading example of Bowies expressive lyricism. It was not an aspect of his songwriting which had been fully explored, but these are some of the first steps to Bowies legendary pen.

While the exact interpretation is hard to define, youd be forgiven for thinking this may surround the urbanisation of modern life and Bowies struggle to come to terms with it.

In an album chock-full of hits, this one falls by the wayside a little.

One of the funkier moments on the album, adding some delicate jazz touches wherever possible, the overarching sentiment that Bowie lets resonate is the last repetitious line free your mind, which punctuates the track with aplomb.

His first cover since I Pity The Fool, the special rendition of Biff Roses track had been featuring in the singers earlier live sets for some time. Never afraid to show his admiration for another, Bowies cover is up to scratch.

Largely seen by many as one of the most challenging songs of Bowies to navigate, it was one of the last tracks to be written for the 1971 record. Its dense texture, and rock hard exterior has it sinking to the bottom of the rankings for us, but that wont be a popular opinion.

The Bewlay Brothers has taken on a life of its own in recent years as a new generation discovers the singer. These are the artistically driven moments in Bowies career that have always seen him on the sharper side of the cutting edge.

The B-side to Rock N Roll Suicide, this 1971 song remains a bastion of Bowies inspiration at the time. While the arrangement was amply provided by Mick Ronson, it is in the lyrics that we see the beginnings of Bowies career unfolding.

The lyrics are influenced by Buddhism, occultism, and Friedrich Nietzsches concept of the Superman everything that makes Bowie brilliant.

In it, he refers to the magical society Golden Dawn and name-checks one of its most famous members, Aleister Crowley, as well as Heinrich Himmler, Winston Churchill and Juan Pujol. A kaleidoscope of influential figures to match the ranging styles of the music.

Not our favourite song on the record as it feels a little too dad-rock but Bowie himself once highlighted the songs significance to his own career in a 1976 piece inMelody Maker.

He once recalled: Theres even a song Song for Bob Dylan that laid out what I wanted to do in rock. It was at that period that I said, okay (Dylan) if you dont want to do it, I will. I saw that leadership void.

He added: Even though the song isnt one of the most important on the album, it represented for me what the album was all about. If there wasnt someone who was going to use rock n roll, then Id do it. This was the moment David Bowie made it clear that he was not just a showman; he was an artist capable of changing society.

Starting of course with David Bowies uncanny impression of Warhol, and a comedic expression that shows off Bowies acting skills, the song soon descends into a folk-pop track about the mercurial pop artist that is certainly tinged with apprehension and darkness.

The lyrics highlight a distrust of the artist: Andy Warhol looks a scream, hang him on my wall / Andy Warhol silver screen, cant tell them apart at all. Allegedly, when the two icons met and Bowie played the song for the pop artist, Warhol was not particularly impressed, leaving Bowie more red-faced than his usual make-up routine afforded.

Sadly, the possibility of two of the 20th centurys most creative and purposeful minds ended with the drop of a record needle as Bowie and Warhol quickly ascertained they were never going to be great friends. But Bowie certainly made off the better of the two from their meeting. Bowie could count two lifelong partners in Iggy Pop and Lou Reed, who he met on the trip and the seedlings ofhis upcoming creation Ziggy Stardustwho he lifted from the underbelly of NYC.

Allegedly written in tribute to Lou Reed and The Velvet Underground, the former of which Bowie would introduce too much of the British audience in 1972 with his work on Reeds Transformer, Bowies Queen Bitch is an insight into the artists future.

First port of call is Ronsons decidedly thrashier guitar work which pulls this song apart from the rest of the album and turns a folk ditty into pure rock n roll. The songs arrangement, featuring a wonderfully melodic bass line, a tight and disco drum pattern, choppy fuzzy guitar chords, and an understated vocal performance by Bowie, all add up to glam rock gold.

As well as being a bloody brilliant song (in whatever decade) the track also provided the template for the invention of glam rock as we know it. It would be a template too for The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, the 1972 introduction to Ziggy Stardust.

An anthemic adolescent bounces down Carnaby Street, Bowie transforms this jaunty little tune, somewhat reminiscent of The Beatles in their pop pomp, to something far more textured and intriguing.

Despite being originally released by Peter Noone of Hermans Hermits, upon inspection, it is really hard to imagine anybody but Bowie writing this track.

Lyrically and thematically, Oh! You Pretty Things has been seen as reflecting the influence of the aforementioned occultist Aleister Crowley, philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, and Edward Bulwer-Lyttons 1871 novel Vril, the Power of the Coming Race, most notably as heralding the impending obsolescence of the human race in favour of an alliance between arriving aliens and the youth of the present society.

An anthem for the outsiders of this world, Kooks may not be the most famous of the albums incredible tracklist, but for many fans, it resonates most strongly. The song, written for his son Zowie, is the track which recognises not only Bowies own kookiness but the effect that will have on him as a parent and Zowie as a child.

I bought you a pair of shoes, a trumpet you can blow and a book of rules on what to say to people when they pick on you, sings Bowie. Cause if you stay with us youre gonna be pretty kooky too.

Its a song which has transcended its intended target and instead hangs around the shoulders of all those who hear it as a comforting cradle of emboldening creativity. Its a forgiveness for the errant character traits and odd affectations. Its Bowie signing off on your weirdness and recognising it for the unique beauty it is.

Was there ever really any doubt that this song would be near the top of the pile?

One of the songs, that for many people, is one of the best that Bowie ever wrote. Its equally a song that Bowie admits it started out as a parody of a nightclub song, a kind of throwaway we think its fair to say that were all glad he didnt.

What transpires instead is a song drenched in optimism and guarded enthusiasm for life and art. As well as being an indictment of the previous generations lack of control, Bowie stating in 1968We feel our parents generation has lost control, given up, theyre scared of the future. I feel its basically their fault that things are so bad. The song is also an anthem for evolution and tolerance.

Its a mark of Bowies character and his artistic destination. Its a manifesto for his career as a rock and roll chameleon, for his life as a patron of the arts and creativity, and his legacy as one of the most iconic men in music.

Without doubt one of the most powerful and poignant songs, Bowie has ever written. Likely to be as powerful in a rock opera as on a pop record, with Life On Mars Bowie really changed the game and made artistically-driven music hit the heights of pop stardom despite never being released as a single.

Compositionally the song is near-perfect. Piano work provided by Rick Wakeman, Bowie reflected that it was actually an effortless creation: [The] Workspace was a big empty room with a chaise longue; a bargain-price art nouveau screen (William Morris, so I told anyone who asked); a huge overflowing freestanding ashtray and a grand piano. Little else. I started working it out on the piano and had the whole lyric and melody finished by late afternoon.

While lyrically, it ranks among the most surreal and deliberately difficult to ascertain any real concrete truth from, it is in the series of tableaux that Bowie provides which shows off his creative genius. Not comfortable with providing a searing narrative that the music warrants, instead Bowie provides a disjointed and designed medley of vignettes from the museum to the modernasking the listeners to create their own tale.

For us, if you can write a song filled with lyrics as non-sensical as Life On Mars while still having the audience sing those mysterious lyrics back to you with passion and drivethen youve truly succeeded as an artist.

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The songs of David Bowie album Hunky Dory ranked in order of greatness - Far Out Magazine

A new study has revealed the perfect song to relax to this Christmas, it might even help your children get to sleep on Christmas Eve!

Boney Ms Marys Boy Child tops the list as the tune most likely to chill you out this Christmas something we could all do with after the year weve had.

While Band Aid 14s Do They Know Its Christmas follows closely behind, featuring the likes of Dizzee Rascal, One Direction and Ed Sheeran.

The research, conducted by Great Bean Bags, analysed over 2,000 songs using data sourced from Spotify playlists containing the words relax, relaxing, chill and chilling in the title to find the top 50 most common songs people choose to kick back and relax to.

From the top 50 songs, it then calculated the average beats per minute (BPM) and found the most common key and time signatures of the top 50 to create the perfect formula for the worlds most relaxing song. Using this formula, researchers then compared it to the same properties of 2020s top hits and all time Christmas classics.

The definitive list of the all time most relaxing songs can be found here.

Commenting on the research, creative director, Patrick Tonks at Great Bean Bags said:Relaxation is core to all of our bean bags, so after what has been probably the most stressful year for many of us, well all be looking forward to a well-needed break, and now we can make that even more relaxing with songs that are proven to chill us all out.

As luck would have it, theres also a Christmas hit that matches the formula meaning we dont even need to break from festivities to relax we can completely get lost in Christmas. The songs weve found to match the formula might even help to get your little ones to sleep on Christmas Eve before the big day!

If Christmas songs arent your preferred choice of music in December, the study also analysed the top hits of 2020, with Lewis Capaldis Someone You Loved coming out as the closest match to the formula, with Doja Cats Say So closely behind.

Commenting on how music can help us to relax, psychologist Cristina Barcelo said:Music is scientifically proven to have a special effect on the brain, the body and even the emotional aspects of the human being,

If youre feeling anxious, take at least five minutes of your day to sit down, take a couple of deep breaths and engage in relaxing music, its going to help you relax and increase the oxygen level of your body, which is also what creates the calming effect in the body, mind, and spirit.

The full research and analyses can be found here.

See more here:

Science Says These Are The Most Relaxing Christmas Songs Ever - B&T

Besides sitting still and focusing on breathing as a form of meditation, there are many activities that can be meditative and help you unwind and relax. Meditation is a practice that people have used for centuries to train attention and awareness as well as achieve mental stability.

However, many people consider meditation a difficult activity. Sitting in silence for a long period of time and focusing on breathing can be challenging, especially when your head is full of other thoughts that can distract your meditation process. Luckily, there are a number of other meditation forms that are not necessarily meditation and that can effectively achieve the same effects and results.

Most of us live a hectic lifestyle, with our day-to-day activities leaving no room for relaxation. Focusing solely on work or studies can be unhealthy and can lead to many consequences that can affect our mental health as well as our physical health.

Not balancing your lifes hectic activities can limit your personal time that you need to rejuvenate and take a break from energy-draining activities. This can lower your energy, motivation, and productivity, which can lead to low self-esteem, stress, and anxiety.

Fortunately, there many easy and enjoyable activities that have a meditative effect and that you can enjoy practicing easily without any challenges. These six pleasant, meditative activities can help you unwind and take a break from your busy day.

You do not have to be artistic or creative in order to paintit is a hobby for everyone. Painting is one of the fun meditative activities that will help you unwind and just be completely yourself.

Choosing the colors you like, the slow motions of the brush covering the blank canvas, and creating the vision you have in your mind are all techniques that can help train your attention, focus on your breathing, and just relax your mind and body.

Many people find it difficult to express themselves verbally because it can be hard to find the right words to use. Painting is a way to express yourself and your feelings without using words, a tool to release the stress and anxiety that might have flooded your mind.

Painting can have a significant impact on your mental health. Creating something beautiful that you worked on for some time and are proud of can give you the self-validation you need that will help boost your self-esteem and confidence.

Planting trees, caring for plants, and nurturing them, in the long run, can be one of the most relaxing, meditative activities that can help you unwind and also find purpose in small things. Gardening requires us to use all our senses and focus on the task at hand.

Touching the soil and plants, breathing in different scents of earth and air, the soft breeze across your face, and the calm and quiet environment can all help create a relaxing atmosphere for you to breathe easily and restore your energy.

Gardening also helps you take a break from your routine and the fast-paced world to practice mindfulness and appreciate the beauty of nature. Caring for other creatures and watching plants grow and flourish can be very gratifying and it can also help you feel accomplished and proud.

Gardening activities also have many health benefits such as burning calories and strengthening the heart. Studies have also shown that healthy bacteria live in soil and helps increase levels of serotonin and reduce anxiety.

This is an activity that might be very popular but also underestimated. Everyone knows walking is good and has positive health benefits, but not many actually take the time off their day to just take a walk.

Walking is one of the easy activities with meditative effects that you can do anytime and anywhere. Walking alone, in particular, can help you focus on your thoughts without many distractions and other influences, which can help you build clear opinions and make better decisions.

Amid the global COVID-19 pandemic, individuals across the entire world have spent months in quarantine inside their homes. As lockdowns in many countries ease up, it is important to get out of the house and go outside from time to time, while practicing all the necessary health measurements.

Being outside, surrounded by nature, the bright clear sky, the chirping birds and animals around, as well as people going on about their day, can give you a distraction from your daily routine. It will also give you the opportunity to focus on your senses: The breeze across your face, the sounds of nature, and even the touch of your foot to the ground. Walking can help you feel more in control of the current moment and slowly help you release any tension you have or stress.

Did you ever wonder how people who enjoy crocheting, knitting, and embroidery can sit for hours just working on their craft? Well, the answer is that needlework is one of the most relaxing and fun meditative activities that help you slow down and unwind.

If you find meditation to be challenging and difficult but still want to indulge in practices that train your attention and help you feel centered and focused, then needlework is a great activity for you.

Needlework might include sitting for a period of time, but while crocheting, knitting, or embroidering you will have something that will keep your hands and mind busy and focused while youre sitting. The repetitive motions of needlework can be very meditative and shift your focus from whatever is bothering you to the task you have in your hands and the pattern you are following and creating.

Needlework is also a productive hobby that not only allows you to enjoy some relaxing escapism but also gives you the opportunity to unleash your creativity and create unique crafts either for you or for others, and that can be very gratifying and boost your mood and self-esteem.

This might be surprising for some but not for others. Meditation is often associated with stillness, deep breathing, and quietness, and it is true that this helps you enter a state of mindfulness and improve your awareness. However, for many people, listening to music can also achieve a similar calm and focused state of mind.

Just like the renowned musician Jimi Hendrix, many people consider music as their religion, and that is because it brings them comfort, makes them happy, improves their mental health, and helps them express themselves through art.

People around the world enjoy music, no matter the genre or the language. Even animals are attracted to rhythmic sounds and pleasant melodies. Music is considered a tool of communication that has incredible effects on individuals.

The importance of music and has made it one of the most enjoyable meditative activities that anyone can do to unwind. Listening to music, focusing on the melody, the words, and the instruments played can create a meditative practice that will help you relax, reduce stress, provide comfort, and boost your mood.

For centuries, people have read books either for educational purposes or just as a delightful hobby that helps them enjoy an activity besides their day-to-day tasks. Reading is one of the meditative activities with many benefits and one that allows you to relax and unwind.

Some of the numerous benefits of reading include lowering stress and anxiety, strengthening your brain function, increasing your empathy, building your vocabulary, and improving your sleep quality.

There are millions of books of all genres of literature in the world, from biographies to thrillers and science fiction, making it easy to find the right book that interests you the most and that you will enjoy reading.

Reading books can help you immerse yourself in a different story and take your mind away from any life problems or issues you might be facing. Reading through the pages will help you slow down and relax as well as train your attention and focus.

Meditation is a great tool that allows us to train ourselves to be more focused in real life, to have a better reaction to unpredictable upsetting events, and improve our mental health.

Despite its immense benefits, meditation can be challenging and even frustrating for many people. Fortunately there numerous activities that are very beneficial and can achieve the same effects as meditation.

If you want to practice meditation but just cannot get yourself to sit still for a period of time without losing your focus, then you should try these six meditative activities that will help you cultivate a state of peaceful awareness without meditation.

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Meditative Activities 6 Relaxing Activities That Will Help You Unwind - Morocco World News

The world outside is messy, loud, and oppressive. Everything morphs into edges that you can easily get snagged on, but inside Lo-Fi Room, you can find momentary respite from the chaos of it all. Here, you can close your eyes, sink yourself into your soft beats, and smile. Here, you are safe.

In a nutshell, this, to me, is the whole appeal of Lo-Fi Room. Scheduled for release in late 2021, this relaxing game from Bearmask tasks you with finding hidden musical instruments littered across different scenes per level, then tests your musical prowess with timed beats. Each musical instrument you find unlocks a music track, in which you have to hit the right button to complete the beat.

Each level indicates how many instruments you need to find (and, in essence, how many tracks you need to successfully sync your own personal rhythm to). When you find all the musical instruments and complete the tracks, you can bask in the glory of your achievement and listen to the full music, with the scene coming alive to your newly formed beat ala-GIF style.

While rhythm games have been around for a really long time, Lo-Fi Room isnt just another Dance Dance Revolution, Rock Band, or Guitar Hero. On the contrary, it doesnt make you feel like you need to get all hopped up on adrenaline just so you can get your groove on. In Lo-Fi Room, its all about chilling out and staying mellow, because isnt that what lo-fi is all about?

As for the controls, theyre pretty basic - all you really have to do is time your taps just right to hit the notes when prompted. There are four keys, and while some tracks are easy one-two beats, some can get pretty complicated, and youll need to bust out your hand-eye coordination skills to really get things going. Some have short durations that are easy to hit, but for some, youll need to hit every single note for a longer period of time - one wrong key and youll have to start all over again.

Still, if you feel like you dont have the chops to hit the notes, dont fret - the game can be pretty forgiving if you tap the keys at almost the right time. Even if you hit the keys relatively near where youre supposed to, the game counts that as a successful tap, so youre really not going to rage-quit from frustration. After all, lo-fi should calm you down to the deepest recesses of your soul - not send you off into a fiery rampage.

If you dont feel like timing your keys to someone elses rhythm, you can make your own music in the games Make Beats mode. Here, you can take your pick from all the different musical instruments available and create your own lo-fi beats. Each instrument will also have four keys, so play along as you please. Im not really too musically inclined, but at the end of the day, I personally found this feature even more relaxing than the Story Mode, if thats even possible.

Currently, there will be 15-20 levels with increasing difficulty as planned when the final version of the game comes out. Its obviously not meant to be played in a single go - I personally think you can enjoy the game best when you sit down and play through just a level or two with every session. Its the perfect way to de-stress when youre feeling overwhelmed with the world around you, especially with the aesthetically pleasing art thats as low-key and calming as the beats that surround it.

Overall, Lo-Fi Room lets you find your chill by perfectly encapsulating what lo-fi is. If you want to give it a try and see if its your cup of tea, you can check out the first three levels for free over at the official website. Then, cuddle up in a cozy blanket with a furry fuzzball by your side and youre good to go.

Heres hoping the game hits its target release date - because if theres even any teeny tiny way the world can unwind right now, well definitely take it.

Continued here:

Lo-Fi Room preview - Chill to the beat of this relaxing rhythm game - Pocket Gamer