Meditation Treks is out today on iPhone, iPad and Android. It’s a guided meditation app with 40 treks and a live sound mixer, and it works completely offline, with no Wi-Fi needed. It’s $29.99 once, with no subscription.
I’ve been working toward this for a long time, so I want to tell you why it exists and what’s inside.
Get Meditation Treks (takes you to the right store for your phone)
Why I built it
In 2011 I sat in a guided group meditation in Austin, Texas. It was called “Ask Your Higher Self a Question,” and what came back to me that afternoon was clear enough to change the direction of my life. It’s where my own guided meditations began, and along the way I also trained as a yoga teacher (RYT-200) and a certified breathwork practitioner.
For years I’ve been recording guided meditations under the name Guided Meditation Treks.
I’m also a software engineer, so when I found binaural beats I couldn’t leave them alone. What if the sound under a guided meditation wasn’t a fixed backing track, but something live that shifted with you, step by step?
That question turned into albums, a free Binaural app, a Vipassana app and a lot of late nights. Meditation Treks is all of it in one place, done the way I always wanted to do it.
Built for airplane mode
The best places I’ve meditated rarely had a signal. A window seat on a long flight. A trail deep in the woods. A cabin where the Wi-Fi gave up years ago.
So Meditation Treks lives entirely on your phone. Every trek, every sound and every lesson is already there when you open it. Switch on airplane mode and the whole app still works.
Prepare your space
That’s more than a convenience. When your phone can’t reach you, your attention is yours again.
Before a session, the app walks you through a short “Prepare your space” step: Do Not Disturb, silent ringer, airplane mode. Then you go inward.
One purchase, not another subscription
I didn’t want to hand you another monthly bill. You buy Meditation Treks once and it’s yours: every trek, the full sound mixer, and the updates that come after.
There’s no account to create, no login and no ads, and the app doesn’t collect your data.
What’s inside
Everything below is included. There’s a full tour on the Meditation Treks app page.
Forty guided treks
The treks come from the Guided Meditation Treks recordings: Volumes 1 and 2, Journeys Within, Healing Breathwork, Breathwork, Sleep and Vipassana.
Some are quiet and practical, for winding down at night or taking a nap. Others go deeper: meeting a spirit guide, asking your higher self a question, sitting with your future self.
Treat each meditation as a template. A guide, not a destination. (If you’re curious where this style of practice comes from, I wrote about the roots of guided meditation.)
A live sound mixer
Under every trek is a sound engine that is actually running, not a looped recording. You can layer nature sounds like rain, waves and forest; noise colors from brown and pink to green noise; and entrainment with binaural beats or isochronic tones.
While a trek plays, it shifts those layers for you as it moves from step to step. Or skip the voice entirely and build your own mix to fall asleep, focus or simply sit. Headphones help with the binaural beats.
I’ve loved the sounds of nature since I was a kid falling asleep to a thunderstorm cassette, so the nature layers got a lot of care.
A Vipassana path, in order
The Vipassana series is a step-by-step body-sensation practice, from your first sit through Metta. I first learned it at a 10-day Vipassana retreat in Texas.
The lessons open one at a time as you go. That isn’t a paywall; everything is already included. The practice builds on itself, and taking it in order is how it’s meant to be learned.
I’d rather you sit with the first lesson for a week than skip ahead to the last.
Your greatest good
Underneath all of this is one simple idea: when you are clearer and kinder with yourself, that ripples into every relationship you touch.
The point is not escape. It’s coming back a little steadier, with a better sense of what your greatest good actually is, and living from there.
I don’t have your answers. The truth is within you. These treks are just a way to go in and look, with a little help from technology.
Where to get it
Meditation Treks is out now:
Thank you for being here, whether you found me through an album years ago, through the Binaural app, or just now. Find a quiet spot, switch on airplane mode, and take a trek.
No Wi-Fi. No subscription.
— Russell Eric Dobda
Meditation Treks is for relaxation and meditation practice. It isn’t medical advice or treatment.
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