Happiness Exercises app for iPhone and iPad

This app offers training sessions designed to help you reduce mental distress and improve well-being.

As with muscles, the various functions of the brain can be exercised by activation. The trick is to find ways to push the right “buttons”, which is particularly challenging as feelings are initiated and controlled primarily by unconscious parts of the brain. The sessions use meditative techniques to calm the mind, and then guide you in the activation of relevant functions.

You can preset the time for each session, which are started and stopped by a gong. There are four types of sessions to choose among (meditative state, anxiety, compassion and good mood), but the principles employed can be adapted to individual needs. Background sounds are included as optional in case of a noisy environment. For the purpose of motivation, the time spent exercising is recorded in a journal.

The training regimes are set up by Bjørn Grinde, who works as a Chief Scientist at the Division of Mental Health, Norwegian Institute of Public Health. On his wikispaces pages are links to articles and books he has written on the human brain and on how to improve quality of life. A four page explanatory text follows the app, but is also found here.