Calm and AllTrails know your stress is reaching a fever pitch—so they’re partnering for mental health awareness
Calm and AllTrails know your stress is reaching a fever pitch—so they’re partnering for mental health awareness
They want to help you, by telling you to take a hike.
BY Sarah Bregel
May is Mental Health Awareness Month, and this year, the check-in feels more necessary than ever. Between the loss of lives in Gaza, the looming November election, and financial stress, all on top of our regular workloads and daily to-do lists, many are carrying hefty mental loads.
Luckily, to bring awareness to the importance of tuning into our mental health, meditation and sleep app Calm is teaming up with hiking companion app AllTrails.
Starting Wednesday, anyone who logs a hike on AllTrails will receive three months of a Calm subscription for free. It might be enough to spur even certified couch potatoes to step into the great outdoors, even if just for a quick jaunt in their Crocs and socks.
AllTrails announced the partnership in an email to its subscribers and made note of five ways that nature can help support your overall mental health. “Spending just 20 to 30 minutes outside reduces the stress hormone cortisol,” it said. It also noted that natural light can improve mood and reduce symptoms of depression, along with other perks of spending time in nature.
Even if you aren’t a natural-born hiker, AllTrails can give you the confidence boost you need to get started. The app makes it easy to log your hikes. Searching for beginner trails that are short or flat or have smooth terrain is simple, too. Navigating hikes, whether beginner or expert level, is straightforward as well. And if logging the hike wasn’t enough of a brain boost for you (it feels good to see your completed journey, calories burned, and total time spent on the trail), the subscription to Calm will be another enjoyable perk.
As part of the new partnership, the apps have also released a cobranded “Sounds of the Top Trails” collection, available on the Calm app. The collection includes the sounds of nature from five of the most beautiful trails in the U.S.
These days, we’ll gladly take any subscription for free, but the Calm app, which is said to help users find zen or fall asleep faster, seems like a good deal to snag just by taking one single hike. But better than the free three months of Calm is that this could be the start of a brand-new habit to get you through not just the month of May, but the entire year with a little more mental clarity.
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