Chill out at work now and zen with app

The Buddhify app is designed to bring calm, peace and meditation. Photo / Getty images

Alarms, social media, work calls and emails - it's not hard to think of your smartphone as a constant source of stress and distraction.

That's why it seems slightly ironic to have an app designed to bring calm, peace and meditation.

But the amount of downloads best-selling Buddhify has had suggest the concept is working.

Buddhify was conceived by Buddhist Geeks associate Rohan Gunatillake - the mind behind successful UK creative studio Mindfulness Everywhere - while on a meditation retreat in 2011.

Like Steve Jobs before him, the Glaswegian developer found an interesting way to marry the fast-paced, ultra-competitive world of tech with the enlightenment and focus of Zen Buddhism.

Drawing on its teachings and principles, the original Buddhify app features 80 guided meditation exercise audio tracks custom-designed for work, going to sleep, de-stressing, travelling and more.

These aim to help you develop calm and compassion, even in the midst of a modern working life.

Along with the exercises, you get detailed graphics and statistics that provide feedback of your usage and progress, a "solo timer" when you want to meditate without guidance, special sections for dealing with pain and difficult emotions, and a chance to put any questions to a team of experts.

The re-booted Buddhify 2 brings tips and tricks to optimise your meditation practice and 40 custom-made new audio exercises.

The app has won Gunatillake a slew of awards, and in 2012 he was named by popular tech magazine Wired as one of 50 people who will change the world.

Gunatillake wrote in Wired how a "mainstreaming" of mindfulness, scientific advances around meditation and the emergence of contemplative technologists would bring us a new wave of digital tools that not only reduced stress, but led to "genuine insight, wisdom and compassion".

Buddhify is available on iOS and Android, and some features vary.