Japanese Mental-Healthcare App, Awarefy, Helps You Adopt Mindfulness and Self-Care Techniques


Published on January 28, 2022

Working on your mental well-being a little each day could help to enhance the way you feel, think, and manage your emotions. Awarefy, a Japanese mental healthcare app, is a user-friendly, self-help tool built to help you embrace self-care and mindfulness techniques to enhance your regular life. After all, your mental health is as essential as your physical health.

Practicing self-care has never been so crucial. As lockdown restrictions continue to roll on, it is important that you make time in your days to show yourself a bit of kindness, take care of your mental health and make sure you are diving back into things too fast.

The term self-care has become a wellness buzzword, so it is essential that you do not lose sight of what the term actually means. These days, people might associate self-care with experimental relaxation techniques and luxurious face masks. Still, self-care also refers to activities you engage in to take care of your physical, emotional, and mental health, including those mentioned above.

With that in mind, a mindfulness app is an excellent way to make self-care a regular habit. Whether they are helping you through a breathing exercise or just reminding you to take care of yourself, a mindfulness app like Awarefy helps make the entire process a little easier by providing you with self-care at your fingertips.

What is Awarefy?

Awarefy is a mental health care app designed through joint research with Waseda University based on the theoretical concept of ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy). It’s commonly known as the third generation of cognitive-behavioral therapy.

The self-care and mindfulness app provides features that enable you to ‘write down,’ allowing you to visualize and organize your daily emotions and conditions. It also has voice guides that help you practice mindfulness and meditation and a recording feature for stress care. Awarefy presents a simple and convenient way to engage in self-care for your mental health from your smartphone.

Since its launch in May 2020, Awarefy has served its Japanese users and surpassed 100,000 downloads by December 2021.

Recently, the Japanese startup Hakali Inc, based in Tokyo, has released an English version of the mental and emotional self-care app, allowing it to be used by a much wider audience. This is the company’s first step toward global expansion. Hakali is also dedicated to releasing the app in other languages to establish a framework and make the app accessible to everyone across the globe as a mental health care app from Japan.

Introducing Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy is a unique therapy that supports patients to embrace their negative feelings and thoughts instead of avoiding or eliminating them. Trained therapists utilize this method to treat a broad spectrum of conditions, and it has shown to be efficient for many people.

ACT also encourages patients to accept things out of their control and commit to other actions and thoughts made to enrich their lives. Instead of feeling guilty about having negative feelings, patients learn that negative emotions are natural. The goal of this therapy is to boost psychological flexibility.

The basis of ACT—which is the basis of Awarefy’s development—emphasizes mindfulness as one of the vital elements. It’s demonstrated that the root of mindfulness is in Buddhist Zen. Designed in Japan, where Zen culture fills daily life, the self-care and mindfulness app reflects on the Zen concept of ‘reassessing oneself to become aware of and regain their true self.’

Based on that principle, Awarefy will offer emotional and mental self-care that improves regular awareness to people in Japan and worldwide.

Awarefy is now available for download on Apple Store and Google Play. The app also has premium plans to support more comprehensive self-care.

Technology Reporter