It can be a challenge to maintain a healthy lifestyle while traveling.

With my schedule that involves backpacking across continents most of the year, yoga helps me stay fit throughout.

Yoga, the ancient art of stretching and breathing, is practiced around the world today and helps maintain wellness of the body, mind, and soul. Modern technology has made it easier for people who cannot attend yoga classes to practice in the comfort of their home, office, hotel room—really anywhere.

I’m in love with yoga apps. They allow me to not only take a yoga class, but to choose the difficulty, adjust the duration, and even select which style of class I wish to take with just the touch of a button.

Mobile apps for yoga have made it simpler for people to bring out their inner yogi. These yoga apps promote physical and mental wellness through a regular, yet flexible, practice ranging from beginner to advanced.

Here are six amazing mobile apps that I feel every yoga enthusiast should install for a comprehensive yoga routine:

1. Daily Yoga

Availability: Android and iOS
Price: Free

With over 500 yoga poses, more than 100 yoga classes and programs in HD, and duration options ranging from 5 to 70 minutes, the Daily Yoga app is one of the most popular yoga apps in the world of fitness. The app consists of exclusively-designed meditation techniques for relaxation and rejuvenation with special plans for boot camp, weight loss, body toning, strength, relaxation, balance, flexibility, body detox, and more.

It has been voted as the best yoga app in the year 2015 and 2016 by Healthline.

2. Yoga Studio

Availability: Android and iOS
Price: $4.99 per download

A yoga app that allows you to play, create, customize, and schedule classes with HD videos, Yoga Studio comes with 65 readymade meditation and yoga classes. The app has a library of over 280 poses with in-depth advice and instructions. While the Yoga Studio app is astoundingly easy to follow for beginners, it offers an amazing experience for advanced level yogis, too. You can pause, skip, and rewind the pose, and the app even allows you to create custom HD video classes.

Yoga Studio has been recommended by The Huffington Post and The Guardian, and was voted the best yoga app for iPhone users in 2013.

3. Pocket Yoga

Availability: Android and iOS
Price: $2.99 per download

Pocket Yoga comes with over 200 beautifully demonstrated poses along with an insightful dictionary that explains the benefits and meaning of each pose. The app maintains a log of the ongoing session and helps track your fitness. It also doubles up as a health app that tracks heart rate, calories burnt, and your workout every time you log in. As you progress in the yoga journey from beginner to advanced, the app automatically unlocks new environments.

The app has been selected by CNN as one of the 10 great mobile health apps, and has been featured by Apple in “Get in Shape,” “Let’s Get Moving,” “10 Essentials,” and “New and Noteworthy.”

4. Simply Yoga

Availability: Android and iOS
Price: Free

Just three years after the groundbreaking release of the free-for-all Practo health app, Simply Yoga was launched in 2012 as an app that offers the best yoga practices for both Android and iOS users—for free. Since then, the popularity of this free, comprehensive yoga app has been steadily increasing. Simply Yoga comes with pre-set 20-, 40-, and 60-minute workout regimens. The app allows you to create a custom routine for all workout poses. It also integrates other health apps to help track your fitness level.

The app also comes with special audio instructions for the entire routine.

5. Yoga.com

Availability: Android and iOS
Price: Free for Android and $3.99 per download for iOS

The ideal companion for curious beginners and seasoned yogis alike, Yoga.com comes with over 45 specialized yoga programs containing audio and video guides. It helps yogis concentrate on specific goals such as stretching, relaxation, backache recovery, and more. With a library of more than 300 yoga poses, 3-D muscle images for a pose, HD video demonstrations in six different languages, and customization capabilities, the Yoga.com app can be a great companion on your yogic journey.

The app allows access to the photo community of Yoga.com app users across the world.

6. Down Dog

Availability: Android and iOS
Price: Free for Android and $3.99 per download for iOS

Down Dog yoga app offers you a studio-like experience in the comfort of your home. To ensure users never run out of content, the app creates an all new Vinayasa flow with complementary music every time a yogi uses it. The yoga sequences are constantly challenging users to enhance their ability and upgrade their level.

While the basic app is free for all, users may have to pay a monthly fee depending on their country usage policy to upgrade the membership and access new features.

Irrespective of whether we are beginners in the world of yoga or seasoned yogis, these apps can help all of us incorporate the benefits of yoga in our daily lives without disrupting our schedules too much.

Yoga apps have freed me from the hassle of traveling all the way to yoga studios. I no longer have to worry about managing my time in a certain way to make room for yoga, and I’m saving money by not maintaining expensive memberships with all of these amazing apps right in my pocket.

We can all give ourselves permission to make yoga an integral part of our lifestyles.

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Author: Swati Kapoor 
Image: Yoga Workshop/Vimeo 
Editor: Callie Rushton