Is Loam meditation app free?

Yes. Loam is free to download and free to start. Core tools like breathing exercises, journaling, daily check-ins, and streak tracking are always available at no cost. Premium unlocks the full guided session library, unlimited custom Moments, and advanced features.

What makes Loam different from Calm or Headspace?

Loam composes every session around how you feel right now — the voice, the pace, and the therapeutic approach all adapt in real time. Instead of a catalog of pre-recorded tracks, Loam generates a new meditation tailored to your current emotional state, calibrated to your experience level, and grounded in peer-reviewed research. It also ships with Sage, a wellness coach trained in Motivational Interviewing, and 15 breathing exercises with haptic-synced animations.

Is Loam safe to use alongside therapy or medication?

Yes. Loam is designed with clear clinical guardrails. Sessions never claim to diagnose or treat mental illness, never tell you to stop therapy or medication, and always defer to professional care for symptoms that warrant it. Content is constrained to evidence-based techniques (ACT, self-compassion, MBSR, somatic experiencing, CBT-I) and a carefully reviewed voice and pacing library. Meditation is a complement to care, not a replacement. If you're in crisis, please contact a local crisis line or your care provider.

What research is Loam based on?

Every therapeutic technique in Loam cites primary peer-reviewed research. Loam's breathing library is grounded in work by Balban et al. (Stanford, 2023), Zaccaro et al. (2018), and Lehrer & Gevirtz (2014). The Moment's therapeutic architecture draws on polyvagal theory (Porges), ACT (Hayes), self-compassion (Neff), MBSR (Kabat-Zinn), and somatic experiencing (Levine). A full citation library is available at /research.

Who are the voices in Loam?

Loam uses 13 research-selected voices. Each voice is chosen for the emotional state it handles best, based on polyvagal theory, ASMR research, and voice psychology — low resonant voices for grounding, warm bright voices for light moods, measured voices for heavy ones. Loam automatically picks the voice the research says will work for your current state, or you can override manually.

Does Loam work offline?

Core tools work offline, including downloaded meditations, breathing exercises, and the journal. The Moment — Loam's custom meditation composer — requires an internet connection at the moment of generation, because the session is composed on the fly. Once generated, every Moment is saved to your library and can be replayed offline without using any credits.

Does Loam have sleep stories?

Yes. Loam includes narrated sleep stories, sleep soundscapes, and wind-down rituals. The sleep content uses anti-storytelling techniques — structured to prevent the mind from latching on to narrative — based on CBT-I stimulus control research (Bootzin & Epstein, 2011).

What breathing exercises does Loam offer?

Loam offers 15 breathing techniques across beginner, intermediate, and advanced tiers, including Box Breathing (4-4-4-4), 4-7-8 Relaxation, the Physiological Sigh, Coherent (Resonance) Breathing at 5.5-5.5, Alternate Nostril, Ujjayi, Kapalbhati, and the Wim Hof method. Every technique links to the peer-reviewed research that validates it, so you can read the study if you want to.

Will I lose my streak if I miss a day?

No. Loam's streak system is explicitly wellness-first: streaks pause, they don't break. You get two streak freezes, you can mark rest days, and the app never shames you for missing a session. Anxious users are especially vulnerable to streak mechanics turning self-care into another source of pressure — Loam is designed to avoid that failure mode.

EDITORIAL

Every claim cited · Every technique peer-reviewed

How Loam decides what to publish.

Name: Loam
Availability: InStock
Author: Loam

Most wellness content cannot show its work. This page is what we hold ourselves to — and where the bright lines are. If you ever read a Loam page that violates one of these rules, please email us. We will fix it.

Updated April 2026·6 min read

By Loam EditorialUpdated April 2026

What every page must do

Every long-form page on the Loam site must meet four criteria before it goes live:

Cite primary sources. When we make a research claim, we link to the actual study — peer-reviewed journal, preprint, or authoritative primary source — not to a blog post that summarises it. Our canonical citation list lives at /research.
State its honest limitations. If the evidence base for a technique is thin, the page says so. We do not launder weak evidence into confident claims.
Name an author. Every page is published with a byline pointing to a real person or to Loam Editorial. Anonymous content does not ship.
Pass a clinician check when relevant. See the section below on YMYL topics.

What we do not do

We do not invent credentials. If a page doesn't carry a clinician reviewer's name, that means no clinician reviewed it — not that we've hidden one.
We do not fake reviews or ratings. Where we cite app-store ratings, they are real and current. We do not emit aggregateRating structured data unless we have verifiable third-party reviews to back it.
We do not publish AI-generated copy without a human author. AI tools assist research, drafting, and editing. The final words are written and reviewed by a human.
We do not run affiliate links to competitors. Comparison pages exist because we believe Loam serves a specific user better — they are not monetised on competitor referrals.

The YMYL line

Google calls health and finance content “Your Money or Your Life” (YMYL) — content where bad information can do real harm. We treat the line strictly:

General wellness pages (techniques, voices, soundscapes, breathing) are written by Loam Editorial with primary-source citations and an organization byline.
Clinical-adjacent pages (anxiety, sleep, grief, ADHD, teens) carry an explicit medical disclaimer and either name a licensed clinician reviewer or state clearly that no clinician has reviewed the page.
Pages we will not write at all include: specific medication dosing or interactions, advice for active crisis (we point to professional resources), advice for children's mental health below age 13, content claiming to treat or cure diagnosed conditions.

Update cadence

Every long-form page carries a visible “Updated” date. We re-review pages on a 6–12 month cycle and bump the date when the substance changes. Cosmetic edits don't bump the date — if you see a fresh date, the content has been re-checked against current research.

How to flag an error

If you spot a citation that doesn't support the claim, a claim that the research has moved on from, or a missing safety caveat — please email us at the address on the about page. Real errors get real fixes, quickly.

An example of our standard disclaimer

On any clinical-adjacent page, you will see something like the callout below. This is the model — every variant says the same three things: not medical advice, talk to a clinician, meditation is adjunct not replacement.

This is not medical advice

Loam's content is written for general wellness, not clinical care. If you are managing a diagnosed mental-health condition, a sleep disorder, or taking medication — please talk to your clinician before changing your practice. Meditation is a useful adjunct to treatment, not a replacement. Read our editorial methodology for how we review clinical topics.

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