To help families and young children cope with higher levels of stress and anxiety caused by the health crisis, a Scottsdale-based company launched Ninja Focus, a meditation, and mindfulness solution to help young kids understand their emotions as they navigate through the early stages of life and drive better habits that could have lifelong restorative effects.

Ninja Focus is a digital mindfulness platform with short meditation tracks, videos, and interactive games specially designed for children between the ages of 3 – 8. Families can access Ninja Focus content using the mobile app to help children be more focused, compassionate, and get better sleep using calming breathing techniques and healthy eating habits.

To encourage families to explore this new approach to parenting, the founders of Ninja Focus made their content available for free for 90-days on both the iOS App Store and Google Play Store.

"Introducing kids to mindfulness early in life has an incredible value in their overall well-being and builds their capacity for compassion and resilience towards anxiety, bullying, depression, and stress. “said Kamala Alcantara, Co-Founder and Chief Content Officer for Ninja Focus. Alcantara is a former K-8 educator and certified kids yoga instructor who received her Master of Education in Human Development & Psychology from Harvard University.

Alcantara also provides a calming voice on many of the age-appropriate videos that use Ninja bunny characters to guide children through simple techniques for breathing exercises, yoga, mindfulness, and meditation. The app also offers soothing music engineered with bi-neutral beats to reduce stress, anxiety, and inspire sleep and relaxation.

“As a parent, I know every mother and father wants their children to grow up empowered, confident, and comfortable with who they are,” said Praveen Mamnani, Co-Founder of Ninja Focus. “We created Ninja Focus to help kids find happiness through meditation and mindfulness using a fun, tech-driven solution with healthy screen time that is beneficial to the entire family.”

Ninja Focus first launched as a Beta test in the Fall of 2019 but accelerated its rollout to help parents coping with stay-at-home orders in response to the coronavirus. Since the public launch in January 2020, Ninja Focus has already surged over 20,000 downloads and has been receiving raving reviews from parents from across the country.

“It normally takes her about 1-2 hours to get to sleep, but [the sleep] meditation puts her to sleep in under 5 minutes,” said a parent, Brittany Smith.

Another parent on the Ninja Focus website says her 3-year-old loves the app and effortlessly navigates it on her own. Loves the idea of rewards like trophies as it motivates her child to listen to each section completely and learn the tools of mindfulness, meditation, and yoga.

For more information about Ninja Focus, visit http://www.ninjafocus.com.

By Sharda Veeramally