'GPS For The Soul': A Free App To Fight Stress

A big draw at the ginormous Consumer Electronics Show now going on in Las Vegas is the newest devices and clever apps to help make our lives  healthier and less stressful.

Finding ways to de-stress is also the personal goal of Huffington Post editor-in-chief Arianna Huffington, 61, who four years ago had a Hillary Clinton-like scare when she fainted at work from exhaustion, striking her head on her desk and badly injuring her face. It was a brutal reminder of how stress and exhaustion can sabotage your health, she told AARP Tech Beat in this video.

Stress, she told us, affects everyone, whether you're a hyper-successful executive or you're unemployed and trying to make ends meet. It wreaks havoc not only on our physical health, but also on our relationships with family and friends.

So at this year's electronics show, Huffington unveiled her "GPS for the Soul," a new, free downloadable app to help people relax and stay healthy. It measures heart rate and heart rate variability -- which can signal rising stress levels -- and provides a personalized guide that offers calming music, poetry, breathing exercises, stress-reduction guides and pictures of loved ones.

Huffington also wrote about the app on her HuffPost website and you can download it here for free.

Photo:  bottled_void /flickr