After Making Your Heart Beat Faster, Lincoln Wants to Help You Find Peace with the Calm App

Lincoln Calm App
The Lincoln Aviator commercial featuring Matthew McConaughey elicits a sense of serenity – something we need right now.

I need this, now more than ever.

Spending time with Matthew McConaughey or in a vehicle with 494 horsepower will make your heart race.

But at some point we all need to calm down, and Lincoln wants to help. So, every Lincoln owner will get a year of membership to the leading meditation app, Calm. Owners can open their Lincoln Way app to find an invitation (and if you’re already a Calm app member, your next year is free). And, the best part is, owners of 2000 model year and newer Lincolns can take advantage of the offer.

Related: 2020 Lincoln Aviator Review: The Innovative, Thoughtful Luxury 3-Row SUV That Considers How You Live 

Lincoln Calm App
The Calm site offers a free one week trial

Is There A Better Time for Calm?

The pandemic has been tough on us, that’s for certain. Even celebrities and those who can afford to insulate themselves from the stresses of the era still need to find ways to maintain normalcy and not let things undermine their mental health.

“We need a semblance of structure, exercise, a drive to nowhere,” said actor and Lincoln ambassador and owner Matthew McConaughey. In a chat with Lincoln’s chief of North America, Michael Sprague, Tamara Levitt head of mindfulness at Calm, neuroscientist and mindfulness expert Nkechi Njaka and Elise Loehnen, chief content officer of the popular lifestyle site Goop, they discussed ways to destress. “Music has been important; family time, spending more time the kitchen,” McConaughey said. “Create rituals where you can.”

Related: Introducing the 2020 Lincoln Corsair: Quietly, Powerful and Dressed to Impress

Creating Calm: Where to Start

“The best place to start is with yourself,” Elise Loehnen said about finding calm and sanctuary in chaotic times. Tamara Levitt agreed. “We can bring our practice [of meditation] into our lives in any capacity. Driving is a great way to test out, to deal with anxiety, anger or frustration on the road.” When you can “teach people they can lean into their breath to calm at any moment,” you can teach people how to reduce their stress and frustration. “When we slow down our breath it calms us down,” she said.

Lincoln has created an environment of sanctuary inside its cars and SUVs with things like symphonic chimes in stead of warning beeps, luxurious details and Revel sound systems that surround and envelop you with music. But to create a more relaxed drive, the company wants to take the idea further by providing even more tools to help owners truly relax and enjoy the ride.

That’s because “We are seeing people take a look at the environments around them. They don’t want to take a taxi or subway because they can’t control that environment,” Michael Sprague said. “Luxury clients want things on their own terms.” So, the company is building on a program that started last year when they offered a Calm membership to select owners. A survey of those owners found that 97% said they found the Calm experience to be a positive one, so Lincoln decided to roll it out to all owners, new and existing.

And, if owners want to add more calm to their lives, they can redeem Lincoln Access Rewards points to receive a Calm gravity blanket, sleep mask or sleep mist to truly indulge in the Calm experience.

Related: Cas Haley is Winning Life, Music and a Thanks to Lincoln’s Chart Your Course Competition, a New Corsair

A Girls Guide To Cars | After Making Your Heart Beat Faster, Lincoln Wants To Help You Find Peace With The Calm App - Screen Shot 2020 08 12 At 3.06.05 Pm
(Clockwise from top left) Elise Loehnen, Michael Sprague, Matthew McConaughey, Tamara Levitt and Nkechi Njaka chat about mindfulness.

Keeping the Calm While Moving On

Finding calm in meditation or under a gravity blanket is great, but eventually the real world seeps back in. And that’s when maintaining calm can be a challenge, especially if you have kids, dogs and a busy life. As we asked Matthew how he finds sanctuary in the one place where things can get frenetic: In the car on a road trip with his family.

“Our family enjoys road trips. I grew up taking them and my kids have too, so for us it’s just about the open road, good music and the adventure, and not really about making each individual happy,” he told us. “Often the most simple trip can bring the most memories and we try to make those often no matter where we go in our car. I would say we are a family that loves music when we drive, so I think that’s a great way to make sure the road trip has harmony.”

And if spending a day on the road with carful of kids makes raises your blood pressure, plug in Calm for everyone and wait for the bliss of snoring babies.

Join A Girls Guide to Cars and Lincoln on September 22nd for a virtual day of creating sanctuary as we host speakers, ideas and tips at The New Now:  Live Your Best Life. Registration is free and open to all, and the first 200 attendees to join the full event will receive a special gift in the mail from Lincoln and A Girls Guide to Cars. Register here: bit.ly/driveyourbestlife and join the fun on social media by following these hashtags: #DriveyourBestlife #LincolnSantuary

Scotty Reiss
Scotty Reiss

Journalist, entrepreneur and mom. Expertise includes new cars, family cars, 3-row SUVs, child passenger car seats and automotive careers and culture. A World Car Awards juror and member of the steering committee, Scotty likes to say the automotive business found her, rather than her finding it. But recognizing the opportunity to give voice to powerful female consumers and create a voice to match their spending power, her mission became to empower women as car buyers and owners. A career-long journalist, she has written for the New York Times, Town & Country, Adweek and co-authored the book Stew Leonard, My Story, a biography of the founder of the iconic grocery company Stew Leonard’s. Her love of cars started when her father insisted she learn to change the oil in her MG Midget, but now it mostly plays out in the many road trips taken with her family.

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