"If you had asked me a year ago whether I would be willing to tailor my self-care routine to the stars, I would have laughed in your face. I’ve always been on the skeptical side when it comes to astrology. I knew my big three, but thought of astrology as more of a personality test than something related to my everyday life. So when I stumbled upon Soulloop, an app that promised to make me feel more in tune with my own self-care routine by using astrology, I wasn’t totally bought in. How could the fact that I’m a Scorpio rising have anything to do with my sleep, journaling, and stress levels?
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As it turns out, a lot. After 30 days of trying Soulloop, I can honestly say that I feel more in tune with myself than I have in months. The app’s features prompted me to reflect, motivated me to take care of myself, and were surprisingly accurate when it came to predicting my moods and emotions based on my birth chart. Read on for my full review of the app that convinced me to start journaling according to the stars.
“This is an astrology app that was built for the skeptics—and I loved it.”
What is Soulloop?
Soulloop is like if your favorite meditation app and horoscope app had a baby. It combines astrological insights and birth chart readings with self-care staples (such as meditation, journaling, and sleep tracking). The purpose of the app is to help users learn more about themselves in relation to the rest of the world through astrology. It’s about repeatedly checking in with both your mood and the stars.
According to app founder Priscila Lima de Charbonniéres, Soulloop combines aspects of astrology, psychology, yoga, and other self-awareness techniques. Lima de Charbonniéres practiced one-on-one astrological consultations for 20 years before starting Soulloop as a way to help people be more in touch with themselves throughout their self-care journey. To her, Soulloop is less about a self-care or self-awareness destination and more about learning along the way.
“Paying attention to daily transits does not determine your journey, but it does provide information to make wiser decisions, aligned with the energy of the moment,” Lima de Charbonniéres told me. “It’s like looking at the ocean and deciding whether it’s worth it to swim, surf, dive, or just sit on the sand and wait.” Seeing daily recommendations for self-reflections based on your astrology allows you to be more in touch with how you’re feeling on any given day. Soulloop is not telling you to do or not do anything based on the stars. Instead, it’s guiding your everyday thought processes alongside your birth chart.
How Soulloop can help you tackle self-care
It can give you a grasp of your astrological birth chart.
When you first download Soulloop, you’ll be prompted to enter your birth date, time, and location. You will then be given a tour of your own birth chart, with explanations of each aspect of your chart, from your different signs to the meaning of each of the zodiac houses. This feature of the app will be particularly useful if you’ve never had a birth chart reading done. When you tap on any given house in the chart, it will take you to a paragraph-long explanation of that house and what it means for you. Since I taught myself how to read my birth chart earlier this year, I didn’t find this particular feature to be anything earth-shattering, but for an astrology newbie, this would be mind-blowing.
It can provide you with reflections based on your current transits.
For those who are unfamiliar, zodiac transits refer to how the stars at this current moment in time relate to the way the stars were on the day you were born (AKA your birth chart). “When we talk about transits, we are referring to the relationship of each planet in the sky at the present moment in relation to their positions at the time of birth,” Lima de Charbonniéres said. Soulloop makes this clear with a daily transit explanation that pops up immediately as soon as you open the app. Under the “Home” tab, there is a section that says “Daily Transit,” with a short, one-sentence explanation of how the stars might be impacting your mood. However, when you navigate to “Your Transits,” you can see several paragraphs diving into each of your current transits.
But why are transits even useful to know in the first place, especially as it relates to self-care? According to Lima de Charbonniéres, it’s all about tapping into the energy of the world around us while simultaneously being in touch with ourselves. “By understanding that you have an energy compatible with the solar system’s energy at your birth, we realize that you interact differently with the energy of the now,” she said. This may sound a little woo-woo to the zodiac skeptics out there, but at its core, learning about your transits on a day-to-day basis can just be an excellent way to quell your anxiety about why you’re feeling amazing or off or weird or silly or reflective on any given day. It reminds you that because everything is always changing, it’s OK if your moods are, too.
It can help you track your mood, dreams, stress, and sleep.
The other major feature of the Soulloop app is the “Journal” tab, which provides spaces to log your mood, dreams, stress, and sleep. This tab will also tell you specific astrological features for the day. For example, on the day of my writing this article, it’s a new moon in Taurus—Soullop prompts me to “start something new” today, and notes that it’s a “favorable haircut day.” This is the aspect of the app that will appeal to those who are looking for more of a self-care companion than an astrology app. You get to choose when you input your mood tracker or add a dream log, and the app will provide suggestions (but not hard-and-fast rules) for how to adjust your day accordingly.
How I used Soulloop
I used the app for self-reflection and journaling.
Though, I was impressed with all of Soulloop’s features, the one that I found myself turning to the most was by far the daily transit blurbs. Throughout the 30 days that I used the app, the daily transit interpretations kept me company through my own emotional ups and downs. I used these transits more or less as journal prompts. Each morning, when I woke up and checked the app, I would either write a journal entry or record a short voice memo based on the insights from the app. I chose to reflect in my own journal instead of in-app, but the mood tracker in-app would have served the same purpose!
In the past, I’ve struggled with the vague, often absurd language used in daily astrology apps, which has the overall impact of a disinterested friend listening to my problems and telling me, “It is what it is.” I didn’t feel any of that with Soulloop. The daily transit guides were super comprehensive. They forced me to take a second to reflect on my intentions at the beginning of the day. One of my favorites, from Saturday, May 4, said, “Your greatest opportunity for growth at this time is to rise above other’s opinions and free yourself to enjoy the small pleasures in life.” The journal session after that one was super satisfying.
I used it to improve my sleep.
Beyond using the daily transit check-in as a prompt for journaling and reflecting, I also loved the in-app sleep soundtracks located under the “journal” section of the app. I am one of those people who majorly struggles with falling asleep at night. I’ve used other random sleep soundtracks before to help me doze off, but with the Soulloop meditations, I appreciated having a personalized selection to return to each night. Never in my life had I considered adjusting my sleep routine based on astrology, but when you think about it… it does kinda make sense! Astrology is about the stars, after all. The sleep soundtracks in the app helped me fall asleep faster, which was a huge win for my overall self-care.
Final thoughts: Is Soulloop worth it?
Of course, there’s an element of confirmation bias in astrological predictions, which is why I don’t think that the fact that I’m feeling better has to do with the stars. Instead, I think it’s because Soulloop taught me how to use astrology. Rather than telling me outright what to do with my life based on my birth chart and transits like a horoscope, the app guided me through reflections that allowed me to come to those decisions on my own. If you’ve found yourself frustrated with other astrology apps in the past, I promise that Soulloop is different. It’s about becoming more in tune with yourself and the world around you, not about blindly following instructions just because of the stars. This is an astrology app that was built for the skeptics—and I loved it.