How Breath works: the guide, the sounds and your journal

Picking a breathing

In "Breathe" you pick one of the 49 built-in breathings or one you've made. Some are gentle places to start, like 4-6 breathing, and others have pauses, like Box breathing 4-4-4-4.

Intense breathings, meaning the fast ones and the ones with long holds, show a safety notice first. Read it every time. They're done sitting or lying down, never in water or while driving, and some people should check with a professional beforehand.

If you don't know which to choose, stay with one for a week. Switching every day makes it hard to tell which one suits you.

The guide you see

The main guide is a sun. It rises as you breathe in and sinks as you breathe out. There are no numbers to watch: you follow the movement with your breath.

If you'd like something else, there are three more guides:

• Rings, if you prefer a simple shape.
• The breathing's curve, each pattern's own drawing, with its climbs, plateaus and descents.
• Words and numbers only, which names the phase and counts the seconds.

Length and pace

You can set the session in minutes or use the cycles each breathing suggests. 4-7-8 breathing, for example, suggests four cycles. Coherent breathing 5-5 suggests five minutes.

You can also adjust the pace, from 50% to 200%. The pattern keeps its proportions and each count changes length. That's handy when a count feels long or short for you. Keep in mind that the site's pages describe each breathing with its original seconds.

For a sense of scale: in a 2023 trial with 108 adults, the daily practice was five minutes. That isn't a recommended dose. It's a reference point for what has been studied.

Sounds and vibration

With sound on, you can practice with your eyes closed. Everything is optional, and you can mix it as you like:

• Cue notes for each phase. A signal when you breathe in, hold and breathe out. You can choose soft notes, bowl, wood or glass.
• A background. Sea, wind, rain or a steady tone that swells and settles with the breath.
• A tick each second, if it helps you keep count.
• A voice that says each phase. It uses your device's own voice, so it sounds different on every phone or computer.
• Vibration on each phase change, on phones that support it.

During the session

The site can keep the screen on while you practice, so your phone doesn't lock halfway through an exhale. And once it has been opened, it works offline, so you can practice in airplane mode or where there's no signal.

If at any point you feel dizzy, tingly or short of breath, stop and breathe normally. The guide sets a pace. You make the call.

My breathings: the editor

This is where you build your own patterns. Simple mode has four sliders: inhale, hold, exhale and pause on empty. The curve redraws as you move them.

Advanced mode adds parts, repeats, fixed rounds, a gradual change over the cycles and the route for each count: nose, mouth, left or right nostril, pursed lips or humming.

You can share a breathing by link or QR code. The pattern travels inside the link itself, never through a server.

My practice: your journal and your data

Every session is logged with its date, the breathing, the time and the cycles. If you want, you mark from 1 to 5 how you arrive and how you feel afterward, and add a note. From that, the journal shows you totals, days in a row, the last 12 weeks and which breathings change how you feel most.

It all stays on your device. There are no accounts, no ads and no tracking. To keep a copy or move to another device, you export a `.breath` backup file, with an optional password, and import it there.

One last thing. Breath is a companion for a practice, not a medical device. It doesn't measure your body or diagnose anything. If you have a health condition, or if you get dizziness that doesn't pass, fainting or chest pain, talk to a health professional.