4-Week Box Breathing
Four weeks of box breathing, five minutes every day. Each phase gets longer as you're ready. How a day goes, who it suits and what it is based on.
4 min read
4-Week Box Breathing is a program that keeps track of you doing Box Breathing every day for four weeks. In, hold, out, hold: four sides of equal length. Five minutes a day, a short break to focus.
How a day goes
Today's program session sits at the top of the technique list. When you start it, that day's phase length and the program's length are set for you, so there's nothing to adjust.
Before the session you see a short focus sentence telling you what to pay attention to that day. The same sentence appears once more at the start of the session.
The phases get longer over time
The program starts with short phases. After a session where your inhales, exhales and holds went comfortably, each phase gets a little longer. An average session keeps the durations where they are, and after a day you found hard they get a little shorter. That way the phases don't get longer before you're ready.
In sessions without the microphone your breathing isn't measured, so the durations follow the program's own plan. Even as the phases get longer, the session stays the same length.
Special days
Once you're used to the technique, a few special days turn up along the way, from easier to harder:
- Quiet day: no sound plays, and you follow the rhythm by vibration.
- Last minute without the guide: in the last minute the circle steps back and sound and vibration stop. You carry the rhythm yourself.
- Eyes closed: after the first rounds the screen goes dark, and sound and vibration guide you.
The last day of the program also ends without the guide. The first time you meet each one, a short page before the session explains what will happen.
Who it suits
People who want to practise a technique with holds regularly. The holds can feel hard in the first days, which is why the phases start short. If you've never done a breathing exercise before, starting with 28-Day Sighing or a technique without holds may be easier.
To set up the program, Box Breathing needs to be unlocked. If it isn't yet, Unlocking techniques tells you what it takes.
If you feel dizzy during a hold, skip the hold and take a few ordinary breaths. Long holds can be uncomfortable for people with blood pressure problems.
How to set the program up, what happens when you miss a day and what you see at the end are in Setting up a program and keeping it.
What it is based on
Box breathing was one of the groups in the study Balban and colleagues published in Cell Reports Medicine in 2023: participants did box breathing for five minutes every day for a month and chose the phase length themselves, wherever it felt comfortable. The study compared the breathing groups with a mindfulness meditation group and measured participants' mood and their breathing rate at rest.
The program's length and daily dose come from this study. The phases getting longer as you get comfortable is the app's version of the study's "pick the length that feels comfortable".
- Balban et al. (2023), Cell Reports Medicine — "Brief structured respiration practices enhance mood and reduce physiological arousal". Full text