Find Your Own Pace
First the breathing pace that feels most comfortable to you is found, then you do Coherent Breathing at that pace for weeks. In the end you hold your pace without the guide.
5 min read
Find Your Own Pace is a slow breathing program that lasts six or ten weeks. In the first week the breathing pace that feels most comfortable to you is found, and on the other days you do Coherent Breathing at that pace. Towards the end of the program you try to hold your pace without the guide.
Setup
- Length: six or ten weeks. Ten is suggested.
- Sessions per day: one or two. Two is suggested. One session completes the day, and the second is extra.
- Session length: twenty minutes is suggested. If you want shorter sessions, bring it down with the slider.
Pace-finding days
On a few days in the first week and on one day halfway through the program, the pace finder opens before the session. You try a few paces one after another, and the app measures which one you hold most comfortably. The pace it finds becomes the pace of the sessions that follow. In the six-week program the measurements after the first one are shorter: only your current pace and the ones closest to it are tried.
If you have an Apple Watch and the shared session is on, the measurement also looks at how your heart moves with your breath. The pace measurement is done on the phone, and that day a short note on the watch says so.
The measurement relies on hearing your breath, so pick a quiet place.
The other days
Coherent Breathing at your own pace, with the exhale a little longer than the inhale. Once the session ends, the day is done. The second session is up to you.
In the Advanced interface, after a shared session with your watch, the result screen shows how much on average your heart swung with your breath.
The last weeks: the unguided part
In the last weeks the end of the session is unguided: the circle steps back, sound and vibration stop, and you carry the rhythm. The unguided part gets a little longer from week to week. The first time you meet it, a short page before the session explains what will happen.
On the last day half of the session is unguided. The report tells you whether you held your pace in that part, or sped up or slowed down a little.
When it finishes
The finishing screen shows the pace measured at the start and at the end, and how you held your pace without the guide on the last day.
Who it suits
People who know Coherent Breathing and want a longer, regular practice. The sessions are long, so you need a calm time when no one will disturb you.
If you feel dizzy with the slow breathing, let go of the pace a little and take a few ordinary breaths.
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
The program follows the method Lehrer, Vaschillo and Vaschillo described in Applied Psychophysiology and Biofeedback in 2000: try several slow paces one after another to find the one at which a person's breath and heart rhythm swing together most closely, then practise breathing at that pace regularly for weeks. The program in the app is an adapted version of this method.
In 2017 Goessl, Curtiss and Hofmann brought together the studies of this kind of regular training in Psychological Medicine and looked at the stress and anxiety measures participants reported themselves.