What your suggestions depend on
The suggested technique and the suggested length aren't fixed. Your intake answers, your past sessions, the time of day, and the places where these intersect.
7 min read
Two people opening the app don't see the same screen. Both the order of the techniques and the length range marked on the slider are built for the person. Here is what gets looked at.
The suggested length is a range, not a number
The lit band above the slider means "for this session, your range is here". The middle of the range starts from a base length and shifts with seven separate factors.
How wide the range is depends on the slider: in a technique that can go up to twenty minutes, the band is not as narrow as in one that ends at five.
The base length. It is not only the length you gave in the intake. There you can choose 1, 3, 5 or 10 minutes, or 15 minutes and more. That length is weighed together with the length of your recent sessions in that technique and the technique’s usual length. In a technique practised in long sessions, like Coherent Breathing, the usual length is longer. In one kept short, like 4-7-8, it is shorter. The more sessions you do in that technique, the more your own sessions count and the less the length you gave does.
In some techniques, though, the base length comes from the length applied in the studies — twenty-seven cycles in Left and Right Nostril Breathing, for instance. The reason: in these techniques, going below the dose isn't "doing a bit less", it is not doing the thing that was measured.
Experience. For a beginner the range shortens; for an experienced person it lengthens.
Overall and recent performance. If your recent sessions went well the range lengthens; if you struggled it shortens. Your recent sessions count for more.
Performance in the same technique. Overall performance and performance in that technique are kept apart. The same person can finish coherent comfortably and abandon 4-7-8.
Completion rate. Sessions you abandon shorten the range. A short session finished beats a long one abandoned.
Time of day. Late in the day the range shortens: a ten-minute session at midnight isn't realistic.
Streak. For someone on a running streak the range lengthens a little.
If a program is running, none of this applies: the length becomes the program's daily length and is locked.
The order of the techniques
The order of the cards isn't fixed either.
Your goal is the main determinant: calm, focus, sleep, energy or "just trying it". The time of day sits on top of that — the energizing breath moves up in the morning and down at night.
The techniques are split into tiers: first the most suggested one (the card with the "Suggested for you" badge), then the other suggested ones (with the "Suggestion" badge), then the rest. The most suggested technique always sits at the very top of the suggested ones.
A technique with a warning isn't suggested. A technique that isn't suitable for the night, or that your health notes or age note put a warning on, becomes neither "most suggested" nor "suggested". Even if your goal is energy, the Energizing Breath isn't suggested at night. These techniques stay in the picker and can be chosen, warnings included.
When goal and time of day clash. If you want energy, stimulating techniques are still suggested in the late afternoon and evening, and if you want sleep, sleep techniques are still suggested in the morning, but they move to the end of the suggested ones.
Then what you have already done today comes in. A technique you did today drops one tier: if you did the "most suggested" technique, when you open the picker again that day you see it with the "Suggestion" badge. A technique you have done often in the last two weeks moves down a little, and one you have neglected moves up a little.
The technique's difficulty against your experience, your score in it and your completion rate all feed into the order too. If you have a program running and haven't done that day's session, the program's technique goes to the top.
Where your answers change each other
The intake answers don't work one by one — they intersect.
Age × experience. The first session of a technique comes softened: in 4-7-8 the hold is four seconds instead of seven; in Kapalabhati a single slow round. Anyone who says "I'm experienced" doesn't get this, and the technique comes in full the first time. But age takes that exemption back: someone over sixty-five starts with a soft first session even if experienced.
Age × interface. Over sixty-five, the suggested interface level is Simple.
Age × goal. For someone over sixty-five who says "for energy", the technique that unlocks isn't the Energizing Breath but Right Nostril. The goal stays the same; the technique that serves it changes.
Health × goal. The same logic runs for health notes. Someone who marks a heart condition and says "for energy" doesn't get the Energizing Breath unlocked; another technique that suits their health notes opens instead.
Your experience level sets how many sessions the locks ask for, and the score of your introductory exercise raises or lowers that. So the answers you gave on the first day are still affecting which technique opens when, months later.
All of it stays with you
None of the intake answers is sent to us. Age, health notes, goal, experience — all of it stays with you and is used only to feed these calculations. If you have more than one device, it syncs to them only through your own iCloud account. You can change them in Settings whenever you like.