Long sessions
Sessions of up to twenty minutes depending on the technique: how long on which technique, when a long length is suggested, the interval chime, pauses and a report split into parts.
5 min read
A short session fits into the day. Sometimes, though, you want to sit down and breathe for longer. In Soluklan the length limit depends on the technique, and the longest is twenty minutes.
How many minutes at most on each technique
On calm, slow techniques you can sit for longer, on fast or intense ones for less:
- 20 minutes: Coherent Breathing
- 15 minutes: Deep and Slow, Extended Exhale, Ocean Breath, Pursed Lip, Alternate Nostril
- 10 minutes: Box Breathing, Triangle Breathing, Humming Bee, Cooling Breath, Left Nostril Breath; and, because it has a program, Physiological Sigh
- 5 minutes: 4-7-8, Right Nostril Breath
- 1 minute: Energizing Breath
In Kapalabhati you choose rounds instead of a length, five rounds at most.
Beyond ten minutes
On techniques where you can choose more than ten minutes, there is a separate zone at the end of the length slider: the long-session zone. Its colour is a little warmer than the rest of the track. Normally it's short; when you drag the slider into it, it widens and you can fine-tune. As you cross the ten-minute line in either direction, the slider resists a little and gives a light haptic, so you don't slip into a long session by accident.
The zone can always be chosen; it isn't locked. But the app only suggests more than ten minutes once you start finishing long sessions on that technique with a good rhythm: a few sessions on that technique in the last two weeks, measured with the microphone, lasting at least ten minutes and with a good score. Until then the suggested range stops at ten minutes. We explained how the suggestion is put together in the how suggestions work article.
While the slider is in the long zone, a short note underneath says that a long session uses more battery.
Quick start begins a session of ten minutes at most. If you want a longer session, you choose the length yourself in the picker.
The interval chime
So you can tell the time in a long session without looking at a clock, an interval chime plays about every five minutes: at the start of the round closest to the fifth, tenth and fifteenth minute, in place of that round's inhale sound. A light haptic comes with it.
In a session shorter than seven and a half minutes there is no interval chime. It also doesn't play if the session has only a few seconds left. The interval chime is the own sound of the sound theme you chose. It has no switch of its own: if breathing sounds are off in Settings, the sound doesn't come, and if session haptics are off, the haptic doesn't either. On Apple Watch it plays at the same moments.
The room is measured throughout the session
The room is measured once at the start of the session, but in twenty minutes a room can change: someone starts talking, the air conditioning switches off. So the measurement is refreshed once a minute throughout the session, and the threshold adjusts to the room's new sound. If the room changed noticeably, a line saying so appears in the report's technical values at the advanced level. What's behind this is in the measuring the thresholds article.
Pauses and counting
Taking a break in a long session is normal. One pause is allowed in a session of ten minutes or more, two at fifteen minutes or more, and three at twenty minutes: the report shows no pause note for these.
For a session to count towards your streak, you need to do part of it. In a session longer than six minutes, that part is no more than three minutes: even if you end a twenty-minute session after three minutes, it counts for that day.
The report is split into parts
In sessions longer than two minutes, the See details part of the report has Session parts. The session is split into at most five parts, and each part is scored separately. If there's a clear difference between parts, a sentence or two says so: the rhythm drifted towards the end, the exhales got shorter, and so on. This is where you see what changed where in a long session. This part is there at the standard and advanced levels, not at the simple level. The details are in the reading the report and how scoring works articles.
Battery
A long session uses more battery. If the battery runs low or the device warms up, the app switches to battery saving on its own. Hearing your breath, the score, sound and haptics carry on unchanged. What changes and what you can do to save battery are in the battery saving article.