Unlocking techniques
What opens the locks, what a locked card tells you, and how to start the session you need right away.
5 min read
Some cards in the technique list have a padlock on them. These are techniques not unlocked yet: the app follows a path from easy to hard.
Tap a locked card
Tapping it opens a page showing what is needed. At the very top, the technique's icon sits inside a ring. The ring shows how far you have come in total towards that lock.
Under it is why the technique is still locked, that is, why this order. For 4-7-8, for instance: without experience of holds and long exhales, a seven-second hold can make you dizzy.
Then come the requirements, one by one: how many sessions of which technique are needed, and how many you have done. Each session is one segment: the "2 Extended Exhale" requirement has two segments, and each Extended Exhale session you do fills one.
At the very bottom there is a shortcut: Start with … now. Tap it and the page closes, and the technique of the first requirement you haven't completed comes up selected in the list. Choose your length and you can start.
What counts
Only scored sessions count: sessions without the microphone don't add to lock progress. Sessions cut very short don't count either.
One session can count towards several locks at once. A requirement like "2 Coherent / Deep and Slow / Triangle" is satisfied by any of them.
What sets the number of sessions
Your experience level. If you said "I know some techniques" in the intake, the basic techniques are open from the start and the advanced ones open with half as many sessions. If you said "I'm experienced", most of the locks aren't there at all.
Your introductory exercise. The short exercise on the first day measures your rhythm, your exhales and your holds separately. Each technique looks at what it needs: if you kept the rhythm easily, rhythm-based techniques open with fewer sessions, and if your exhales were short, techniques that ask for long exhales open a little later. Get full marks in the exercise and one technique opens straight away. If the microphone didn’t hear your breath, nothing changes.
Your goal. Whatever you came for, that goal's technique starts unlocked. Say sleep and 4-7-8 is open; say focus and it's Box; say energy and it's the Energizing Breath.
If your health notes or your age make that technique unsuitable, a different technique opens for the same goal.
When a lock opens
When a new technique opens, a short notice slides across the top of the home screen. Tap it and you go straight to that technique.
Some screens have locks too: the personal summary and the weekly summaries open after a certain point. They announce themselves the same way. Programs are locked by their technique: if a program’s technique isn’t unlocked yet, that program’s card on the Programs screen shows as locked, and tapping it shows what you need.
If you don't want locks at all
The locks exist to order the learning, not to punish. But if you came in already knowing the practice, marking your experience level honestly in the intake is the practical answer: choose "I'm experienced" and almost everything starts open.
You can change it later too: Profile → Settings → Experience.