Calm

Breathe

Cyclic sigh (the default): breathe in through your nose, take a short second breath in to fill your lungs, then breathe out slowly and fully through your mouth (or nose). The breath out is the longest part.

In a remote randomized trial, people did 5 minutes a day for a month. Breathwork, especially the cyclic sigh, improved mood and lowered breathing rate more than mindfulness meditation did. It found no significant change in resting heart rate or heart-rate variability.¹

Box: in, hold, out, hold, all the same length. The trial tested it too; the 4-second default is this tool's choice. Long exhale (in 4 s, out 6 s) is also this tool's choice, after the trial's finding that the exhale-focused pattern did best. Slower and Faster stretch or shorten every phase.

Feel dizzy or short of breath? Stop and breathe normally.

Ride an urge

Rate the urge if you like, then ride a 3, 5 or 10 minute wave with slow breathing. Let it rise and fall without acting on it. The before and after numbers are for your own notes; the urge may or may not drop.

Brief urge-surfing instructions did not lower urge strength in a trial with student smokers, but they smoked fewer cigarettes over the next week.³ Mindfulness-based relapse prevention, which teaches this skill, led to fewer drug-use days and less heavy drinking at 12 months than standard relapse prevention or usual care.² The wave lengths are this tool's choice. Your last 30 rides are kept.

Wind down

1. Go to bed only when you are sleepy.
2. If you can't sleep, get up, go somewhere dim and quiet, and come back to bed when you are sleepy.
3. Use the bed for sleep and sex only: no screens, reading or TV in bed.
4. Get up at the same time every day, whatever the night was like.
5. Skip daytime naps.

These are the stimulus-control instructions from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine's guideline. It strongly recommends cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) as the first treatment for chronic insomnia, and stimulus control on its own as a conditional recommendation.⁴ Trouble sleeping 3 or more nights a week for 3 months or more is chronic insomnia; see a clinician.⁵ In Sleep, Start runs the long exhale for 5 minutes on a dimmed screen.

Pacing

Tone (off unless you turn it on) is a soft hum that rises as you breathe in and falls as you breathe out. Vibrate buzzes once for each breath in and twice for each breath out, where the phone supports it. The screen stays on during a session where the browser allows it. Leaving the page pauses the session.

Sources

1. Balban MY et al. Brief structured respiration practices enhance mood and reduce physiological arousal. Cell Rep Med. 2023;4(1):100895.
2. Bowen S et al. Relative efficacy of mindfulness-based relapse prevention, standard relapse prevention, and treatment as usual for substance use disorders. JAMA Psychiatry. 2014;71(5):547–556.
3. Bowen S, Marlatt A. Surfing the urge: brief mindfulness-based intervention for college student smokers. Psychol Addict Behav. 2009;23(4):666–671.
4. Edinger JD et al. Behavioral and psychological treatments for chronic insomnia disorder in adults: an AASM clinical practice guideline. J Clin Sleep Med. 2021;17(2):255–262.
5. AASM Sleep Education. Insomnia.