Guided Breathing

Controlled breathing is an important part of many mediative practices.  It benefits not only the physical health but also the mental because breathing rhythms naturally synchronize with thought processes.  This site allows for the timing of breath phases and to the accompaniment of soothing sounds and visual patterns.

There are three breathing modes: combined, split, and 4-way.

Combined

In combined mode, breaths will be of equal length.  Two sounds will be played: a high pitch ‘shhhh’ corresponding to an inhale, and a similar sound of lower pitch corresponding to an exhale.  Match these to your breathing.  Ideally breathe in through the nose and out through the mouth, or both inhale and exhale through the nose.

Underneath is a slider that controls the duration of inhale and exhale.  It defaults to 5.5 seconds, which is an 11 seconds breath cycle in total.  Dragging this slider can increase or decrease the duration from 2 to 15 seconds.  Pressing the left and right arrow keys on the keyboard can achieve the same.

Split mode

The Split option allows the duration to be different for inhale and exhale.  Their range can go from 0.5 to 30 seconds.  Drag the sliders to change duration.  Or use the number and arrow keys as follows.  To change Inhale, hold down the 1 key (either on the upper keyboard or number-pad) while pressing the left and right arrow keys.  To change exhale duration, do the same with the 3 key.

4-way

The 4-way option allows for control over inhale, exhale and the option of breath holding at the end of each.  The range for the inhale and exhale is the same as Split mode and the Hold durations can be 0 to 30 seconds.  Drag the sliders to change duration.  Or use the arrow keys with number keys 1,2,3,4 in a similar way to the Split mode.

During the Hold periods you will hear short "puffs" at regular intervals.  Don't breathe on these – they are timing markers to show progress of the Hold.  Each puff is played one second apart at the end of each second, excluding the last if a whole number of seconds is specified.  E.g. for a 4.0 second hold you will hear three puffs followed by the start of the next inhale or exhale.  And for 4.5 second hold you will hear four puffs, followed by a half second of silence, then the inhale or exhale.  When using the Fine adjust slider (see below) the number of puffs will be the same but their spacing will change.

The Fine adjust slider allows the durations to be changed by small amounts.  All parts of the cycle – inhale, exhale, and holds – can be increased or decreased by a factor ranging from half (0.50) to double (2.00).  This is useful for changing the total duration of 2-way and 4-way breathing while keeping the ratio between the durations the same.  It’s also useful for changing durations below 10 seconds in increments smaller than half a second.  When the breathing is playing or the sound menu is showing, it can also be adjusted by holding down the 5 key while pressing the left or right arrow keys.

The Pitch slider allows the pitch of the breathing sounds to be raised or lowered.  The breathing sounds are low frequency by default and this might not suit some.  Moving the slider to the right makes the overall frequency pitch higher.  The slider can also be controlled by holding down the 6 key while pressing the left and right arrow keys.

Moving the slider all the way to the right (past the “9” setting) will cause a “V” to appear beside it.  This is the Variety setting.  In this mode pitches are chosen at random, although high and low frequencies will still be used to distinguish between an inhale and exhale.  This makes the experience more interesting.

Stop after __ cycles appears in breathing mode and will stop the breathing after a specified number of cycles, where a cycle consists of inhale, exhale and holds.  Similar to the stop after __ minutes feature of the Timer except it checks breaths rather than elapsed minutes.  Enter a whole number or leave blank to ignore (non-numerics are considered blank).  The elapsed number of cycles will display at the right of the feature when the input field is non-blank or the Timer is running.  When the Timer is running and displaying on-screen, the cycles will appear to the right of the elapsed time.  To see the cycles without the time, pause the timer at 0:00:00.

Beside the Breathe mode selections are a number of buttons with numbers on them.  These are durations presets for recommended options:

5.5  This is the default 5.5 second inhale and exhale.  It is a good duration for resting mode.  Don’t breath too deeply otherwise you’ll need to increase the duration.

4444  This is suitable for staying calm and focused.  It consists of:
Inhale 4 seconds, Hold 4, Exhale 4, Hold 4, then repeat the cycle.

4462  A more relaxing version of the above. It consists of:
Inhale 4 seconds, Hold 4, Exhale 6, Hold 2, then repeat the cycle.

478  This refers to the ‘4-7-8 technique’ by Dr Andrew Weil as explained in this video:

Inhale to the count of 4, Hold 4, Exhale 8, then repeat the cycle (there’s no Hold after Exhale).  The exhale should be done through pursed (almost closed) lips.  This creates an internal positive pressure that widens airways.

Note that it says ‘to the count of’ rather than seconds.  The actual number of seconds is about half those numbers.  So here it has been reduced to 2, 3.5, and 4 seconds respectively to match the video.  If desired, the amounts can be increased to a longer durations (e.g. doubled to 4,7,8), just so long as their ratio stays the same.  The best way to do this is with the Fine adjust slider.

This technique is said to be good for quickly destressing and falling asleep.  The instructions say to do this at least twice a day (can be more) and for no more than 4 breath cycles per session.  Make use of the ‘stop after __ cycles’ option, which defaults to 4 in this case.  After a month this can be increased to 8 breath cycles maximum.  For convenience the 478b button will do this and increase the intervals to 4,7,8 seconds.

A more detailed explanation is in this video:

The source for the above material is Breath by James Nestor
A good interview with Mr Nestor is here
The audio can be downloaded here   (<- right-click and select “Save-Link-as”)