Breathing exercises
Three patterns, each with a free guided timer. Pick one and start — there is no account, nothing to install, and nothing is stored.
Breathing Timer
Five seconds in, five seconds out. The simplest one there is.
Five seconds in, five seconds out, no holds. Six breaths a minute. It is sometimes called coherence breathing or resonant breathing, and it is the pattern to reach for when you do not want to think about which pattern to reach for.
Box Breathing Timer
Four seconds in, four hold, four out, four hold. Follow the orb.
Box breathing splits the breath into four equal parts: inhale, hold, exhale, hold. Each one lasts the same number of seconds, which is where the name comes from — trace the four sides of a square and you have the pattern.
4-7-8 Breathing Timer
In for four, hold for seven, out for eight.
Inhale through the nose for four seconds, hold for seven, then exhale through the mouth for eight. One round takes nineteen seconds. There is no pause at the bottom — the next inhale follows the exhale directly.
Which one should you use?
If you are not sure, start with the 5-5 timer. It has no holds, there is nothing to strain against, and it does most of what the other two do.
Reach for box breathing when you need to be steady and alert — before a difficult conversation, or between two demanding pieces of work. Its four equal phases settle you without making you drowsy.
Reach for 4-7-8 when you want to come down: end of the day, trouble sleeping, or anxiety that has stopped being useful. Its long exhale is a downshift, which makes it a poor choice right before you need to concentrate.
A note on doing this regularly
Every one of these works. The problem is never the technique — it is that on the days you most need to breathe properly, you are least likely to remember to. Deep in a build, grinding through a review, three meetings back to back: that is exactly when the breath goes shallow and exactly when opening a breathing timer does not occur to you.
A few slow breaths a handful of times a day beats one long session a week, and the difference between the two is entirely a matter of being reminded.