Breathwrk: Breathing Exercises

The app itself is exactly what I wanted to help me start doing breath work. The only issue is it constantly crashes and freezes up, forcing me to delete and reinstall the app. Super annoying. I use an iPhone and don’t have this issue with my other apps.

Didn’t get a single email or text about renewal of my subscription (trial), was charged though account was inactive the whole year, send a message to help desk and never heard back. No big deal, but I think it would be ethical to give ppl heads up.

Great app but confused about how to add or remove breaths from favorites? The heart icon is no longer at the top of the breath page.

I’ve been having a stressful month and this rlly helped me I highly recommend. I love how there’s specific breathing for almost anything. The only thing I don’t like is that a lot of it is locked

As a teacher this app would be perfect for the classroom. Many students come in the classroom stressed and worried. This would be perfect to either start the class with or as a redirection tool when the class has become distracted. How can we sell this to school districts and integrate it into the classroom? I hope the developers realize the potential this app has in changing the education system of America.

After finishing a breathing exercise the screen goes blue and I have to restart the app to use it

I am in college and in my psychology class we talk about how breathing exercises can help reduce stress. The reason breathing exercises are said to reduce stress is because they activate the body’s relaxation response. The deep breathing increases oxygen flow to the brain, which improves focus and tension. Aside from helping manage stress I've learned from my mom that using breathing exercises help reduce anxiety and help her during anxiety attacks. I remember her saying how it helps ground her or gives her something else to focus on. I could see that as in the moments of practice I'm only focusing on breathing and nothing else. I used this app for the last week because I have been experiencing a lot of stress myself and I would have to say that it does help a lot. Doing it multiple times a day really helps me relax and focus on what I’m doing instead of freaking out over it. The music that plays while you inhale and exhale also is a good touch because slow music like that is very calming. It was interesting to do something like this because I never have been consistent with it and now that I have I can tell that it actually is very helpful. The most I’ve done for breathing exercises is the ones we practice in class, from now on I will be using this app all the time.

I really enjoyed the app, I have been testing it out this past week for one of my classes. I would use the calming one the most when I was feeling more anxiety and it definitely helped calm my breathing down, that was my favorite one. I also gave all of the free breathing exercises a try. A few of them such as the winding down and calm down one were basically the same exercises so I didn’t understand why they had them both. Other than that they were great ways to help calm down my anxiety. Often times, when you are feeling overwhelmed or worked up just getting control of your breathing can help relax all of your nerves, heart rate, and all other sensory’s. In class we did a similar breathing exercise to the calm down one and my teacher asked how we felt and many students reported feeling relaxed. Why this is, is because deep breathing activates our parasympathetic system, which is part of our nervous system (not the one that activates fight or flight) and when we do the deep breathing exercises it sends signals to that part of the brain to let it know you’re safe/okay and there is no need to activate the fight or flight response and gets more oxygen to the parasympathetic system instead or the sympathetic system (fight or flight response area in our brain) so our body knows to remain calm. It is a very good way to help calm one’s anxiety down.

This app overall seems helpful, especially for anxious individuals (including myself) that struggle to regulate their breathing when worrying or during stress. There are different breathing exercises for different situations like panic relief and just normal calming which is cool. They provide calming music and clear breathing instructions within each tab. Though, there does not seem to be clear science behind this other than researched breathing techniques. It just seems to use meditation techniques or normal calming breathing techniques instead. On top of the normal breathing techniques, this app is pricey at $9 a month for something you could look up on youtube. I think they make it look better by providing more options all in one place as well as keeping a leaderboard for app users. This app is helpful in some situations but to me, nothing special enough to be paying for.

The new voice guided classes that have been replacing the daily energize routines are terrible. I don’t want to hear a voice or brash music in the morning and the follow along visualization images are gone. If it doesn’t change back soon, I’ll probably delete the app.