Field Instrument 003

Everyone has a pace. Find yours.

Somewhere between four and seven breaths a minute, your heart rate and your breath stop competing and start amplifying each other. That rate is personal, it barely moves once you know it, and almost nobody is ever told theirs. Five short trials, about four minutes, and nothing leaves this page.

  1. Sit tall, feet down, hands loose. Breathe through the nose the whole way.
  2. The ring will pace you. Follow it, do not race it. Fill to about three quarters, never to the brim.
  3. Five paces, four breaths each. After each one you rate how it felt. That rating is the measurement.

About four minutes. Skip this if you're pregnant or have a cardiac or respiratory condition, unless your clinician says otherwise. Lightheaded means stop, not push. Nothing here is saved or sent anywhere.

Scientific Receipt, Breathing near 6 breaths per minute maximises heart-rate variability amplitude by bringing the respiratory rhythm into phase with the baroreflex, and the exact rate that does this differs between individuals (Vaschillo, Vaschillo & Lehrer, Applied Psychophysiology and Biofeedback, 2006; Lehrer & Gevirtz, Frontiers in Psychology, 2014). Clinical assessment identifies that rate from a live HRV trace. This instrument reads subjective ease instead, which tracks the same effect loosely rather than exactly. It is a starting pace, not a diagnostic. Read the full evidence review →