Apple Fitness Chief Jay Blahnik Explains Benefits of Breathe App in watchOS 3

With watchOS 3, Apple has introduced a new Breathe app, encouraging wearers to take a few minutes of their day to do short deep breathing sessions. Apple’s director of fitness for health technologies, Jay Blahnik, sat down and talked to Buzzfeed about its benefits.

Just doing some deep breathing can have some great benefits for a lot of people,” whether they’re taking a break from a busy work day or winding down for the day, Jay Blahnik, Apple’s director of fitness for health technologies, told BuzzFeed News. And with an app like Breathe, “it wouldn’t be hard for them to do it, regardless if they were a beginner or were very experienced with having more mindfulness in their day.

The Watch app, which was introduced at WWDC, will prompt you every four hours (adjustable) to inhale and exhale from anywhere between one to five minutes. Once you’re done, it will show your heart rate.

According to Blahnik, Breathe has been tested on hundreds of Apple employees and seven breaths per minute was the most comfortable rate for most people, though you can adjust it to 10 breaths per minute.

The easy-to-access, low-commitment nature of the feature also turned out to be key. At work, especially, Blahnik said, the prospect of taking “a minute between meetings, to push away from their desks, quiet their mind, relax their bodies, [and] just take deep breaths, seemed to be appealing to a lot of people.

WatchOS3 is due out this fall where we’re expecting to see the next-generation Apple Watch rumored to include GPS and possible smart bands.