Breathing Exercise

Patrick Löffler

Breathing exercise like “box breathing” is known to improve HRV. I really miss the breathing exercises I had on Garmin or Polar. I wish there were any on the S9P. Anyone else?

ChrisA

@patrick-löffler me too, I am practicing Qi Gong breathing techniques for many years now But on Suunto you can have a workaround even showing you your HR and if it dropped, if you want to try it:

if you create a new the yoga sportmode, showing the lap table view and there select one column to be the MIN HR per Lap you can see your lowest HR for any lap (Autolap) or manual lap by pressing the lap button.

In this example (older picture from my S5) I set Autolap to 30 seconds, meaning I inhale and exhale within 30 seconds eg. I do two breaths per Minute. When you turn off the sound on your Suunto you will get a gentle vibration telling you that 1 full breath is done after every autolap time you set.

You can look up this table comfortably after your session in the logbook on your Watch (or of course any time during the session - but that may be counterproductive, trying to relax oneself)

Later in the app you get a nice overview of your inhalation’s (hr peaks) and exhalations (hr lows) and your overall lowest HR. Like here

Patrick Löffler

@chrisa Awesome! I will try that immediately! Thank you very much!!!

ChrisA

@patrick-löffler it works quite good and you can set any autolap time you want (like 10 seconds in the picture but then it’s almost only showing completed laps ) and see your HR drop. I don’t practice Box breathing but of course you could also hold your breath for one “lap”

In the Sportmode you can set a time target, like 5, 10 or whatever minutes and then it’s as good as the Serene app on Polar. Even better than Polar, the breathing session gets tracked in the app . The drawback is, that you can not set different times for inhalation and exhalation or holding your breath.

isazi

@chrisa you could try with intervals

ChrisA

@isazi I thought Intervalls only work with running modes… but I will give it a try, thanks!

isazi

@chrisa they work with all custom modes having the interval screen.

ChrisA

@isazi works too, but the lower limit for Intervalls and recovery is 10 seconds which results in 3 breaths per minute, which is too slow for some people (especially in the beginning) and then some tend to “overbreath” but if you can handle this breath rate it’s also a good solution since you could set the inhalation and exhalation time to different values, which allows longer exhalation phases and therefore deeper relaxation. Also the number of Intervalls is limited to 50 but even at 10 seconds per Intervall this results in 1000 seconds, which is long enough for most people. It’s just great, for what you could use your Suunto Watch

Patrick Löffler

@chrisa Thanks. Trying right now. It works perfectly! You made my day. What an awesome tip! Thank you very much. One more question though. The autolap alarm is vibration and sound. Can I change it to vibration only? If yes, where? Thanks again! Totally thrilled right now.

DMytro

@patrick-löffler you go settings, general, tones, all off I guess.

ChrisA

@patrick-löffler thanks - it’s one of the great things I learned from other people here, that you can do extremely creative things with Suunto watches .

isazi

@ChrisA because you seem to be very knowledgeable about this, can you suggest some place where to learn those breathing relaxation techniques? I want to improve

I’m not going to track them with the watch though, just want to learn.

ChrisA

@isazi Oh thanks for your warm words , when you want to learn from a teacher I suggest to look for a local teacher. Often this can be learned in Qi Gong courses or also in Yoga or Tai chi classes in fitness studios or martial arts schools.

Qi Gong is often the easiest way to start since it has easier movement techniques (compared to Tai Chi or Yoga from which I know very less) and breathing is an fundamental part of it. There are “low quality” courses who only teach the movement, like a gymnastics style, but breathing is an integral part of all “inner arts”.

If you just want to practice breathing by yourself, there are many books and even good apps. I could recommend the books from Dr. Yang Jing Ming, a highly skilled and respected master like this:

https://www.amazon.de/Qigong-Meditation-Embryonic-Jwing-Ming-Yang/dp/1886969736

which is also available as an app for Android an iOS with good videos.

Or better for starting:

Dr. Yang has a lot of good publications and being a physicists he also has a scientific background. He also has many videos on YouTube.

Another great book (but more on Qi Gong / Chi Kung as a whole and the Zhang Zhuang “standing like a tree” techniques) is “The way of energy” from Master Lam Kam Chuen, which I consider the best book for starting to practice Qi Gong since it is very well written and covers every aspect of life and how practicing Qi Gong techniques help e.g. to have more stamina in sport or in all day life.

seanvk

@ChrisA This is such an awesome approach using a custom Yoga sports mode. I just came across this. It’s much better than Serene and customizable.

ChrisA

@seanvk thanks