Release is a web-based breathwork app for people who work online, designed to help you manage stress, improve focus, and live a happier, healthier life. Our research-based tools help you build life-changing habits to support your mental health. If you're overwhelmed at work and need a breather, our stress and burnout specialists can guide you through exercises to help calm your mind.

A Release subscription provides access to a comprehensive library of guided breathwork sessions, each lasting between 3-10 minutes. The app also includes a guided breathing box that pops up in the bottom corner of your screen to help you stay aware of your breath and breathe fully throughout the day, which can help you to reduce stress. As a subscriber, you'll enjoy unlimited access to all breathing exercises and techniques, making it easy to incorporate breathwork into your daily work routine.

The best time to start using Release is now. Breathwork can benefit anyone, regardless of their current stress levels or experience with meditation. By incorporating breathwork into your daily routine, you can proactively manage stress, improve focus, and enhance overall well-being.

Release is a Google Chrome extension that works on any computer, including all Mac and Windows devices. Unlike mobile apps, Release is optimized for use on desktop and laptop devices, seamlessly integrating into your online workflow.

Stress and anxiety can be triggered by various factors, including work pressure, financial concerns, relationship issues, health problems, and major life changes. All of this is reflected in our breathing pattern. When we're feeling anxious or stressed, we tend to breathe more shallowly and erratically. Release helps you to improve your breathing in order to effectively reduce stress and anxiety.

Our research shows that some of the top causes of stress for people working online include difficulty disconnecting from work, feeling an overwhelming sense of responsibility, and the blurring of boundaries between work and personal life. The pressure to always be available, signalled by notifications from communication tools like Teams or Slack, often adds to stress. Many people also find it challenging to maintain a work-life balance, often working longer hours or feeling guilty about taking breaks.

Release is designed with all of this in mind, in order to help you to periodically disconnect from work, reduce your stress levels, and take more regular breaks to help prevent the feelings of burnout and overwhelm.

Release helps you to manage your stress and anxiety by guiding you through short breathing exercises throughout the day. Studies show that slower, fuller exhalations help to reduce stress and anxiety. When done consistently, breathwork helps to improve nervous system resilience and calm the mind.

On top of using our breathwork app, we recommend taking regular breaks, setting clear boundaries with your work hours whenever possible, and creating a separate space in your home where all work is completed. This helps to create a psychological boundary for your work to stay in one place, allowing other areas of your home to feel more calming by not being associated with your work.

To stop a panic attack, you can try using the cyclic sighing technique developed by Dr. Andrew Huberman. This method involves a specific breathing pattern that can quickly calm your nervous system. Here's how to do it:

Inhale quickly through your nose.
Without breathing out, take a second, deeper breath to fully expand your lungs.
Slowly exhale all the air through your mouth.
Repeat this cycle for about five minutes.

Cyclic sighing has been shown to be more effective at improving mood and reducing anxiety than other breathwork techniques or mindfulness meditation. It activates the parasympathetic nervous system, which slows down your heart rate and has an overall soothing effect on your body.

Improving mental health often requires a holistic approach, including regular exercise, a balanced diet, adequate sleep, social connections, and stress management techniques like breathwork. While breathwork can help a lot by helping you regulate your nervous system, we recommend seeking professional help from a therapist or counselor can provide additional support and guidance for addressing specific mental health concerns.

Two of the most underlooked forms of managing stress are diet and social connection. We recommend working with a trained nutritionist to understand how factors such as sugar intake, choice of fats, and soluble fibre intake all affect our stress levels. Regarding social connection, we suggest prioritizing in-person connection with people who you feel safe and comfortable around, and connecting physically through hugging and other consentful forms of physical touch.

Breathwork is an active practice that involves consciously controlling your breathing patterns to influence your physical, mental, and emotional states. It encompasses various techniques designed to reduce stress, increase energy, improve focus, and promote overall well-being.

Breathwork offers numerous benefits, including reduced stress and anxiety, improved focus and concentration, enhanced emotional regulation, better sleep quality, increased energy levels, and strengthened immune function. Regular practice often leads to long-term improvements in overall health and well-being.

The breath is a powerful tool for influencing our physical and mental states. It directly affects the autonomic nervous system, which controls many bodily functions. By consciously altering our breathing patterns, we can activate the parasympathetic nervous system, promoting relaxation and reducing stress.

Belly breathing, also known as diaphragmatic breathing, involves deep inhalation that expands the abdomen, fully engaging the diaphragm. This type of breathing is more efficient and promotes relaxation. Chest breathing, on the other hand, is shallower and often associated with stress or anxiety, utilizing less lung capacity.

Effective breathing exercises for stress relief include box breathing, 4-7-8 breathing, alternate nostril breathing, and coherent breathing. These techniques help activate the body's relaxation response, reducing stress and promoting a sense of calm. All of these practices can be found within our library of guided sessions in the release app.

Sleep difficulties can be caused by a wide variety of factors, but the most common reason we see in our users is poor stress management. Learning to regulate your nervous system through breathwork and taking more frequent breaks can significantly help to improve sleep. We also suggest allocating at least 3 hours of time to stop working and looking at screens before going to bed, so that your body can naturally wind down from the stimulation caused by being online.

To sleep better naturally, we recommend avoiding screens for at least 3 hours before going to bed, avoiding caffeine and heavy meals in the evenings, sticking to a clear sleep schedule, and improving your sleep hygiene by optimizing your pre-sleep routine and sleeping environment to help you to feel safe, calm, and naturally tired as you get ready for bed.

Feeling awake at night can be caused by factors such as an irregular sleep schedule, exposure to blue light from electronic devices, stress or anxiety, caffeine consumption, or underlying health conditions. Identifying and addressing these factors can help regulate your sleep-wake cycle.

The 4-7-8 breathing technique is particularly effective for promoting sleep. This method involves inhaling for 4 counts, holding the breath for 7 counts, and exhaling for 8 counts. Regular practice of this technique can help calm the mind and prepare the body for restful sleep. You can also find this guided technique in the release app library.