Breathscape: Deep Breathing

With this very clever approach, a phone easily provides biofeedback and kids and teens can work on training themselves to breathe more deeply and intentionally. Breathscape: Deep Breathing's focus on breathing -- rather than guided meditation -- helps it stand out from a crowded landscape of meditation-based apps. There are also possibilities to listen to meditation narrations, but the focus is more on being mindful of your breathing and listening to how it affects the music. And kids may delight in the fun of watching their belly rise and fall as it collects data on their breathing patters. There's not a whole lot of variation in the choices of music or guided meditation. However, because the soundtrack responds to your breathing, each time is a little bit different. The data report could be useful if it helps inform kids on their progress of achieving deep restorative breathing. But it could also be distracting, particularly because there's little information on how the "breath score" is calculated. Deep intentional breathing can certainly help prime anyone for sleep, though to use Breathscape: Deep Breathing to help with that, kids would need to lie in bed with a phone on their belly. This may not be an option for all families depending on their rules for using screens in the bedroom. The developers make big claims regarding what their app can do, and it might not achieve all those promises for everyone. But incorporating a few minutes of deep, mindful breathing into a regular routine can undoubtedly bring some benefits.