Stress Relief from Your Smartphone

By Dr. Perry Bosmajian, National Center for Telehealth & Technology

Dr. Perry Bosmajian is a psychologist and project lead for the Breathe2Relax mobile application.

In the growing mobile application marketplace, one of the most promising and rapidly expanding areas is health care and wellness. Here at the National Center for Telehealth & Technology (T2), we design and build high-value mobile applications for the benefit of service members and their families.

Our newest mobile app, Breathe2Relax, is of particular value to people who may be experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder, providing easily accessible relief for stress and anxiety. Breathe2Relax is a diaphragmatic breathing trainer that uses a smartphone’s interactive learning capabilities to teach deep-breathing exercises through video instruction and interactive demonstrations. It’s simple and effective for controlling stress when used either as a stand-alone tool, or in association with face-to-face psychological health care.

Diaphragmatic breathing (belly-breathing) has widely-known benefits for reducing stress, tension and anxiety by calming the “fight or flight” response. From the first time you launch Breathe2Relax, you can immediately begin the breathing exercise and track its beneficial effects through a simple stress results scale. You can easily customize your Breathe2Relax experience, using the app’s preference settings to select breath duration and number of cycles, as well as choice of music and background images.

One of the most interesting parts of Breathe2Relax is the “Body Scanner” feature that allows you to review an image of the human body to learn the effects of stress on its various systems. In understanding the negative and often unseen consequences of stress, users may be more motivated to use the app on a daily basis to develop a beneficial stress relief “habit.”

Breathe2Relax is a free mobile app available now for the iPhone and iPad through iTunes and is scheduled for release for Android devices in late July. For more information about Breathe2Relax and other available apps, visit t2health.org/apps.