In this episode, Ida Grace introduces the Connected Breath iOS app. Designed to promote mindfulness and relaxation, Connected Breath offers guided breathing exercises to help you pause, reset, and find serenity. The app boasts a simple and tranquil interface adorned with a night sky background. As you inhale and exhale, stars gently appear and fade, symbolizing other users across the globe who are also engaging with the app simultaneously. This shared experience fosters a sense of connection and support during your practice.
Download Connected Breath on the App Store
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/connected-breath/id1166443182
transcription:
Disclaimer: This transcript is generated by AIKO, an automated transcription service. It is not edited or formatted, and it may not accurately capture the speakers’ names, voices, or content.
Hello AppleVis, good evening from Ida and tonight I'm going to be doing a podcast app demonstration of an app called Connected Breath.
This is a meditation app that connects people from all around the world to do a meditation together.
So this app works just similar to apps that are social media apps where you can connect in real time with people but you can't communicate with them.
It simply shows you how many people are using the app at a time.
So if I open the app, open Connected Breath, this app is used in portrait mode and the first thing we get is to select breathing duration.
You can do one, three, or five minutes.
I'm going to select three minutes and then I will show you what happens.
For anybody who's curious, I'm using an iPad.
I'm using Daniel as my voice over voice, the compact version of Daniel because I like him better than the enhanced and I'm using an Apple keyboard that doubles as an iPad case.
So you can choose to breathe for one, three, or five minutes in this app.
I'm going to double tap on three minutes and you're going to hear a bell.
And then go to the bottom of the screen, okay that message is going to change throughout the meditation.
I will show you, okay so that's the starting sound and then breathe in, breathe out.
This message is changing with the music.
Breathe in, breathe out, and now it's going to change.
You are breathing in and then it's going to tell you how many.
Seven other people are currently connected right now.
The stars in the distance are the people breathing, that's the visual representation.
We are all breathing together, we are all connected, I guess I don't need to repeat.
Now close your eyes and focus on your breath.
Now the rest of the time it's going to say breathe in and breathe out over and over again.
And for those of you with perfect pitch, you will notice that it's saying breathe in on the C chord and breathe out on this like A minor type chord.
So if you don't want to constantly listen to the messages, just listen to the music and follow the music.
You hear the peaceful nature sounds in the background?
You kind of hear a breathing noise too, it's kind of creepy honestly.
Breathe in and breathe out.
See it's still changing from breathe in to breathe out.
And it will always end after an exhale, don't worry.
When it does end you'll hear the same sound as when it started but the music will continue.
So I'm doing a three minute and after this I want to show you something the app does each evening.
Oh, there's the end sound.
Now before I do anything else, I want to show you what happens after a meditation.
If you hear the music is still playing.
I just went to the top left of the screen and if anybody is curious, when I was listening to and having voiceover read the messages on the screen, I was having it do that by continuing to hit control down arrow on my keyboard, which is basically the command to have it continue to repeat the bottom of the screen.
So if you just try to swipe to the right or use the right arrow, the message won't refresh with voiceover.
You have to do the control down arrow or else the only other way I have found that it works is to swipe left and then right again quickly to get it to refresh the message.
Or if you have a keyboard, use control down arrow to get it to automatically refresh so you don't have to swipe.
That's during the meditation or you can of course just not pay attention because no matter which duration you choose, it's going to display the same messages.
So I just honestly, I just ignore them because no matter what you choose to do in the app, it's going to say the same thing.
So after the meditation, you can share.
You can rate, this ideas button, I don't understand, okay it opens safari, but it, are you hush?
Yeah this is a group meditation online thing and I'll show you the group meditation in a minute.
So these are like suggestions, oh that would be a fun idea, yeah the original Pixel Thoughts is a website.
I haven't found the app for that yet.
I found Connected Breath through a Crisis Resource Center website, the Crisis Text Line Resources website, and they have the original Pixel Thoughts, but they linked me to the Connected Breath website and Connected Breath has an app, but the original Pixel Thoughts do not, so I don't know how to find those for you.
So this page is just a bunch of ideas that people have had about the app, so I'm going to go back to Connected Breath, oh, okay I missed the notification so I'm going to go ahead and tell you what happened here.
So I have this app set and all of my meditation apps set to go into do not disturb mode automatically when I open them, and that includes this app, so that means that I most likely missed the notification, although it is only 8.52 and normally my notification comes in at 5 minutes to 9, so I'm going to close out of here.
So you can see if it does indeed happen, let's see if I missed the notification, but what happens basically is there is this app, Connected Breath does a group meditation every night at 9 p.m. local time, so this app connects to whatever time zone you're in, so for me that's Central Time, and it notifies you 5 minutes before your group meditation starts.
Okay, so when I was on vacation in Florida, it connected me to Eastern Time and it gave me a notification at 8.55 p.m.
Eastern Time.
Once I got back home, now it's back to Central.
I will say, however, that it does take a day or two, the first night I was in Florida, I clicked on the notification and it did not take me into the group meditation, it just took me into the regular app screen.
Connected Breath, now, Connected Breath, join us for the nightly group meditation in your time zone, CST, we all breathe together at 9 p.m.
Okay, so that is the 5 minute notification, yes, I hear you, come on, I'm trying to get it to go to my notification center by swiping one finger down, there you go.
Now when I click on this, I want to tell you all, voiceover is a little bit stupid with this and I don't like it, it says group meditation starts in, and there's supposed to be a countdown timer, and there's not if you try to swipe, so I have to touch areas of the screen, or I have to use control up and control down, yeah, it goes from group meditation starts in to people have joined, it tells you how many people have joined, eight people have joined, but now it's not showing a little countdown timer for the group meditation, so voiceover is a little bit stupid in this, and I don't know how to send this podcast to the developers of this app, so they can fix it, but at any rate, the notification comes and then when you click on it, it takes you into the app and it takes you into a five minute countdown, and when the group meditation starts, you will hear the same sound, it will be the same process as I just demonstrated, only it is always a five minute meditation, you can't change the duration for the group meditation as far as I've been able to tell, so it's going to countdown, and it does, I have gotten voiceover to tell me about the countdown timer before, as far as how much time is left until meditation, okay, see now it's saying group meditation starts in eight, but that's inaccurate because eight is how many people have joined, so see, voiceover is not friendly, this is the one part of the app voiceover does not like, but we wait, and by the way, it's the same music, you don't get to change the music, I hate that, but such is life, and at the end of the meditation, I will continue telling you about the buttons that appear after a meditation, cause I realized I did not finish doing that, did I?
See, and it's showing me everything out of order, group meditation starts in, and now nothing, group meditation starts in people have joined, that makes no sense, so voiceover doesn't like this part of the app I'm afraid friends, voiceover hates the countdown, and I don't know how to report this to the developers, I will keep looking, but yeah, this app is simple, I mean there's not much to it, this is basically all you do with the app, so, we're waiting for the meditation, waiting for 9pm central time to roll around, I better shut up, or you won't hear the noise, this is one of many meditation apps I use, I've done podcasts on the other ones before, so we are in the connected breath app, still waiting, watching, and, aha, there's the countdown timer, 12 seconds to go, I just touched the screen and got lucky friends, okay, hear the bell, that's our beginning noise, okay, now the voiceover is going to say some random things, see now it's 25, yeah, so C chord is breathe in, and the A minor chord is breathe out, and it does this breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out twice, before, if you really want to check, you are breathing in with how many?
8 other people, so there are 9 people here right now, including me, and then of course it will say, the stars in the distance are the people breathing, again, that's a visual representation for sighted people to see, or visually impaired people to see, each person is represented by a star, so this app basically is just a reminder that we are all breathing together in the universe, all humans breathe the same air, honestly I think it's a good reminder that, you know, whatever political party we are a part of, or however many disagreements we may have, we're all just human, we're all just breathing the same air, this is a lot easier said than done, I shouldn't talk because I have a hard time with this too, but I think all of us as humans do, so C major chord is breathe in, and the A minor chord is breathe out, we have the beautiful piano melody over the music, and the crickets in the background, I love the crickets, and again it's just continuing to say breathe in, breathe out on the screen after it gives the introductory messages, so it's just encouraging you to close your eyes if you're sighted, or if you're blind and you like to meditate with your eyes closed, just breathe in and out, let go of the worries of the day, get ready for sleep, you can use this app any time of day, just the group meditation happens at 9pm, but the process is the same no matter what, I believe the countdown actually begins at 10 minutes till 9 your time, but the notification comes at 5 minutes till 9 local time, it's just a peaceful music to listen to, and an app that just helps you just breathe the pain away, I like to use it like right now, my ankle is hurting me a little bit, so I just like to imagine breathing in, and imagining the pain in my ankle just being blown away with the wind that is created by my exhale, this peaceful relaxing way to end the day, it's a good opportunity to just take some belly breaths, make sure your breath is deep in your abdomen, this is supposed to be an app demonstration not a meditation I know, but the screen is literally just continuing to say, breathe in breathe out, and at the end you hear the same ending sound that you heard before and then you get options, I will say the times are a little bit inaccurate, the 5 minute one is not quite 5 minutes, the 3 minute one is not quite 3 minutes, the 1 minute one is just at 1 minute, oh see that noise signals the end, and now you can see the buttons have appeared, okay the restart button will bring you back to where it says select breathing duration, and then, okay so the zero means obviously the group meditation just happens, the 6 is how many people are here now, okay so, and now it's not letting me swipe back to the left so I'll just close the app because we're done with it anyway, okay friends that is connected breath, again it's an app to just remind us we're all human, we all breathe in oxygen when the plants breathe it out, we all breathe out carbon dioxide so the plants can breathe it in, so we're really just exchanging our breath with nature which I believe is why they included nature sounds, so that is the app friends, if you have anything to say about this podcast you can contact me by email at rainbow.girl.radio at gmail.com, you can also use the contact form on applevis, and because I've had some people, some, I don't know their intentions, I like to start out with just email, so please don't ask me for my phone number or if I voice chat or if I want to do google hangouts or whatever the popular app where everybody is hanging out on, I prefer to get to know each other through email first, yes I know you can't tell tone of voice through an email, but I have certain things in my past that get triggered when people try to push farther, so please don't do that, stick with email until I get to know you and decide what to do, okay that is all for me tonight, thank you for joining