Serene™ guided breathing exercise

Serene™ is a guided deep breathing exercise that helps you relax your body and mind and manage stress. Serene guides you to breathe at a slow, regular rhythm – six breaths per minute, which is the optimal breathing rate for stress-relieving effects. When you breathe slowly, your heart beat starts to synchronize with the rhythm of your breathing and your heart’s beat-to-beat intervals start to vary more.

During the breathing exercise your watch helps you maintain a regular slow breathing rhythm with an animation on the watch display and by vibrating. Serene measures your body’s response to the exercise and gives you real-time biofeedback on how you're doing. After the exercise, you get a summary of the time you spent on the three serenity zones. The higher the zone, the better the synchronization with the optimal rhythm was. The more time you spend in the higher zones, the more benefits you can expect to feel in the long-term. When you use the Serene breathing exercise regularly, it can help you manage stress, improve the quality of your sleep and give you a sense of improved overall well-being.

Serene breathing exercise on your watch

The Serene breathing exercise guides you to breathe deeply and slowly to calm down the body and mind. When you breathe slowly, your heart beat starts to synchronize with the rhythm of your breathing. Your heart's beat-to-beat intervals vary more when your breathing is deeper and slower. Deep breathing produces measurable responses in the heart’s beat-to-beat intervals. When you breath in, intervals between consecutive heart beats shorten (heart rate speeds up) and when you breath out, intervals between consecutive heart beats lengthen (heart rate slows down). The variance of your heart's beat-to-beat intervals is greatest when you are closest to the 6 breathing cycles per minute rhythm (inhale + exhale = 10 seconds). This is the optimal rate for stress-relieving effects. This is why your success is measured not only from the synchronization, but also from how close you were to the optimal breathing rate.

The default duration of Serene breathing exercise is 3 minutes. You can adjust the duration of the breathing exercise in range between 2-20 minutes. You can also adjust inhale and exhale durations if needed. Fastest breathing frequency can be 3 seconds for inhale and 3 seconds for exhale resulting 10 breaths per minute. Slowest breathing frequency is 5 seconds for inhale and 7 seconds for exhale resulting 5 breaths per minute.

Check that your position allows you to keep your arms relaxed and your hands still throughout the entire breathing exercise. This allows you to relax properly and ensures that your Polar watch can accurately measure the effects of the session.

Wear your watch snugly just behind the wrist bone.
Sit or lie down comfortably.
On your watch, choose Serene and then choose Start to start breathing exercise. Exercise starts with a 15 seconds preparatory phase.
Follow the breathing guidance on the display or through the vibration.
You can end the exercise by pressing the BACK button at any time.
The main guiding element in the animation changes color according to which serenity zone you're currently in.
After the exercise, you'll see your results displayed on your watch as time spent in the different serenity zones.

The serenity zones are Amethyst, Sapphire and Diamond. The serenity zones tell you how well your heartbeat and breathing are in sync and how close you are to the optimal breathing rate of six breaths per minute. The higher the zone, the better the synchronization with the optimal rhythm. For the highest serenity zone, Diamond, you need to sustain a slow target rhythm of around six breaths per minute, or slower. The more time you spend in the higher zones, the more benefits you can expect to feel in the long-term.

Learn more about the Serene™ guided breathing exercise in this in-depth guide.