This Activity Tracker Knows You’re Stressed Before You Do

Jisc

It’s easy to get carried away in the moment and feel overwhelmed before you even realize you’re stressed out and need to take a mindful minute and chill out. In fact, our modern lives perpetuate this problem. That’s why wearable technology is now reaching beyond heart rate measurements to be able to tell us to calm down before things get out of hand.

Spire, a relatively new activity tracker that’s now in Apple stores, has the ability to measure changes in your breath and correlate those shifts to your stress level. The petite, pebble-shaped, waterproof device clips onto your bra strap or the top of your pants, and notices the natural fluctuations in your inhales and exhales as you move through a typical day.

A post shared by Spire Inc. (@spire.io) on Jun 21, 2017 at 2:36pm PDT

It initially establishes a baseline for your normal breathing patterns (since breath is not created equal among all humans). From there, it can sense when you’re at rest and relaxed, alert and focused, or tense and stressed by your inhale and exhale duration, how long you hold your breath at the end of an exhale before taking another inhale, your inhale-exhale ratio, and your breath consistency.

It then syncs the data it gathers with an app on your phone via Bluetooth, so you can look back and connect any fluctuations with situational changes during your day, making you more mindful of how you physically interact with the world around you.

When it catches you heading toward your stressful zone, Spire vibrates or sends a notification to your phone (depending on your setting preferences) and coaches you on how to return to those steady inhales and exhales. For some people, this kind of alerting system stresses them out even more instead of helping them relax, but the idea is that we can all be more actionable with mindfulness if we’re just given a more obvious signal during the times when it could be especially helpful.

A post shared by Spire Inc. (@spire.io) on Jun 14, 2017 at 10:27am PDT

The coolest thing about Spire is that it’s smart — meaning it learns from your past behavior patterns — so it can alert you when you’re likely to experience a stressful event before it happens, giving you a chance to collect yourself preemptively. We all definitely have moments in our lives where this feature could come in handy.

So if you’re in the market for a new piece of wearable tech, consider going the mindful route and tracking your breath rather than your heart rate. The soothing perks sure seem to be worth the $130 price tag.