Two breaths per minute

During a recent holiday, I had two major goals:

• Improve my relationship with anxiety
• Play with Claude Artifacts

I got a little obsessed with breathing – the cornerstone of relaxation and meditation.

Claude helped me animate 2 rectangles to represent the lungs, which we both coded into the animation below based on the breathing of "expert meditators":

• Inhale for 12 seconds
• Exhale for 18 seconds

I've spent hours staring at this animation.

I didn't know how to feel my diaphragm before I started building this. I still struggle to relate the expansion of my lungs to contracting my diaphragm.

Other notes:

• The slow exhale is a common meditation technique that triggers the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS), which helps calm body and mind
• At this breathing rate, expert meditators exchange about 24% of their lung volume
  • The average breathing rate is much faster (~15 breaths per minute) and shallower (~12% exchange)
• There are other muscles involved in breathing, but the diaphragm is the primary one:
  • It's a dome-shaped muscle that separates the chest from the abdomen.
  • During inhalation, the diaphragm contracts and moves downward, creating a vacuum that pulls air into the lungs.
  • During exhalation, the diaphragm relaxes and moves upward, pushing air out of the lungs.
  • Though you can't feel your diaphragm directly, you can feel the pressure it creates in your abdomen

My current record is 93 breaths at this rate. It feels weird and transcendant.