How to build your own breathing exercise (box breathing & 4-7-8)

Breathing exercises are the fastest way to settle a racing mind — and you don’t need an expensive subscription or a noisy app full of ads to do them. With Sequal you can build your own breathing exercise in a minute, then follow it hands-free with a per-phase countdown and gentle voice cues.

Why breathing exercises work

Slow, deliberate breathing nudges your nervous system toward “rest and digest”. Two patterns are worth knowing:

• Box breathing — inhale 4s, hold 4s, exhale 4s, hold 4s. Even, square, calming.
• 4-7-8 breathing — inhale 4s, hold 7s, exhale 8s. A longer exhale to wind down before sleep.

Build box breathing in Sequal

In Sequal, a breathing pattern is made of phases. Each phase has a label and a duration, and one trip through all the phases is one cycle.

1. Tap the + button and choose Activity.
2. Turn on breathing phases and add four phases: Inhale, Hold, Exhale, Hold.
3. Set each to 4 seconds.
4. Set the number of cycles — try 10 rounds to start.
5. Add a spoken cue so you can keep your eyes closed, and press play.

That’s it. Sequal counts each phase out loud and on screen, so you can just breathe.

Want the full walkthrough with screenshots? See the docs: Breathing & meditation.

Make a 4-7-8 version

Duplicate the idea with three phases — Inhale 4s, Hold 7s, Exhale 8s — and 8 cycles. Save it as its own activity so you can pick whichever one fits your mood.

Turn it into a routine

Stack a few activities into a sequence for a complete wind-down: a short box-breathing activity, a spoken announcement (“relax your shoulders”), then a quiet timed break. Play the whole thing before bed.

It’s free, and it’s yours

You can build and play breathing exercises on Sequal for free, on your device, with no account. And because you own what you create, you can export and share your breathing routine with a friend as a single file.

Open Sequal and build your first breathing exercise today.