S3 Ep 046 Stefanie Broes Wants Everyone to Breathe Better

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Show Notes

Today we talk with Stefanie Broes, the founder and CEO of moonbird, the world’s first handheld breath pacer designed to make breathwork accessible. She shares why breathing is so important and how we can all breathe better and more intentionally –  to improve our health and well-being and decrease our stress and anxiety.

She also shares tips on connecting with your breath, so you can begin your journey to better breathing.

In this episode you will hear: 

• Why moonbird is worth bringing another piece of tech into your life. 
• Breathing as a powerful tool.
• Why breathing intentionally is important. 
• What HRV is and why you want to increase yours. 
• Breathing in through your nose. 
• Benefits of breathwork to improve your wellness
• Ways to connect to your breathing today.

Stefanie is the CEO and co-founder of moonbird, a health tech start-up active in the well-being space. Moonbird is the world’s first handheld breath pacer and is all about making breathwork accessible to let people live healthier and happier lives. The product is used to decrease stress, manage anxiety, and combat insomnia. 

Stefanie has a medical background, a Ph.D. in pharmaceutical sciences, and a Master’s in IP and data protection law. Before starting moonbird, she worked in two other start-up companies, Ectosense (medical devices) and Cowboy (consumer e-bikes). When she discovered the effectiveness of breathing exercises to tackle her own insomnia, she submerged herself in the matter.

Before starting moonbird, there was no company translating scientific insights into attractive end products for consumers. This is why Moonbird exists – to make breathwork accessible, cool, and convenient.

Connect with Stefanie Broes:

Website: https://www.moonbird.life/ 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/moonbird.life/ 

Order your very own Moonbird:

https://www.moonbird.life/?ref=Aw-hLIhs-5oAhv&utm_medium=affiliate&utm_source=goaffpro

Connect with R Blank and Stephanie Warner: 

For more Austu Podcast episodes, and to download our Austu Quick Start Guide, visit https://HealthierTech.co and follow https://instagram.com/healthiertech

Additional Links:

• Shield Your Body website: https://ShieldYourBody.com
• Shield Your Body Youtube Channel: https://youtube.com/shieldyourbody
• Host R Blank on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rblank9/
• Shield Your Body on Instagram:https://instagram.com/shieldyourbody

Transcript

Stefanie Broes 0:00
When you breathe really slowly, what I just mentioned is that your heart rate will synchronise with your breath. Actually, this is what physiologists called cardio respiratory coupling. And it means that your heart rate is in complete synchronicity with your breathing rate, in order to maximise the oxygen intake. So when you breathe in, more oxygen goes to the blood because more blood passes your lungs, when you breathe out, the opposite happens. So it’s really to couple the respiratory and the cardio system that you have in your body to couple these two systems. And that means that you’re in coherence. And if you look at the nervous system, you would also see that your nervous system is imbalanced. So your sympathetic nervous system, the fight flight freeze mode, and the parasympathetic nervous system, the one that calms you down the rest and digest system, they balance each other. So this whole wonderful mechanism actually in your body starts to come into play when you practice for breathing exercises, which is amazing, actually.

Announcer 0:59
Welcome to the Austu podcast, the show about building a healthier relationship with modern technology. Now, here are your hosts, R blank and Stephanie Warner.

R Blank 1:11
Hey, Steph, so as you know, I’ve been looking forward to this interview for some time, it is with Stephanie Bruce, from moonbird. And the reason I’ve been looking forward to it so much is because I love my moonbird, which I’d never heard of before. And they sent me an evaluation unit. And I’ve been sort of addicted to it now for about a month. And as you know, and the whole team knows I talk about it all the time.

Stephanie Warner 1:38
Yeah, absolutely. And before anyone who’s listening, thanks, this is a pitch for a product, it is not. But we are just in it just talking about the amazing form factor of this product, but more about the mission of what this product does, and how it helps us with our wellness. Something as simple as learning as paying attention to our breathing, which is something we don’t normally do. And this tool is exactly that it is a product but it is a tool to help to help us hone in on our breathing and make our lives better day to day and are super excited about it because he’s been using it and it’s been helping him. So I really excited about this

R Blank 2:21
and we got through an interview with two Stephanie’s without any confusion. So I was

Stephanie Warner 2:25
confused a few times. But now we know

R Blank 2:27
we can do it. So let’s get into it. All right, let’s do it. Stephanie Bruce is the CEO and co founder of moonbird, a health tech startup active in the wellbeing space. moonbird is the world’s first handheld breath, Pacer. And it’s all about making breathwork accessible to let people live healthier and happier lives. The product is used to decrease stress, managing anxiety, and combat insomnia. Stephanie has a medical background, a PhD in pharmaceutical sciences, and a master’s in IP and data protection law. Her own insomnia is what drove her to dive in and learn the effectiveness of breathing exercises. This is why moonbird exists to make breath work accessible. Cool and convenient. Welcome to the Austu podcast. Stephanie.

Stefanie Broes 3:20
Thanks so much for inviting me.

R Blank 3:23
Oh, no, it’s it’s a pleasure. Okay, so. So, to start the interview, I’m going to say that your product, which I’ve now been using for about three weeks, it represents two things that immediately turned me off. So one is it’s using technology to help me do something that I think I should be able to do on my own, like breathing. And two, it’s an additional source of EMF in my life. And I try to avoid those, especially those that that pair with my phone and force me to use my phone. So I was predisposed to dislike your moonbird product. So my opening question to you is how did you win me over so much that I love my moonbird?

Stefanie Broes 4:12
That’s your you want to know why you like it?

R Blank 4:15
Yeah, tell me tell me. What did you do? It’s

Stephanie Warner 4:19
he loved about it almost every day.

Stefanie Broes 4:24
I could ask the question to you then. So there are many things that I like about movement. And I hope that those are the same for you. And the first and most important one for me, at least and I think for 1000s of customers at the moment is that it works. It’s an intuitive way of guiding you your breath. And I totally get on what you say like do we really need another piece of technology for something that we are already doing all the time? But I guess that’s just us being humans, right we need some extra support. Once in a while we need to go to the gym in order to work out. We need to go to a doctor once we once we break our arm And so the same holds true for breathing exercises. I actually teach people how to breathe and give workshops around this topic. And still, when I’m really stressed or panicked, or when I’m laying awake in my bed, and I can fall asleep, I still grab my movements.

R Blank 5:17
Yeah, I think one of the things is I’m still trying to, I mean, I use like I said, I use it every day. And I just want to be clear to everybody, I am not being paid to. Anyone who listens to my, to this show knows that I’m not like a shill. And I’m not being paid to say this, I really, really love this product. And every time I use it, I try to think of why I love it. I think one of the things that may be most obvious to me is that I don’t have to keep count in my head. And that allows, right because if you’re if you’re trying to do a specific breathing pattern, and it’s five seconds in, and five seconds out, and to do that correctly, over, you know, to do that correctly over five minutes, takes concentration to do it over 20 minutes takes a lot of concentration with the moonbird. I don’t have to do that at all right? Because and we should explain this to people. And if you’re listening on on iTunes or whatever, you can come over to YouTube and see it, I’m holding it. And it’s this this awesome little device. And what it does is it expands when you’re supposed to inhale, and it contracts when you’re supposed to exhale. So and through the app, you can set, you can use some of the presets or you can set it yourself how long you want the inhale to be and how long you want the exhale to be. And then you can just let it go right and you don’t have to keep count in your head. And that because I was joking a little, only a little about how I was predisposed to dislike this product. But when your agent reached out to me, I had been actively working on breathing exercises in the morning for the past several months. And so that’s why I was like, Oh, well, this sounds interesting. Let me let me try it. And I was really able to jump up from like eight minutes to 20 minutes in a session, no problem. And it just felt so much easier. Now I realise I am not asking you any questions. So let me ask you a question. So this is going to sound a little sarcastic and a little idiotic at the same time, which is kind of my my specialty. Why is breathing important?

Stefanie Broes 7:36
Well, we all do it the whole time we do it ever since we’re born up until the day we die. But we do it in a passive way. Like we never think too much about it. And we don’t know what what kind of a powerful tool it actually is once you master it. And once you get to learn your breath, it can both inform you on how you’re doing when your breathing rate is elevated and more shallow, maybe you’re stressed maybe this is a signal that something is stressing you out. And at the same time, it’s a tool, you can actively change your breathing patterns, and then elicit immediate effects. And that’s what I just found that super powerful to come to that realisation. And I was just surprised that a lot of people nowadays like to meditate and like to Yeah, to do explore this territory. And I myself, I do it too. But the breath is like not exposed in the same way as meditation is. While it’s for me, it’s it’s the next big thing it’s as powerful as meditation can be. And maybe it’s even easier because you can just do breathing exercises, within a couple of seconds, actually, within a couple of minutes, you’ll start to feel effects. While with meditation, it takes for ages. It’s such a master. And don’t get me wrong, I love it. It’s just I’ve been doing it for five years. And I still think that I’m a beginner. Because it’s a really complex technique to master. And with breathwork that’s it’s so easy to start with it and everybody can actually do it, you just have to learn how to do it.

Stephanie Warner 9:10
So So can you explain the kind of the mission behind mood bird AI, and how it’s working to promote like Austu nology use.

Stefanie Broes 9:21
So we founded the company really to make breathwork more available to people. And I myself used a lot of apps and tools and so on to guide my own breathing, to help with my own insomnia. But I struggled with using apps in bed, for instance, or my best friend struggle to use apps when she was having a panic attack because you don’t want to be on your phone at such a moment. And it’s too difficult to do the breath counting on your own when you’re having a panic attack because you’re just completely freaking out and whatever. So we wanted to build a new form factor and wrap breathing guidance in a new form factor. You can Say. And the idea was born on the fact that I thought of a mom breathing with a baby on her chest and cradling the baby to sleep, and the baby feeling how the mother is breathing. And then actually, it calms the baby down because they connect with a mom. And they’re like reassured, they have this physical sense of touch. And the mom is really guiding the baby through her own breath and through the skin contact. And so I wanted to mimic this guidance by developing a physical tool that guides you through motion, just like if mom cradles her baby to sleep. And that’s basically the idea of the of the device. But us as a company, we want to make breathwork available in all sorts of form factors and services, and so on. So right now, this is our first product. And over the next coming years, I hope we can develop other products, other services, expand the app, and also guide people through different ways like organising courses, or having a lot of content in the application and so on, to really be able to reach everybody with this simple mission, actually, that’s, you can use your breath as a tool to calm yourself down to fall asleep, to regulate your anxiety, and so on.

R Blank 11:13
You’re talking about the form factor, because I’m someone who designs products, also, not nearly as high tech as yours. But I have to say, because also, yours wasn’t the only product that I got for evaluation at the at the at the same time I got it. And so I had I opened my moonbird. And then I opened this other product. And I have to say it feels like your execution on this has been really high level. I mean, holding the moon bird is a very nice experience. But unboxing, the box is a nice experience. Loading the app was very simple. There’s no complex pairing process, and you just load the app, and then you shake the moonbird. And then it’s like done. So I just have to compliment you on the execution of the design. I think. And I think that I mean, I think that helps make it a more pleasant experience for people.

Stefanie Broes 12:11
Yeah, thanks for mentioning that, I’ll make sure to pass the comments to the team, because we’ve got an amazing team to beat that’s working on that. And my brother, as well as my co founder, Michael. And he’s the CTO and CO CFO of the company. And he’s, he’s just such an intelligent and incredible person. And he’s the one who said, I don’t want any button on the device. The waken shake principle that indeed, you just shake the moment you put your thumb on the sensor, and it starts breeding for you in a very natural and intuitive way. And then also you don’t have to think about turning it off when you’re in bed and you want to practice the breathing exercises, which comes in very handy. Because if I’m in my bed, and I’m doing my breathing exercises, moonbird I don’t have to think about oh, I’ll have to wake up again to turn off my moonbird because then my mind is just racing, and I won’t stop worrying about that. So creates another Yeah, struggle before falling asleep. And yeah, that’s my brother who who did that. Cool. Yeah.

R Blank 13:09
But I mean, as you become more successful as an entrepreneur, you should realise to take credit for everything yourself. But we’ll skip past. So right, that’s a feature I didn’t mention earlier, which has, it has this little sensor on one side, which is where you’re designed to hold your thumb. And the things that it measures are your heart rate, and your HRV and HRV. And I mean, I’m I know what heart rate is HRV. I am not an expert on I hear a lot about it, I hear a growing amount about it. But I’ve not studied it so much one thing that I thought was interesting. So a if you could define HRV for people, and then B, I was a little surprised that the app was encouraging me to maximise my HRV, I would have assumed I’d want to minimise my HRV. So can you explain to people what HRV is, and why I should want to increase it?

Stefanie Broes 14:13
Yes, it feels a bit counterintuitive or unnatural, you need to increase the parameter. But actually our HIV is a health marker. And the higher your HRV the better. It means that you are resilient, you can cope with stress, your performance is good, and so on. So a high HRV is actually what you really want. And HRV itself is heart rate variability. And when a lot of people think about heart rate, they think that our heart rate or heart beats like a metronome. So like if it’s 60 seconds, 60 beats per minute. It’s a heartbeat every second, but in reality our heartbeat is it’s irregular so it goes like faster and then slower again and faster and slower again And these natural variations between consecutive heartbeats is what we call heart rate variability. And it’s healthy. And it’s good because it means that your nervous system can switch between different situations in the body. So you want your heart rate to be to have a lot of reliability between heartbeats, because then your body’s like responding optimally to everything that’s happening in your body. And one of the processes that impacts this variety is our breath. So when we breathe in, our heart rate rises, when we breathe out, our heart rate decreases. So this is you can with this actually train your heart rate variability, when you do slow breathing exercises like breathing really slow what you do with a moonbird, you maximise this reliability between heart rates, you get really intense variations when you breathe in, and really intense variations when you breathe out. So you really train your HRV in a short moment of time, you can also do that by sporting and going outside working out. But that just takes a lot of efforts.

You need to put on specific gear and whatever. So it’s a breathing exercise is like a very intense and short exercise for your heart actually,

R Blank 16:13
yeah, no. So and then there was this other metric in the app called coherence. So can you can you talk a little bit about coherence and why we should care about that?

Stefanie Broes 16:25
Yeah. So when you breathe really slowly, what I just mentioned is that your heart rate will synchronise with your breath. Actually, this is what physiologists called cardio respiratory coupling. And it means that your heart rate is in complete synchronicity with your breathing rate, in order to maximise the oxygen intake. So when you breathe in, more oxygen goes to the blood because more blood passes your lungs, when you breathe out, the opposite happens. So it’s really to couple the respiratory and the cardio system that you have in your body to couple these two systems. And that means that you’re in coherence. And if you look at the nervous system, you would also see that your nervous system is imbalanced. So your sympathetic nervous system, the fight flight freeze mode, and the parasympathetic nervous system, the one that calms you down the rest and digest system, they balanced each other. So this whole wonderful mechanism actually in your body starts to come into play when you practice slow breathing exercises, which is amazing, actually.

R Blank 17:25
So when you’re using the app, you have this option, by default, it’s on to have a voice guide you the experience. And I I like that feature. It’s so just so people understand it’s not constant. But it’s every so often you’ll get this message about how you know, soften your belly or ground with the ground or things like that. And I was wondering how it is, you chose that voice? Because it’s the same voice in the entire app for all the exercises. And it’s, it feels to me like that’s pretty key to the experience that that you’ve created. How did you choose? What were you looking for in in that voice? Or wasn’t you

Stefanie Broes 18:21
know, no, it was absolutely not me, would be me with a GET and Dutch French accent? No. I wouldn’t do that to the people to do this listening to the app. Now. It’s a funny question, actually. So we’re a startup. We’re doing everything ourselves. And the lady you hear speaking is one of my yoga teachers in came for a visiting class in Brussels. And she’s an opera singer. She lives in San Diego. And, yeah, I just contacted her. I knew she was an opera singer. And I asked her if she wanted to do the recordings. For us. We have a Dutch voice. She’s a friend of mine who works at a radio station in Belgium. And we have another German voice who is one of our customers actually. So we’re really trying to do everything herself. And so she’s a connection.

R Blank 19:11
Okay, well, I approve for whatever that’s worth. So I had a question about box breathing, right? Which if I’m, if I’m correct, right, that’s you breathe in a certain amount of time, then you hold it, and then you exhale over a certain amount of time. So instead of just breathe in, breathe out. It’s a three step breathing process. And I haven’t used all the modes of the app. But what I’ve seen is that sometimes it just goes in and out. And then sometimes it’ll throw a hold in the middle of it. Am I Am I correct about that? If

Stefanie Broes 19:53
you like the box breathing exercise, you should also always include a breath hold.

R Blank 19:57
Oh, no. Yeah, I just do the object. Normally, I just do what you call a breathing break. And I just set it for different times. And it seems to kind of shift between non box breathing and box breathing. Oh, is that okay? Was that not supposed to

Stefanie Broes 20:13
you’re just discovered a bug. Let me read Let me double check that for, you know, normally you have it, you can indeed select different options. And so we have the breeding one, which is like five in five out for six breaths per minute, typically advise and use during scientific research. And then we have box breathing. So that’s a couple of seconds in breath, hold, exhale. And we have a couple of exercises where the exhale is longer than inhale. And the option to also set your own breathing rhythm if you know what you like, whether you’d like to pause or not, whether you like a shorter inhale, and exhale, and so on, you can set that.

R Blank 20:49
So one other and I know Stephanie has has a bunch of questions for you, too. So I’ll stop hogging the mic in one second, in one second. The way because I’m not a breathing expert, I mean, I actually literally I have been breathing my whole life. So but, but I am not an expert. But I remember when I was younger, and I would do kung fu meditation, that I was always trained to breathe in through the nose, and out through the mouth. And it seems like your guidance plans, strongly encourage and through the nose and out through the nose, although you also say, out through the mouth is okay, if that’s what you prefer. And I was just wondering why, why that is? Why do you encourage him through the nose and out through the nose instead of in through the nose and out through the mouth?

Stefanie Broes 21:43
Well, you’re right, I don’t have a strong opinion on how you breathe out. Personally, there are a number of coaches that strongly advise to breathe in and out through the nose as much as possible. I myself personally, I’m a bit more. Yeah. Okay, with both options. Breathing in through the nose is very important though, because you, you warm up the air, you humidify it to get all the pollutants out. But you also create nitric oxide when you breathe in, which is a gas that’s created through your blood vessels of your nose while breathing in and it dilates the blood vessels in your lungs. So when you do this, you open the blood vessels in your lung more and you have more exchange of oxygen in your blood. So breathing in through the nose really makes a whole breathing experience much more efficient for your body. while breathing out, it doesn’t have all those things, you don’t need to warm the air or clean it from anything leaving your lungs or whatever, you don’t create this nitric oxide. So I’m a bit personally, for me, whatever it feels most more comfortable, comfortable. But there are a number of coaches are called the bootay. CO coaches, it’s a Russian Doctor Who invented this, this theory, they strongly advise to do both through the nose.

Stephanie Warner 23:00
Excellent. Um, that was a really interesting. So I’m finding this whole conversation really interesting. And I love the concept of the device. And I honestly just never really thought about how I just take it take for granted that I just breathe. You know, like if you don’t think about this, but it is a tool. And it’s really fascinating to me. And I’d love to get into the benefits of breath work a little bit with you. So you talked about using breath work to help with anxiety and insomnia. What other ways can breath work be used to help improve your wellness?

Stefanie Broes 23:37
There are so many ways so besides stress, which is the most obvious one and stress related disorders that I would classify as insomnia and anxiety. We have people that use moonbird when they have depression or burnout. A lot a lot of people actually typically burnout is something that coaches also like to include moonbird in their programmes to guide people and coach people. So when they’re at home, we have people suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome. We have people that are Yeah, training their sports performance, although they I wouldn’t say that movement is the ideal breathwork tool for that there are other ones that train like your, your lung volume and so on. But moomer Definitely also has has a role to play there. And this is something that we’re actually researching at the moment with one of Belgians. Well, well renowned football teams. movement can be used for breathing exercise in general can also be used for pain management. We have some we have some physicians using moonbird in the hospital for people undergoing local anaesthesia, for instance, ducked people who have to place a poster cuts I don’t know how you pronounce it in English, but like somewhere where you put chemotherapy inside your veins. It’s like a small operation on your chest. But people have to be awake and it’s quite anxiety triggering because you See that they’re cutting in your chest. And then the doctors give murmured in their hands. So they they distract their thoughts and breathe with the movement and at the same time really activate their parasympathetic nervous system to calm them down. We have some dermatologists using moonbird While they’re doing laser treatments, and then just like give it to people who have a fear of going to the to the dentist. So a lot of like a lot of variety of use cases, just

Stephanie Warner 25:27
wow, it’s really, really fascinating because I again, just take it all for granted. And it sounds like there’s so many different uses. So my mind is just just racing with all sorts of things that, you know, I just haven’t really thought about for breathwork. And one thing does, I don’t know if I have a well, I guess I have a question brewing. But I was while you’re talking. I wondered about like children or behaved people with behavioural issues, it seems like, especially maybe young people like very young people, you know, that may be a great tech, because it’s tactile, it helps slow them down. Have you have you used this at all in schools or with children with behavioural issues or young people with behavioural Yes,

Stefanie Broes 26:08
yes, I was just about to add, actually. So thank you for that question. We it’s not something that I thought of in the beginning, I don’t have children myself yet. But we had people coming back to us saying they bought the moment for themselves and they was lying on a table and their children were curious and walking around in the house. And some had to explain it, some even didn’t have to explain it. But the children actually like it a lot. Because it’s a it’s a fun element for them as well to do these breathing exercises, we can typically be a bit boring, sitting down and just doing these exercises, we don’t have like, really a real profound effect immediately on them. And so the idea of holding a small bird in your hand or in their hands, and they make a small nest with their two hands, and then they feel the moonbird breathing inside their hand, makes it fun for them to do this and makes it not only tactile, but also something like visual, like there’s a story behind this. And then the parents say, Okay, now you sit down for, for instance, six minutes or four minutes, whatever you programme the moment and you breathe with the little bird in your hands until it’s calm itself. And then by the end of the exercise, they’re also calm. So this is like a something that I didn’t think of in advance, but that has come to us and which I actually really, really like. And we’re investigating this now, like on a bigger scale with parents and children’s in, in a setting. And we’re taking interviews with them. And so to see how we can maybe do something else for them. And, and yeah,

Stephanie Warner 27:40
yeah, you know, it’s fun. What came to mind is I have a friend who works with her whole job her entire day is with one child, she spends time with one child, and they this young think they’re like elementary school age. And this child has really, really hard time dealing with, you know, other children. So when he gets really upset, he goes into a dark room, like they put them in a room with her. And I was just thinking, Gosh, what a that would be a really interesting thing to to see about using something like that. And like that kind of para educational sector. So I don’t know if you’ve thought about that. But that might be an interesting, an interesting way to go with the with the product as well.

Stefanie Broes 28:31
Yeah, absolutely. I hope to do that once on a large scale, I definitely see the added value. And something else that you mentioned that I forgot to say that a lot of people with autism or ADHD, also use the device. Because it’s another like the tactile element is quite important for them as well, because they often there are too many sensations going on. And then you know, colours or sounds might be very intense. But this subtle motion, the subtle thing moving in their hand isn’t something that they can connect with, as well. So that’s as low another group of people using the

Stephanie Warner 29:05
absolutely I definitely can see like that that tactile element is just so important. And key, I just I love this product so much. And I I haven’t used it but the more we talk about it, the more I hear about him like this is really exciting. And there’s so many use cases for this. So just kind of stepping back a little bit what kind of challenges has moonbird encountered in helping people to slow down and breathe better?

Stefanie Broes 29:30
Well, we as a company, you mean then.

Stephanie Warner 29:33
Yeah, just getting that message out, because we’re all just moving so fast. And we’re doing so you know, this, our culture is, you know, there’s there’s constant information coming in. Have you had challenges in getting that getting people to adopt that sort of, you know, slow down approach?

R Blank 29:50
Yeah. And follow up. Tying right into that maybe, is is like how hard is it to convince people that they need to breathe better Yeah, I mean, it like just some people like to me, I know, I’ve known for years before I even started doing the exercise that I really should be breathing better. But that doesn’t mean that everyone accepts that awesome. No. What are some of those challenges?

Stefanie Broes 30:17
Well, there are many and exactly what you just mentioned is one is a big challenge when it comes to our marketing efforts, at least. So we have a complex marketing funnel, I would say, because we have to first do some education on exactly that, like explain people why they should change your breathing and why that’s beneficial to their health. And then there’s like the second step of why moomer It can help with that. So we see that a lot when we’re doing our marketing that a lot of people are like, Why should I use something to do something that I’m doing my whole life, and that’s free? And then they’re like, then you explain everything, and then they’re like, Okay, right. So changing your breathing rate can definitely impact your health. And then they’re like, but why do I use a device and can’t I just use a free app for it. So it’s like, we have like multiple points where we need to convert people and convince them actually, why moonbird can be of added value. And I’m actually quite open to that. And quite I get it that people sometimes use a free app or whatever. If that works, then that works. The only thing is that for me, it didn’t work when I was really stressed and panicked. And that I then use moonbird And I still breathe with that rumoured as well, like the whole day.

R Blank 31:30
That’s good, good habit to keep up.

Stefanie Broes 31:36
But I also combined it with like, just breathing exercise without and so on. So it’s you have a whole variety and you just need to find what works for you. And I just I’m convinced that for some people moonbird is just it’s super useful, and it can really help them and that’s what they need.

R Blank 31:49
Yeah, i and i like i said, i i Hold I entirely agree. And I was not I did not think I would be reacting that way to this product. And I totally agree. Relatedly or, let’s say unrelated Lee, you call this thing a moonbird. And as you were just talking you were talking about it in terms of it feeling like a bird right so holding a bird, but how did you is that the like the design aesthetic was was to go after? Like, how did you name it Moon Berg? Where did this all come from?

Stefanie Broes 32:22
So moomer does it’s it was a real bird. I forgot the Red Knot bird forgot the English name. And I remembered it a red knots. And he was he had a ring around his Paul no feet. And

exactly. So he was tagged and people followed him. And they they found that in his life, he flew the distance. Each year he went from the Tierra del Fuego in Argentina to up north in Canada. And they followed him for 17 years. And in total, he flew the distance from the Earth to the moon and back. And they found that pretty amazing because he was so old, and he flew such long distance that they baptised him as the moonbird. He even has a Wikipedia Wikipedia page. And we just love the name. And it is a signal of vitality and longevity and good health. And the name wasn’t taken already.

R Blank 33:28
Right? You’re an IP lawyer. That’s right. Yeah, no, when I was when I, I didn’t know what to expect when I got it. And I got I opened it. I was looking and I was like, Oh, I guess that could be a bird on the moon or something like that. No, that’s a cool story. So when when whenever we interview people, and I think everyone who’s listening knows already that I’m a big fan. And if this is a product that you can afford, I totally recommend getting it by the way, I should note. It pairs with the phone quickly, but it can easily pair with multiple phones. So you only need one per household. Right? So so if there’s multiple people in the household, you just need one, as long as you’re not using it at the same time. It’s no problem. But for those who maybe are thinking about getting a moon bird or who aren’t able to get a moon bird, is there something specific like one or two pieces of advice that you could give people that they could start benefiting from perhaps a more conscious approach to to breathing or stress management? Yeah, absolutely.

Stefanie Broes 34:39
My favourite exercise and you actually don’t need a moonbird for that is you close your eyes and you start focusing on your breath for a couple of seconds, maybe a minute, two minutes. And you just check in with your breath like how’s your breath have that moment? Is it faster? Is it lower slower than normal? He, once you do that multiple times, you’ll get the hang of it. And you’ll start to understand when your breathing rate is off. And then if you’re able to you just start lowering your breathing rate to around five seconds in five seconds out, you open your posture. So you try to make space debris as well, you point your shoulder blades towards each other. And you try to breathe as much as possible through your belly, envisioning that there’s a balloon in your belly, and you inflate it with inhale and deflated with the exhale. And if you combine those things for just a couple of seconds, but preferably one or two minutes, it will already give you like, a boost and just calm yourself down and connect you with yourself in the moment. And I try to incorporate that small exercise when I have like dead moments in the day, when I’m waiting in a queue, or when I’m putting gas in my car, whatever. I’m just, I don’t know what to do. And I’m just checking in with myself and I do this exercise, and it helps me a lot.

R Blank 36:00
That’s great. Thank you for sharing that. And that’ll also make a great little shareable video clip, too. So I like that. Stephanie, where would you like people to our listeners to connect with you.

Stefanie Broes 36:16
People can follow us on Instagram. And people can go to our websites. And to find more information about moonbird. We regularly post things on our blog posts as well around breathwork. The signs behind it a research we do, the people we work with, we tried to put like our coaches in the spotlight as well. And yeah, or LinkedIn page, we want to set up a YouTube channel and things like that, but it’s not there yet. So probably, yeah, Instagram and our own website is the most important one.

R Blank 36:52
So the URL is moonbird dot life. And we’ll have that in the show notes. And your Instagram handle is also moonbird dot life. And we’ll have that in the show notes as well. And I’m more than happy to give you a copy of this video when it’s done. So you can inaugurate your own YouTube channel. So 70 This has been a real I mean, it it. I mean, I always say it and it always is a pleasure talking with people. But I was so excited to get a chance to speak with you because I really am super impressed with what you and your team have created. And I wish you the best of luck and helping the world to breathe is it’s an incredibly important goal. And thank you so much for taking the time today to come join us on the Austu podcast.

Stefanie Broes 37:42
Thank you so much for inviting me because this helps me to spread the mission is all because I can reach more people with his mission. It’s not about selling the movie. It’s it’s about getting the mission out there. So thank you for inviting me a lot.

R Blank 37:52
No, thank you.

Stephanie Warner 37:53
It’s been great having you.

Announcer 37:57
Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Austu podcast. Remember to check the show notes for all the links and resources mentioned in the show. Please like and subscribe to the Austu podcast on Apple, Spotify or your podcast platform of choice. Get your free quickstart guide to building a healthy relationship with technology and our latest information at Austu .co

Transcribed by https://otter.ai