User Guide

Learn how to use Pausa and why it's the best way to make space in your day to feel better.

How Pausa Helps You Manage Stress and Anxiety in the Long Run

Stress and anxiety are not personality traits. They are nervous system states. When you experience pressure, uncertainty, or overload, your sympathetic nervous system activates: heart rate increases, breathing becomes shallow, muscles tense, and attention narrows toward potential threats. This response is adaptive in short bursts. The problem begins when the system does not fully return to baseline.

Consistent breathwork, as practiced through Pausa, directly targets this physiological loop. Slow, controlled breathing—especially with longer exhales—stimulates the vagus nerve, a key pathway of the parasympathetic nervous system. This branch is responsible for recovery, digestion, and restoration. By repeatedly activating this pathway, you are not just calming down in the moment; you are training your nervous system to downshift more efficiently over time.

In the long run, this creates measurable changes in stress management. First, you develop earlier awareness of activation signals such as tightness in the chest, jaw tension, irritability, or racing thoughts. Second, you reduce the duration of stress cycles; instead of remaining dysregulated for hours, you recover faster. Third, you increase tolerance to uncertainty and discomfort, because your body no longer interprets every challenge as a threat.

Pausa reinforces this adaptation through repetition and structure. Mood tracking builds emotional literacy. Smart reminders interrupt accumulation before escalation. Streaks encourage consistency. The 10 Day Journey provides progressive exposure and skill-building. Over weeks and months, short daily sessions compound into greater resilience.

The outcome is not the elimination of anxiety. It is a shift from being physiologically hijacked to being physiologically responsive. You still experience stress—but you are less controlled by it, and more capable of regulating your internal state with intention.

Mood Tracker

Pausa’s Mood Tracker is a fast, low-friction check-in designed to help you identify your current emotional state and immediately translate it into action. Instead of overthinking what technique to use, you simply select how you feel—anxious, stressed, overwhelmed, tired, unfocused, calm—and the app recommends a breathing exercise aligned with that state. Each recommendation is grounded in nervous system regulation principles, helping you either downregulate (calm) or gently energize (refocus) depending on what you need.

Over time, the Mood Tracker helps you recognize patterns. You begin to see when stress peaks during your day, what situations elevate your arousal, and which breathing techniques create the strongest shift. It turns emotional awareness into a practical skill. Rather than sitting with a vague sense of discomfort, you convert it into a structured intervention. The result is clarity, agency, and faster recovery from stress.

Breathe to Unlock

Breathe to Unlock is Pausa’s digital self-regulation feature designed to interrupt unconscious screen habits. You choose specific apps and set a screen-time threshold. Once you reach that limit, access is temporarily paused until you complete a short guided breathing session inside Pausa.

This feature is not about restriction or punishment. It is about inserting a physiological reset into moments where autopilot behavior typically takes over. The breathing sequence lowers nervous system activation, creating a measurable pause between impulse and action. After completing the session, you can consciously decide whether to continue using the app or disengage.

By pairing technology use with breath awareness, Breathe to Unlock transforms distraction into an opportunity for regulation. Over time, it strengthens impulse control, reduces compulsive scrolling, and builds intentional digital habits.

10 Day Journey

The 10 Day Journey is a structured onboarding experience that introduces you to breathwork in a progressive, accessible way. Each day includes a short guided session focused on a specific intention such as calming anxiety, increasing focus, improving recovery, or reducing stress before sleep.

The program gradually builds familiarity with core breathing patterns and teaches you when to apply each technique in real-life situations. Instead of overwhelming you with options, it provides a clear path. Day by day, you develop both physiological awareness and practical skill.

By the end of the journey, you will have a foundational breathwork toolkit and a repeatable system for regulating your nervous system. The goal is not perfection; it is consistency and confidence in your ability to shift your internal state on demand.

Smart Reminders

Smart Reminders are designed to integrate breathwork into your real schedule. You can configure timing, frequency, and preferred session types so Pausa prompts you at moments that align with your routine—before work, mid-day, after meetings, or before sleep.

These reminders are intentionally minimal and supportive rather than intrusive. Their purpose is to create behavioral cues that reinforce habit formation. When stress accumulates gradually throughout the day, a well-timed reminder can interrupt escalation before it peaks.

By responding consistently to these prompts, you strengthen the association between stress awareness and immediate regulation. Over time, breathing becomes automatic rather than reactive.

Streaks

Streaks are Pausa’s habit-building system. Each consecutive day you complete a session, your streak continues. This visual reinforcement encourages consistency and builds momentum over time.

The purpose of streaks is not gamification for its own sake. It is behavioral reinforcement. Research in habit formation shows that small daily actions compound more effectively than occasional intense effort. Five minutes per day of conscious breathing can produce meaningful nervous system adaptations when sustained consistently.

Streaks create accountability to yourself. They encourage return after missed days and help transform breathwork from a reactive tool into a proactive daily practice. The result is resilience built gradually through repetition.

What is Pausa

Pausa is a lightweight, science-informed mobile app for iOS and Android that guides short, accessible breathwork sessions. Designed for busy people and beginners, Pausa uses simple audio, visual and haptic cues to teach evidence-based breathing patterns that reduce acute stress, downregulate the nervous system and improve focus. Sessions are intentionally short and non-prescriptive so you can use them at your desk, before a meeting, or when anxiety rises. Pausa also emphasizes companionship — voice-led guidance, gentle prompts and community-oriented touches help users feel supported rather than alone. The app integrates with system notifications and background timers to make breathing an easy habit you actually keep.

  • iOS and Android app for guided breathwork
  • Evidence-based tools to manage anxiety and stress
  • Companionship-focused design to reduce isolation