About Us

Empowering people to develop healthy habits and live happier lives

We aspire to support people with diabetes by providing an innovative and user-friendly mobile app as an adjunctive treatment, leading to better health outcomes and an improved quality of life.

Our Mission

Stress has gotten way out of control, but to deal with stress is not complicated nor expensive

The impact of non-communicable diseases accounts for 78% of the worldwide healthcare burden, and affects at least 120 million people in the US alone. Increasingly, individuals suffering from these problems turn to alternative interventions such as yoga, meditation, mindfulness, and breath work. About 95% of the stress related diseases that occur each year in the world can be lessened, reversed, or avoided by lifestyle changes.

Our Products

The Breathing App

Our original app available since 2017

The app demonstrated purely organic growth:

768K downloads App Store, Google Play
Shortlisted as one of the best meditation apps by Wirecutter in 2023
Rated 4.7 stars on the App Store
Featured in Goop, Vogue, and CNET

TBA for Diabetes

The first stress-specific app for diabetes

Crafted to alleviate the impacts of stress associated with chronic disease:

Evidence-based science
FDA pre-submission stage
Pilot group tested 44% reduction of stress   levels after a single month intervention   in remote validation study

How did it start

One of the world’s top yoga teachers had a heart condition

After suffering from two extreme, back to back cases of pneumonia in 2004, and a long recovery, Eddie went to a cardiologist who diagnosed him with several congenital heart defects: Mitral valve prolapse, a decaying mitral valve, and a bicuspid aorta. While these are common structural heart anomalies, and are generally not life-threatening on their on, in combination they can lead to an increased chance of enlargement of the heart or aortic dysfunction.

This created a constant source of stress for Eddie: worries about mortality, being a new father, and a small business owner with no insurance. He became interested in seeing if he could support his cardiovascular health through Yogic practices, which led to the eventual discovery that through sustained, slow breathing practices, he could permanently alter his resting heart rate (from high 70’s to the present day 56-58) and lower his blood pressure to extremely good measures. It also improved his sleep quality and ability to fall asleep within minutes of getting in bed. Yoga on its own was not enough to do this. It was slow breathing that did the trick. The Breathing App is the result of a decade of breath and health experimentation. It is the one, single practice that effected not only improved health measures, but removed the stress of heart disease and allowed him to positively and proactively engage with cardiovascular measures, health, and support. There are hundreds of scientific papers on the positive effects of slow breathing on cardiovascular health, but very few cost effective and affordable guidance delivery systems.

That’s the problem that The Breathing App was created to solve.

Our story

Timeline

2016
Germ of an idea

The Breathing App is a collaboration that started with New York Yoga instructor Eddie Stern and Belarusian App designer Sergey Varichev, who met at a Yoga workshop in Moscow 2016. Friends of Eddie’s climbed on board to help: Dr. Deepak Chopra verified the science; multi-million record selling artist Moby created the breathing sound cues.

2017
We launch!

The Breathing App was launched in Amsterdam at the Inner Peace Conference in October of 2017, bringing the simple and powerful practice of resonance breathing to anyone with a smart phone.

2018
Gwyneth loves us

Actor and entrepreneur Gwyneth Paltrow fell in love with the app upon its release and started promoting it on GOOP and in Vogue; other media followed.

2019
Maks joins the team

Maksim Luhouski joined the team in 2019 as a full partner and has taken on the role of re-vamping the design, user experience, and reinvisioning road map of the user’s breathing journey.

2020
The world goes viral
(and so do we)

During the COVID lockdowns, the app went viral, with up to 60,000 organic users per month.

2021
Shift to health tech

Recognizing the immense power of breathing in the support of healing serious diseases, the team began to look beyond the breathing and mindfulness space and into health tech. Specifically, we examined the effects of slow breathing practices on non-communicable diseases, that account for 78% of deaths globally.

2022
Dr. Nick Heath teams up

Bringing on Dr. Nick Heath, a decision was made to focus in on diabetes, affecting some 572 million people worldwide. The Breathing App for Diabetes began to take shape.

2023
Dilesh Mehta becomes a
partner

Renowned fragrance entrepeneur and philanthropist Dilesh Mehta joins as a founding member of the Breathing App, making the first financial investment the app has ever received. Dilesh's business acumen leads the app to its next level of growth. Maksim and Sergey build a global team, and in the span of a year, the Breathing App for Diabetes is built, tested, and prepped for market.

2024
We launch, again!

The Breathing App for Diabetes is launched in January. To expand our reach into the new markets that we wish to serve, partnerships are formed with the American Diabetes Association and other forward thinking diabetes organizations.The original Breathing App, which is a free app, was built, produced and launched with no budget. Without any paid marketing, we’ve garnered close to 800,000 organic downloads and 60,000 users per month. With a marketing team and plan in place, our goals for the new app aims far beyond these numbers.

2025
To the future, and beyond

Heading into next year, we plan to build Breathing Apps for cardiovascular disease and anxiety.

The Team

Eddie Stern, MsC, CYT

Yoga Teacher, Researcher, Author

NYC based
35 years teaching experience
Peer-reviewed publications
Founder of Ashtanga Yoga New York

Sergey Varichev

Software Engineer and Technical Enthusiast

Prague
15 years of career
Scaled companies from 3 person to 35000 employees
Passion for yoga, neuroscience and psychology

Maksim Luhouski

Experience Designer and Consultant

Amsterdam
12 years experience
Ran consulting services for products with multi-million audience
Passionate about psychology and physical practices

Dilesh Mehta

Serial Entrepreneur, Philanthropist

London
Successful fragrance entrepreneur with brand franchise expertise
Committed to social responsibility through the BC Mehta Trust
Mentors start-ups and serves on a fashion line board

Nick Heath, Ph.D.

Breathing Researcher and Coach

Florida based
Diabetes Course Author
spent the last 5 years studying, teaching, and applying breathing techniques
Oxygen Advantage® coach
member of the Global Wellness BREATHE Initiative

Jennifer Eichermueller, MSL

Growth & Experience Marketing

Arizona based
15 years health care and patient engagement experience
Core focus on business optimization through enhanced marketing practices
Passion for improving the overall health & wellness of the most vulnerable