Hi Venu'ers,
I'd been reporting issues with Breathwork activities earlier, and they were addressed in a recent patch (thank you!).
However, it seems Garmin doesn't understand well how Breathwork is used in practice. Getting audio prompts for the first few "breathe in - hold - breath out"s and then nothing for the rest of the activity doesn't seem to be the best solution. A little digging around reddit and my own experience tells me that people prefer to use this activity in various ways:
- No audio at all.
- Audio cues for all breathe in / hold / breathe out steps throughout the entire activity.
For 1), you have to turn off voice for all activities to be able to enjoy a silent Breathwork. The screen fades out after a few second - even if not completely dark, it's still a bit hard to see the animation, which looks very cool btw (at least on the Venu - I really like it).
For 2), there is no option, you have no choice but to keep looking at the screen, freezing your neck and head in the same position for long minutes, which is counterproductive.
My suggestions to make this activity type perfect would be:
- ) Have an audio on/off option in the activity settings menu (the one that shows up before you start it).
- ) Have a screen fade on/off option in the activity setting menu. The purpose of this would be to have an option to keep the screen bright throughout the activity if user chooses to turn off audio and prefers to look at the watch face.
- ) Have a gentle chime or music effect indicating breathe in / hold / breathe out throughout the entire activity, so it can be enjoyed all the way to the end with eyes closed or off the watch face.
Check out YogaBody's 10 min Pranayama video on YT, its animation and audio is super simple but extremely effective at guiding someone through a relaxing Breathwork activity. Something like that would be amazing to enjoy on Garmin, too.
