Moonbird review: a breathing companion

Moonbird

A breathing coach in the palm of your hand!

Introduction: A nervous nervous system

I’m quite an anxious person, but recently I’ve been trying to work on that. I’ve always seen the breath as a very useful tool. It’s like a remote control for your nervous system. I became aware of its effect on my body during stressful situations; the mind works obsessively, the heart runs crazy, the chest is heavy, knees are weak, and hands are sweaty. Now I understand why Eminem vomited on his sweater: mom’s spaghetti. All jokes aside, being stressed feels like shit. It feels like the world is going to fall down on you, and the only way to avoid that is by keeping the mind busy, thus staying stressed.

Sadly (or should I say luckily), the power of the mind can keep the body going for only so long. I recently read When The Body Says No by Gabor Maté, and learned that so many people struggle with taking a break, that their body eventually gives up on them.

We’ve evolved into such cerebral animals that we forgot one crucial fact; mind and body are one! You can’t eat trash and expect to feel great, just like you can’t breathe shallow and expect to feel present or grounded.

Your breath is ever-present throughout your life, it’s your most loyal side-kick, but through mindful breathing you can make it your friend. I’ve been dipping my toes into breath work, meditation, and yoga for the past few years, but this year I took the plunge. The effectiveness of all these practices is too big to ignore any longer.

I recently discovered The Heart Math Institute. They've been doing research for more than 20 years on heart coherence. Heart coherence happens when the heart rate syncs up with the breath, and slows down. This results in an increase in physical health, emotional well-being, stress resilience and cognitive performance (e.g. focus, concentration). All these factors increase the quality of life, and that’s what we’re all going for, no? 

Heart coherence can be measured and fine-tuned by biofeedback devices. Out of the myriad, I’ve picked out the Moonbird. In this blog, I’ll review my experience with it for the past months. We’ll have a look at the company, the product, the user-experience, and how it holds up with its competition. 

Review Moonbird 

Moonbird is a start-up company founded by a Belgian brother-sister duo. Its main goal is to allow everyone to harness the power of their breath. Whether that is for coping with stress, falling asleep faster, or building a consistent meditation practice.

Moonbird puts a breathing coach in the palm of your hands, allowing you to practice anywhere and anytime. 

It differentiates from the competition by focusing on a modern product design, an app that serves as a coach, and overall user friendliness. Compared to other (more advanced) biofeedback products, like Inner Balance or Kyto, it doesn't measure all the details. Instead, it distills the most relevant ones into accessible and easy-to-understand statistics. The moonbird app gives you three types of data: heart rhythm, heart rate variability (HRV) and heart coherence. Continue reading for more details on the relevance of these statistics.

Hardware

The Moonbird is a small and subtle biofeedback device in the shape of an avocado. The outer layer is made from a soft and smooth rubber. It gets your bio input through the infrared sensor. The design is logical and straightforward, allowing the thumb to organically line up with the sensor. Charging happens through two magnetic pins, making it completely wireless.

During a breathing exercise, the Moonbird ‘breathes’ at a certain pace. It does so by flapping its wings, which you’ll feel pushing in the palm of your hand. The Moonbird imitates the movement of the lungs, by expanding during the inhale and contracting during the exhale. I’ve noticed that it can be quite difficult in the beginning to sense this movement. I’d have to focus intensely on the device to know which way it was going. With practice, this got easier and became second nature to me. 

The wings also make a mechanical sound when flapping. It’s just loud enough to notice, and just quiet enough not to bother me. I use this sound (together with the movement) to keep me present during the exercise. Although I use this noise to my advantage, I believe better engineering can make the device even more subtle to use in public spaces. 

The Moonbird has an app which can guide, educate, and inform you during your breathing practice. All of this is amazing, but it has the disadvantage of keeping you connected to your phone, which is very often the reason for the anxiety and information overload. Luckily, the Moonbird can fully work by itself. It has a very intuitive shake & wake function. This is excellent for using in bed or when you aren't (or don’t want to be) near your smartphone. The breathing pace can be set in the app and will be downloaded on the device. From then on, you can always access your prefered breathing exercise with a flick of the wrist.

I’ve noticed that this function tends to be quite sensitive. On the one hand, this makes the shake & wake function very easy to activate without doing the Harlem Shake. On the other hand, it also causes this function to start by accident, thus draining the battery a lot faster. I’ve tried to carry it in my pocket a couple of times, but this proved to be near impossible. The device would whir in my pocket out of nowhere, making people look at my crotch in a funny way. “Is that a Moonbird in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?” I’ve addressed this issue to customer support (really easy through the app) and they’ve assured me that it’ll be fixed in future software updates. 

Until then, I’ll keep my Moonbird at home as much as possible. When travelling, it’s crucial to bring the special charger. The battery performance is not bad under normal circumstances. When kept in the house, and only activated when breathing, it can last for about five days. But when on the move and accidentally being turned on every instant, the battery can drain in a day or two.

Software (the app) 

Getting started

Good software can make or break a product. Moonbird is definitely on the right track with their app. Although the device can stand perfectly by itself, it is only in conjunction with the app that its full capabilities come to light. 

One of the first things the app will help you do is perform a Heart Rate Variability intake. Based on the results it determines which breathing pace suits you best. This test should be done again regularly, since the results might change as you practice more.

Knowing your ideal breathing pace is crucial information. Knowledge is power, and once you get the right rhythm ingrained in your system you can literally practise anywhere and anytime, even without Moonbird. 

The interface

After pairing your Moonbird to your phone, the app welcomes you with a clean-looking interface. There are two main pages you’ll want to navigate. 

The first one is the exercise section. Here you can find exercises for all sorts of goals. Whether you want to take a breathing break, curb your anxiety, fall asleep, or simply follow your own personal rhythm. The duration is adjustable, ranging from two minutes to half an hour. Exercises that are initiated through the app also have audio guidance. A calm and soothing female voice guides you through the exercise. You can turn the audio off in the settings if you will. 

The second mainpage brings you to a vast archive of information audio clips. These are like little podcasts. There are several topics, which consist of multiple episodes. Every episode is about 10 minutes. While the episode is playing, your Moonbird starts breathing as well. So you're simultaneously learning and relaxing. Moonbird doesn't recommend bingeing these episodes, but suggests you listen to one a week. I’ve had trouble staying awake since the relaxation can be so deep. The morning or afternoon is probably the best time to digest the audio bits. 

One annoying factor about these exercises is that the breathing pace is set to the topic of the episode. My preferred breathing pace is 5,5 breaths per minute, so when I listen to the episodes about anxiety, I find the 7,5 bpm quite fast, and yes, almost anxiety inducing… As of yet, there's no way to adjust the breathing pace in the settings.

Biofeedback

How does biofeedback work?

You start a breathing exercise with a set intention. You want to calm down, free your mind, fall asleep… While breathing, your device picks up the effects of the exercise on your body and translates it into biofeedback statistics. You look at these graphs being formed in real time and interpret what’s going on inside of you. As a result you have a deeper understanding of the effect on your inner body, and it helps you maintain focus on your breath. 

When tracking a breathing exercise through your app, you’ll see three types of biofeedback statistics: heart rhythm, heart rate variability, and heart coherence. These three statistics are complementary to each other and tell a comprehensive story about the inner workings of your body. I’ll explain each stat briefly, links will give you further clarification.

Heart rhythm

Your heart is like a drum that plays throughout your entire life. It has a certain number of heartbeats per minute. The heart does not beat to a fixed, regular rhythm like a metronome. Rather, the rhythm of a healthy heart is irregular. Your heart rate is controlled by the nervous system. The sympathetic branch of the nervous system accelerates heart rate, whereas the parasympathetic branch slows it down. Simply put, your heart pumps more during an inhale, and pumps less when exhaling. That’s why a long exhale calms you down and hyperventilating makes you feel like you just ran a marathon.

Heart Rate Variability

The variation between heartbeats is called heart rate variability (HRV). HRV is often used by athletes to measure recovery from past workouts and their ability to perform at their best again in the future. This stat can also be useful for ordinary people who are trying to increase their quality of life. 

A high HRV means that you are resilient and can quickly adapt to and recover from stress. It makes you calmer, more focused, and improves your sleep and resilience. A low HRV indicates a decreased ability to cope with and recover from stressful situations. HRV is therefore a common health marker used to measure stress and the ability to recover from it.

Heart coherence

When you breathe at a slow rhythm (between 4 and 7 BPM), your heart rate syncs with your breathing. The heart is then moving in synchronicity with the breath. This state puts a whole chain of events in action. Your heart produces hormones (oxytocine and dopamine), that are transported to the brain. This creates a communication system between the heart and the brain, allowing them to reinforce the relaxation. By doing so, your nervous system balances between the sympathetic and parasympathetic branches, causing it to calm down. You feel the effect of heart coherence in your whole body. 

Heart coherence is an entire field of study with spectacular findings. For more information, you can visit HeartMathInstitute. 

The Moonbird indicates with a colored graph whether you’re in coherence. Bright blue is yes, light blue is almost, and white is no. Focusing more intently on the breath and heart rate is a great help in reaching a state of heart coherence.

Price 

A Moonbird costs you €159. At first sight that might look quite steep, especially compared to a device like Kyto which costs a hundred bucks less. At €60, it’s really hard to beat pricewise. But Kyto doesn’t do what Moonbird does. Sure, it does the basics (tracking heart rate, HRV and coherence), but all the other features (audio guide, tactile feedback, wireless, stand-alone) separate the Moonbird in a class of its own. 

If you’re set on gathering just as much information, while having some sort of coach, then you might consider the Inner Balance Trainer. At €220, it’s even more expensive than the Moonbird. Those €60 don’t make a significant difference in my opinion. 

Considering all it’s features in comparison to the competition, I believe that the Moonbird is priced fairly.

Conclusion: Is it worth it? 

The Moonbird is an excellent device! It’s aesthetically pleasing and ergonomically designed. The infrared sensor does the trick perfectly and provides you with very helpful biofeedback. This is all neatly gathered, processed and stored in the Moonbird app. There you can find a plethora of breathing exercises and extensive informative audio guides. The software is good, but future updates will make it great. As a young company, Moonbird is constantly looking out to improve their product, and I’m positive they’ll continue doing that. 

The question now is, do you really need a €160 avocado to breathe when you’re literally breathing every second of your life? I can make the analogy with sports watches. You don’t need one to go for a run or to the gym, but if it helps you reach your goals, holds you accountable, and motivates you to do what’s good for you, then I’d argue it’s more than worth it. 

We often overestimate our willpower. I’ve set intentions to do regular breathing exercises too often, but only the past month have I been able to keep up with it. My Moonbird is a standard in my evening routine. When I lay down and turn off the lights, I breathe with it for about ten minutes. 

Instead of looking outward and polluting the mind, I look inward and clear it.

I don’t think I’ve ever slept better, been more focused and at peace for such an extensive period of time. 

If you’re serious about your mental health and you can afford it, go for it! You won’t be disappointed. And if you are, rest assured–don’t stop breathing–there’s a risk-free 14 day return policy.

Blog out! 

Durim