I recently updated my Apple Watch to watchOS3 and was later greeted mid-morning with a prompt on my wrist to breathe...
I chuckled to myself when I saw this. "Really?! I need to be reminded to breathe?" Admittedly the day had been a bit stressful up to that point so I secretly wondered if maybe I had turned something on that was constantly monitoring my pulse and noticed it was a bit higher than average.
For kicks I decided to give this thing a whirl. I went for the "1 minute" session. The little blue "crystal image flower thingie" (CIFT is my technical term) slowly expanded and contracted, and I matched my inhale / exhale patterns to match it. After about 8 breaths my minute had been reached and I saw a summary of my heart rate. I'm not sure where it was previously, but it was pretty low. But I did a self-diagnostic and that stress that had been nipping at me was gone. My head was a bit clearer, and I went back into "hacking the matrix" with a renewed sense of energy and excitement.
It was crazy how a simple task (and in such a short amount of time) can have amazing effects. The mind/body connection becomes more and more profound to me every day. You can't have one without the other.
So don't forget to breathe. No, I'm not saying go buy an Apple Watch for this kind of things. But set a reminder somewhere. Once, maybe twice a day, take a minute or two out of your life to shut everything else out and.... just... breathe...