Breathing Made Tangible: How Moonbird Brings Calm, Sleep & Embodied Awareness with Stefanie Broes

In this episode of the Mindfulness Exercises Podcast, Sean Fargo talks with Dr. Stefanie Broes, founder and CEO of Moonbird, about how tactile, screen-free technology can help us reconnect with the body through mindful breathing.

Moonbird is a handheld device that literally breathes with you—expanding and contracting in your hand to guide calm, slow breathing for stress relief, better sleep, and heart-rate-variability (HRV) coherence. https://www.moonbird.life/

Sean and Stefanie explore the science and simplicity behind breathwork, how therapists and counselors are using Moonbird in clinical settings, and why a tactile approach can make mindfulness more accessible for children and adults alike.

Listen in to learn how mindful breathing transforms anxiety, improves emotional regulation, and strengthens our connection between mind and body—one conscious breath at a time.

🔗 Learn more: mindfulnessexercises.com/podcast🔗 Explore Moonbird: moonbird.life

Keywords: mindful breathing, breathwork, HRV, sleep, stress relief, mindfulness tools, trauma-sensitive mindfulness, Moonbird, Stefanie Broes, Sean Fargo, breathing device, counselors, therapists, anxiety support, mindfulness exercises podcast

🕒 Timestamps

00:00 – Intro: Welcome to the Mindfulness Exercises Podcast

01:00 – Stefanie Broes’ story: From insomnia and stress to discovering breathwork

04:30 – The science behind slow breathing and the body’s relaxation response

06:00 – How Moonbird was born: from avocado prototypes to embodied calm

09:30 – Why touch and tactility matter for mindfulness and sleep

12:00 – From tracking to acting: turning data into embodied calm

15:00 – Heart Rate Variability (HRV): why coherence matters for stress and recovery

18:00 – Breathwork vs. mindfulness of breathing—complementary or separate?22:00 – Custom breathing rhythms and guided exercises inside the Moonbird app

25:00 – Therapeutic uses: how counselors and psychologists integrate Moonbird

30:00 – Moonbird for kids & classrooms—introducing the “Moonbuddy”

35:00 – Why embodiment makes mindfulness more emotionally safe

37:00 – Sean on mindfulness & clear comprehension (Satipaṭṭhāna / Ānāpānasati insights)

39:30 – Future of breath tech and mindfulness in schools and organizations

42:00 – Closing refl

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Mindfulness Exercises with Sean Fargo is a practical, grounded mindfulness podcast for people who want meditation to actually help in real life.

Hosted by Sean Fargo — a former Buddhist monk, mindfulness teacher, and founder of MindfulnessExercises.com — this podcast explores how mindfulness can support mental health, emotional regulation, trauma sensitivity, chronic pain, leadership, creativity, and meaningful work.

Each episode offers a mix of:

• Practical mindfulness and meditation teachings
• Conversations with respected meditation teachers, clinicians, authors, and researchers
• Real-world insights for therapists, coaches, yoga teachers, educators, and caregivers
• Gentle reflections for anyone navigating stress, anxiety, burnout, grief, or change

If you’re interested in:

• Mindfulness meditation for everyday life
• Trauma-sensitive and compassion-based practices
• Teaching mindfulness in an authentic, non-performative way
• Deepening your own practice while supporting others

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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:04

Hi everyone, welcome to the Mindfulness Exercises Podcast. My name is Sean Fargo. Today I'm excited to be joined by Stephanie Bruce, the co-founder and CEO of Moonbird. Something that I've been really excited to try. Moonbird and Moon Buddy is a handheld breathing coach that literally expands and contracts in your palm to pace your breathing. It's screen-free. You can pair it with an app that shows real-time heart rate and HRV. Stephanie holds a PhD in pharmaceutical sciences, and Moonbird grew out of her own struggle with insomnia during her doctoral work, a journey that led her to slow, tactile breath work, and ultimately to building an evidence-informed tool that helps people to sleep, de-stress, and feel at home in their bodies. She and her brother, Michael, launched Moonbird to make Calm more accessible through simple, embodied tech. Stephanie, welcome to the podcast.

SPEAKER_00 1:23

Thank you so much, Sean, for that kind introduction.

SPEAKER_02 1:26

Yeah, I love what you've put together. I think that it's really exciting tech that feels very practical. And I'm a growing fan of breath work lately. So I'm excited to dive in with you about all that Moonbird is doing and how it's helping people and how you know breath work in general is supportive for people to, as you as we said, to feel at home in our bodies, which a lot of people don't quite feel that so much these days. But love to learn a little bit about how you came up with this. It sounds like this was born out of your own sleep struggles during your HD work. I'm curious how you made this connection with insomnia and breath work and kind of what that story is for you.

SPEAKER_00 2:16

Yeah, absolutely. So I have always been quite sensitive to stress, I guess. But it's during the end of my PhD that I endured like lots of stress because you really build up to these four years and then this big presentation at the end, and it was just a lot for me. And that impacted my sleep very badly. And then at that moment, I really noticed like if you don't sleep for a couple of weeks, like literally taking three or four hours to fall asleep, and some nights where I almost couldn't even sleep, you're just not the same person anymore. And so I was literally in dire need for a solution. And during while I was at uni, I was already practicing some yoga. And through yoga, I discovered meditation. And in parallel to that, like personal journey and discovery, I noticed that these topics weren't really covered in my medical education, which I found very interesting. So being a scientist, I like turned to the science and I found that there's like actually lots of convincing evidence around these practices. And it's within that research that I suddenly discovered breath work as well, which in the beginning for me, while I was meditating, I thought it was all the same thing, right? Because when you meditate, you often focus on your breath, but you don't really change your breathing rate. So when I discovered breath work as like a separate tool for meditation, I found it super interesting because the idea was, or the science says that by changing your breathing rate in just a couple of minutes, you literally and physically impact your body and you activate like your rest and digest systems or your relaxation system, which meant for me like, oh my God, this can be like a very powerful solution to help me and my mind, but also my body to calm down when I can't fall asleep. So I was like really convinced of this method and to apply it for sleeping issues. And then I went and I tried these techniques. I used apps for it as well because I couldn't keep my focus because I was so stressed. And it's at that moment, yeah, yeah. So that was like it's a contradiction. I was like, okay, this is the tool that needs to work, but I was like so worried when I was in my bed, like it was like negative spiraling, like all the way, like making it really, really difficult to meditate and to do these practices. And then ultimately, you know, I use different tools and apps, but I thought, like, for me, this is not really working because these apps were keeping my brain awake again, like it was connected to social media, and then I was scrolling again and so on. You had the blue light leading you in your face. So at that moment, I literally asked myself, like, how can I help myself to pace my breathing? If it's not through auditive cues, if it's not a visual cue, what are what are other sensory stimuli that we can use? And I literally felt like I want to use the sense of touch because it's such a strong and powerful way of communicating information. It's why children have a teddy bear, it's why we hug each other, right? It's like so powerful in itself, it's soothing in itself. And so I wanted to really use that. And that's when the idea started to exist of like, what if we make like a breathing object and you hold this object and you literally just have to match your breath with this object, which strips it away from all the like thinking and looking at something and like active processing. And that's the the idea of Moonbird. It's a physical object that breathes for you, and you just feel that and you breathe with it, and it helps you to calm your breath and then triggers that whole relaxation response.

SPEAKER_02 5:59

Beautiful. Yeah, I love hearing how just the logic behind the evolution to how you got to this tactile thing that you hold. Because I think a lot of us don't want to turn to our, you know, smartphones to open up to listen to someone talk to us or to look at the screen for a video. You know, we just want to come home to our bodies and feel ourselves and just be with ourselves. And, you know, in terms of like mindfulness teaching, a lot of our community are our mindfulness teachers, therapists, coaches, counselors, yoga teachers. And when we introduce mindfulness to people who are beginners, oftentimes one of the introductory practices is to put your hand on your belly as you breathe to feel the rise and fall of the belly as we breathe because it's more obvious, it's tactile, it's coarse, you know, it's the opposite of anything subtle. And, you know, when we're sleepless, when we have anxiety, we need something more obvious to really kind of tune into the the rhythm of the breath. And I invite people to go to moonbird.life, the website where you can learn more about this. It's moon and then bird at life. And Stephanie, can you describe like what it is that people are holding and what the tactile experience is like when they're using Moonbird and and what happens over the course of a minute or five minutes as you use this?

SPEAKER_00 7:41

Yeah, absolutely. So, for those who are watching the video, like I'm holding the device up right now, and the whole shape of the device is based on an avocado. So that's how you can imagine it yourself. That's literally how it came about. So when I the next day, my brother came over for dinner, and we were having dinner at my house, basket on the table, and I introduced my idea and I told my brother, I want to develop, you know, a smart stress ball that helps me to breathe properly, and it should fit in the hand because I want to take it to work as well. And so it should be like discrete. And we literally tried like a lemon, we tried a peer, and then an avocado, and ultimately we felt like, okay, the avocado is what works really well. And so that's how you hold the device in your hand. There's a sensor incorporated as well in the device. So if you want, you can combine it with an app and get biofeedback and see like the impact of the exercise on your body. But it was important from the onset that the app is not obligatory or mandated to be used, specifically for the reasons that I mentioned. You're in your bed, you don't want to use an app, you're having a panic attack in a supermarket, you don't want to grab an app or open your phone. So you just shake the device, you put your thumb in the sensor, and after a couple of seconds, the device starts to expand and contract in the palm of your hand, and you feel that movement, and you literally breathe along with it. With the app, you can choose between different breathing exercises, you can customize them as well. So it allows to really for you to personalize the breathing exercises, whether you like box breathing or you know, longer exhalations, you can all customize that. And that's basically all that there is to it. It's like a very intuitive and simple concept. And when we launched a product on the market, not long after, we got lots of feedback from our customers, and we value that a lot. And so we noticed that people told us, I bought the moon bird, I my children noticed this weird-looking device, and they were super curious. Like, what is it? And the parents explained the concept to children. And apparently, children resonated really well with this idea of like there is a small bird, you're holding it in your hand when the belly of the bird expands, your belly needs to expand. And so parents came back to us telling us, I literally found my child grabbing the moon bird and doing a breeding exercise with it, while it was like it was not our intention to develop a device for children. So we listened to parents, and then ultimately we had the idea of developing the same concept, but then the kids' version, and that's the moon buddy. So it's simpler in the sense that there is no sensor, there is no app, but it's just like an object that expands and contracts and breathes for you. Yeah, yeah, we made it cute. We made you've you've got different covers as well, so you can change them. So it's really developed for kids, but we actually have lots of adults also using the boon buddy because they like it more.

SPEAKER_02 10:45

Yeah, I mean, I look at it and I smile when I see it because there's like a little what, like a teddy bear version, yeah, a little bird version, cute colors. I showed one of them to my six-year-old daughter, and she's like, I want one, I want one.

SPEAKER_01 11:03

Oh my god, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 11:04

Yeah, and yeah, it's kind of like a fun game. Like, can you can you breathe with your moon buddy? My wife, when we first started dating, she was working with a company called Spire, P-I-R-E, that was a device that you kind of clip onto your like the like your underwear, like like almost like like just a little clip that you clip, you know, kind of near your belly, and it would measure your breathing. And then you would open up your phone and it would tell you like how you're breathing and like how that might correlate with your mood. And I think they were expanding into HRV and heart rate and stuff like that. I think they got bought bought by a medical company or something. But I was really fascinated by how like tech and breathing could support us and like practically with our mood and with our well-being. And I think Moonbird is it just feels so practical because you're like breathing with it and it's kind of almost like coaching you in real time rather than giving you data about like the past, you know, on your phone. It like Moonbird and Moon Buddy is like actually supporting you in real time.

SPEAKER_00 12:17

Yeah, that was super important for for me in the beginning for us as a team is that you know, you've got all these wonderful wearables and trackers. And so at that moment that I had my sleeping issues as well, was like, okay, I need to know what's going on. And I bought an Aura ring and I I saw my data and I saw it was bad. And you know, it made me almost panic even more because now I'm confronted with how big the issue was. And I was also left a little bit with the idea of, and now what? Now I see the data and it's it's confusing because I want to act on it. Yeah, and that's really why we develop Moonbird and ultimately Moonbuddy is because we want to make sure that yes, you can track and yes, there is a good thing about that. But let's also, in line with that or in parallel with that, develop the solutions that allow you to improve your HRV, improve your sleep, decrease stress, decrease anxiety, and all these things. And so for me, that's really where Moonbird fits in. You know, you can track and we've got lots of data, but if you want to act on it and you find it difficult to do it on your own, because you know, you can do this on your own, you can do your breathing exercise, you can meditate, you can go to the, you can, you can go for a jog or whatever, but we as humans, we sometimes need a little bit of extra support. It's why we go to the gym, it's why we go to meditation class or take a meditation teacher training or a normal training. And so for those practicing breath work, you can want to do it on your own perfectly fine. If you need a little bit of extra help, then these are tools that can support you.

SPEAKER_02 13:51

Yeah, yeah. And I love that you can do this like in bed to help fall asleep without a screen. It's just very practical, you know. And a lot of scientists these days are saying like sleep is maybe the most important thing that humans need. You know, we all need nutrition and exercise and you know, hydration and all these things. But, you know, if you don't have good sleep, then everything else suffers. And so I love that it's practical in that sense. And, you know, that's kind of the basis for my company, mindfulness exercises. It's not mindfulness concepts, it's not mindfulness theory, it's exercises. Like, how can we actually do this in a practical way, not just thinking about it or rationalizing or studying in a head-based way, but rather like how can we actually practice this in an embodied way in real time, like right now, you know, in daily life. So I love your emphasis on keeping it tactile, embodied, real time. I am also fascinated by the data that it can show you, you know, in real time and retrospectively, which is you can see your heart rate and HRV. You know, a lot of athletes are using HRV scores as a key metric. And I think it's important for just heart health and general health in general. But can you talk a little bit about the data around heart rate and HRV and anything else and how people are using that for their well-being too?

SPEAKER_00 15:30

Yes, absolutely. So, as I mentioned, we've built in a heart rate sensor. So while you're doing exercise, you can measure your heart rate and heart rate variability. And you'll see that once you start practicing slow breeding exercises, this has an impact on how your heart beats. And so we all as healthy humans, our heart beats in an irregular fashion. When you have like an average heartbeat of 60 beats per minute, it's not like a metronome, it's not like constantly beating. It goes a bit faster and then it goes a bit slower. And that variation is very healthy. It's like it's normal. You don't have it. You either have a pacemaker or you're dead. So we all have variations between different heartbeats, and that is called heart rate variability. And basically, a lot of variability is healthy because it means that your heart is able to adapt, adapt to internal circumstances or external circumstances. Whether you're jogging and you know you need more air, your heart rate will adapt. Whether you're stressed, your heart rate will adapt. So there are lots of external or circumstances that impact your heart rate. And that's it's it's like it's healthy. The fact that you can adjust is healthy. So ultimately, that's also why athletes take very good care of their heart rate varietability because you know, a high HRV means that they're able to recover really fast, for instance, from exercise and strength. And there are lots of ways to increase your HRV, and one of them is exercising intensely. But basically, science shows that breath work is also a really good way to train your heart and to train and elevate your HRV. And so what we see is that when you start to breathe really slowly, these variations between heartbeats get much larger and shorter. So you get lots of variations between heartbeats. And that's because your heart rate starts to synchronize with your breathing. So you're breathing in and out, in and out, very regularly, very deep. So you get like this sinus pattern appearing in your breathing curve, if you would like map it, and your heart rate actually starts to synchronize with this. So you get like the sinus curve appearing in your heart rate goes up and down, up and down. And so that's what we display in real time when you're doing the exercise. So you'll see that your heart rate is like irregular. And once you start practicing slow breathing exercises, you get this sinus curve appearing in your heart rate curve, meaning that your heart and your breathing is coherent, which is sometimes referred to as coherent breathing as well, might be a term that some people have already heard of. And that's like training your HRV, increasing your HRV. And if you do that, it does not only happen during a session, but if you do that consistently, you also see that across sessions and just in general, your HRV will increase and go up.

SPEAKER_02 18:30

Wow, thank you for that background on HRV. It's so, you know, I come from a mindfulness and meditation background and have always been a little biased towards mindfulness in the sense that, you know, we could be mindful of our breathing, but we're not trying to force the breathing into certain ways or trying to breathe a certain rhythm. We're just kind of noticing however we're breathing. And over the years, I've been humbled by a lot of the research that's being done around the power of certain breathing practices and rhythms. And it's fascinating how quickly it can help change our state, decrease stress, you know, all these things that we're talking about. And so I just a couple months ago I enrolled in a breath work facilitator teacher training program where I'll support people with certain kinds of breath work and did a breath work retreat in Italy, and it was so powerful. And and just the breathing practices that they had me do really kind of cleansed my spirit in certain ways. And I was a believer that breath work is is really powerful. You mentioned that Moonbird and maybe Moon Buddy have different settings of different kinds of breathing. I think you mentioned box breathing. And can you talk a little bit about the options that people have in terms of the types of breath work that Moonbird can help facilitate?

SPEAKER_00 20:06

Yeah, absolutely. So what we so in general, breath work has like lots of varieties to it. And there's also a big and very popular part of it that focuses on like elevated and fast breathing rates, which is more like the intense and deep breath work that you typically do in like group sessions and so on. That is something that we left out of this. So we only focus on slow breathing, which helps you to relax, calm down, fall asleep faster. That's the kind of breath work that we focus on. The other part is also very interesting and might be something that you experienced as well during those sessions, which can be very emotional, helpful when you have traumas, like releasing those things can make you become very creative, like lots of people see things and so on. So it's like very, very intense. We believe that that's best done guided by somebody in real life to help you also integrate with whatever is like popping up and so on. So that's why we deliberately left that out of whatever we do. So we only focus on like the slow breathing size of breath work. And within that, there are lots of metrics that you can play with, be it the depth of the breath, being it the duration of the inhalation, the exhalation, whether you're breathing through your nose, your mouth, it high in your chest, in your belly, and so on. So there are lots of variations to it. And with the Moonbird app, you can change the variations between inhalation, exhalation, and whether you have pauses in between. And so you can completely customize that to whatever you want. We even do like a short intake to help understand what breathing rate is optimal for you based on your heart rate. So we'll let yeah, we'll let your breathe at different rhythms and we see on which heart on which breathing rate your heart rate is like optimal, optimally in sync with your breathing. And that's in like your personal breathing rhythm. But as you mentioned, like the default exercise is like a box breathing, it's an a one with a very long exhalation because that triggers the relaxation even more. So that's advice for sleep. We have a very neutral, like five in five out breathing exercise, which is my favorite, by the way. I'm just like a very regular, although it's seven in seven out, like it's very slow for me. But yeah, it's lots of things to play with.

SPEAKER_02 22:26

And um so do you like the five and five out and then a five, like in between the two or just back to back?

SPEAKER_00 22:33

No, so my default exercise is seven seconds in, seven seconds out, back to back indeed. No pauses in between.

SPEAKER_02 22:39

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 22:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 22:40

And what do you yeah, why do you like that one?

SPEAKER_00 22:43

I don't know. I just feel that maybe it's because I've been practicing it for a couple of years now already, that my my slow breathing pace is very slow. And I feel that if I breathe at five in five out, that it's it's a bit too fast. It just doesn't really fit me. I feel that it it just triggers my my nervous system, is even more relaxed when I breathe really slowly.

SPEAKER_01 23:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:05

I also use it mostly still when I'm in my bed when I want to fall asleep, which is different setting than when you're in the office, for instance, right? Because you're like active, you're doing stuff, and then your breathing rate is also a bit faster than while you're in your bed, right before you're falling asleep.

SPEAKER_02 23:22

Well, yeah, and I'm just kind of imagining myself doing this with the moon bird in my hand. Like to know when the end of the seven seconds is up, you really have to like bring your awareness into your hand. You know, it's it's not a head-based thing. A lot of us as mindfulness practitioners, it's easy to get caught up into head-based awareness. But with this, you know, we can say tactile, but really like imagining like holding something that will cue you where, you know, the end of the inhales coming and then the start of the exhales coming right after that. And to be able to tune into, you know, seven in, seven out, or whatever the flow is, you really have to bring awareness into the body, like below the head, into the hand, and then kind of you know, invite this syncing up with your own diaphragm, you know, and you're kind of feeling it with your lungs and your belly and your nostrils. So it's really an embodied experience that you are tuned into in a moment-to-moment way, you know.

SPEAKER_00 24:39

Yeah, it's a very mindful practice. Yeah. So while you're indeed, while you're changing your breathing rate, which is something you wouldn't typically do while you meditate because you just want to passively observe, here you are actively changing that, but at the same time, it requires some like focus onto this movement, but in a very somatic way, which helps when you know you have stress, anxiety, and it's all in your head. And here we kind of like invite you or almost force you to go to that physical aspect of the world. It's like we we invite you to connect with something and then literally connect with it by mimicking the motion and the movement, and so it's like a dual mechanism, it's a physical focus, inviting you to connect with it, and at the same time, you have just like the the effect of the slow greeting which relaxes your body, and so that combined is really powerful, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:40

And you know, a lot of emotions live in the body as well, and so as you were saying you're really connecting with the breath, with the body, with the you know, the device too. I'm sort of sensing into the probability or possibility that a lot of people are also connecting more with the emotions in the body, in what would feel like kind of a safe way to do that. Like, okay, we're sensing into the body, breathing in, you know, maybe there's a little bit of sadness in the body too, maybe a little bit of fear, maybe a little bit of anger. So I imagine that a lot of people are bringing mindfulness to their emotions in the body as they breathe, perhaps in a safe way, almost like how a keto kind of use utilizes the energy that's flowing in a way where we're we're using that energy in a kind of a fluid, safe way that's not combating anything, resisting anything, but rather just kind of it's a subtle shoehorn into oh yeah, so there's these emotions too. And I can breathe with them in the body together, and it's okay. I'm gonna focus on the breathing, but I'm I can also kind of feel the emotions also, so that I'm not resisting them per se, but I'm kind of slowly connecting with them breath by breath.

SPEAKER_00 27:11

Yeah, no, absolutely. And so we love to work with psychologists and therapists and coaches, and that's indeed that's what they say. So they have they see their patients or their clients, and obviously it's not about breath work alone, it's also about the mind, it's also about behavior and everything. But the moon bird is really like it's a support for them, and it allows people to get out of their head and to, yeah, to to work on another part of whatever trauma that they're dealing with. So we we Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 27:45

Do you see therapists and counselors and coaches handing the moon bird to their clients and walking them through it either in one-on-one sessions or in group sessions with many moon birds?

SPEAKER_00 27:59

Oh yeah. So we so we're a European company, and so we're quite established in our home markets, which is Belgium and the Netherlands. And we reached out to so many psychologists and therapists to to see if they would like to work with Moonbird, and there are plenty saying, I see so many people just walking into my my therapist room, and you can just literally see that people sometimes are stressed, right? Their shoulders are like high up and they don't, they're not breathing correctly. And you know, they come here for an hour and they just want to like talk and solve things, and but they never really like land in the room where they are. And she's the people that I talk to then often say, like, or the therapist, and I now even in my mind says, like, before then I can even actually start my session, I need them to physically arrive in the room and calm down, and then handing over the moon bird is like a great way to tell them, okay, breathe at this rhythm self, land and arrive here. And then even during the session, once that has happened, during the session, you can they can just keep using the moon bird, breathe with it, connect with it while not thinking too much about it. But after you know, a couple of minutes, it goes almost automatically. And then, you know, they they're more present in their body and in the room.

SPEAKER_02 29:19

Yeah, it's a great idea to do it at the start of those sessions. Reminds me a lot of companies and businesses like to start meetings now with a little mindful check-in for a minute or two minutes, and different companies do it in different ways. Some do it at the beginning of a board meeting, some do it like when a manager is giving feedback to their subordinate. You know, different kinds of meetings will start with a mindful check-in or a one to two minute practice. And I could see moon birds being utilized in a corporate or business environment as well for people to kind of land in their body. You know, kind of process the energies of the day before you know connecting with each other to meet.

SPEAKER_00 30:09

We are actually starting a study. So I have a scientific background, so I love to do research, even though that we're not a medical company or a medical device. We have done a couple of research studies here in Europe, but we're actually starting a research study in the US next week where we're gonna do exactly that. So we we and five moonbirds to like a team, and they're gonna use Moonbird on a daily basis, and we're gonna like see what the impact is on how they feel, how they interact with each other and so on, just to really understand that better. And similar is that idea, but in the school context. So in schools, children are so overly stimulated. And one of the ways that children deal with it right now is often that they have to leave the classroom and then they talk to a teacher or somebody helps them really to calm down. But the problem isn't that they skip class often because you know they need to leave the room. And so we here in Antwerp, we experiment with giving some schools and some classes moon buddies, explaining this to children. And the devices are just in the classroom. So now when a child feels overly stimulated, they can just autonomically grab the device, stay on their seat, and calm themselves down. So this is a great tool to help children self-regulate and deal with their own emotions without the intervention of a supervisor, without a need of leaving the classroom. And so in in January next year, we're gonna start do a study as well to also hopefully be able to demonstrate this in like a controlled way and publish these results.

SPEAKER_02 31:48

Wow. Please send me those results when you get them. I imagine they're gonna be positive. That's that's amazing. I was just trying to think of some other like names. So you have Moon Bird for like as your regular product, and then there's Moon Buddy for kids. Trying to think of a name for like you know, working professionals like Moon Wolf or Moon Buddy or or Moon exec or haven't quite found it yet.

SPEAKER_00 32:14

But please let me know when you have like a special edition for corporate moon LTD.

SPEAKER_02 32:22

Right, yeah, maybe like a black version with teal trim or something. And I do want to ask about like what are the differences between the moon bird and moon buddy? I know there's a different design, you know. What moon buddy is cute, but is there anything beyond that that's different for the kid version?

SPEAKER_00 32:41

Yeah, so once we received the feedback from the adults, we started doing lots of user research. We did lots of co-creation sessions with children, we had focus groups, we had children and parents like keeping diaries for a month to give feedback on the moon bird. And we're because we really wanted to know like what are the essential features? What should we keep? What should we strip and remove? And what is important for parents and kids when they're using the device. And so we noticed that kids weren't using the biofeedback component. Kids weren't interested in like the I can completely customize each breathing rate. That was like too much information and too difficult for parents and children to set all like the different settings. And parents were saying the moon bird, which is$199, is a bit too expensive to give the device with my children to school because they might lose it and they might drop it and whatever. So price point was also essential for parents. And so, what what because we were able to remove the application, we were able to remove the biofeedback sensor and so on, um, we were actually able to bring the costs down a lot. So the moon buddy is$89, and it's just a very simple version of the moon bird because it in essence only has like the expansion and contraction to it. And then on the device are like four breeding exercises which you switch by using a button. So it's very simple.

SPEAKER_02 34:08

Thank you. I'm gonna get one from my six-year-old. She's starting to learn different meditations now.

SPEAKER_00 34:14

So but I'd love to just send you one as a thank you for the podcast. I'd love to send you uh thank you.

SPEAKER_02 34:21

I'm also happy to just support your company as well.

SPEAKER_00 34:25

One thing that I still wanted to add to something that you mentioned before, which I think is interesting, is you mentioned you know, you started from the meditation and mindfulness corner, which sometimes indeed is a bit like it should be very accepting as is, not changing anything, just observing that that that whole philosophy almost. And I completely understand that. I am a huge fan of meditation as well myself. I think it's a beautiful way of moving through the world. But I also very quickly actually understood or saw how these two techniques are very complementary. And if you also look at the science, there is like a bit of overlap as well, where it's not always clear like what is triggering what, because when you're practicing meditation, you see that your breathing rate goes down as well, which might also trigger like lots of positive effects. And vice versa, when you're doing breathing exercises, obviously you're like focusing on your breath while slowing it down. So you're also doing like sort of a meditative practice. So I just I find that very intriguing, like that whole space and how all of these concepts actually are very differently and at the same time come together as well. And again, how they're very, for me, at least complementary.

SPEAKER_02 35:46

Absolutely. Yeah, it's a really excellent point that you know, classically speaking, you know, the Buddha rarely spoke about mindfulness as a separate thing. He would often combine like mindfulness and clear comprehension about what to do with that mindfulness, yeah. Like sati sampajanya, mindfulness and clear comprehension. It's easy in mindfulness circles and as mindfulness teachers to teach mindfulness as its own separate thing, which is valuable, especially in formal meditation practice. But but once we're aware of like, you know, what's happening moment to moment in more and more subtle ways, what do we do with that? You know, like what is an appropriate response? You know, we can't just, you know, sit in a corner under a tree all day. We have to act in the world, contribute to our society, etc. If I'm feeling anxiety, insomnia, anger, fear, you know, we can bring mindfulness to that, and we can have an appropriate response, which may include, you know, breathing, reflecting on something, or you know, going for a walk or getting a drink of water or whatever it is. The breathing can often be a very appropriate response after we bring mindfulness to okay, what's going on? Oh, yeah, there's insomnia, there's anxiety. Okay, you know, I can be with that. I don't need to run from it, I don't need to judge it, I don't need to resist it. And there's something I can do to support my well-being, like breathing.

SPEAKER_00 37:30

Exactly. They're all different techniques that we can use in our toolbox, you could say.

SPEAKER_02 37:36

Yeah, absolutely. Bella like that one. Uh Bellers. Stephanie, what's next for you? What's next for Moonbird? I know you have that exciting project that you're working on. What can we look forward to from you in the future?

SPEAKER_00 37:51

We are dying to spread wings in the United States. I'll be around more often, like physically, because I want to meet the people in the space there. I want to. We have such a beautiful mission, and I want to make sure that it does not stay, you know, where we are. And I want to ultimately help as many people as possible discover what's an important tool they all possess without really knowing it. Being adults, that's what we started with, but actually, even more so for the children. I really think that that's where we should like focus ourselves on, and that's the biggest need because if we would all know to understand or understand how we could use these kind of techniques and tools, we would move through the world better, we would interact more calmly with each other and so on. And I just think the world would be a better place. So I look forward to making sure that people hear more about the brand, introducing our solutions, what we do, doing research projects. And at the same time, we're also working a bit on like a new version of the app where we're gonna experiment with how we're offering reading exercise and so on. But that's like it's a it's a special project because what makes us really unique is like the physical aspect of it. And yeah, I look forward to to doing that.

SPEAKER_02 39:11

Beautiful. Yeah, well, happy to get the word out. You know, it'd be nice if there's a way for like whole schools to get a bunch of moon buddies for their classrooms and you know, start the day or each class with those. I know a lot of mindfulness teachers and coaches and therapists don't really know how to teach kids because a lot of the concepts go over their head or things feel a little theoretical. And you know, using a moon buddy is just very great step, yeah. Yeah, and can lead to them just growing up with more tools in their toolbox, which will impact their whole lives and you know, our society will be so much different with more mindful kids. Stephanie, is there anything else that you'd like to share with our community or any sort of other key takeaway that you'd like to share?

SPEAKER_00 40:02

I think we covered most of it. If I'm not sure if you offer that as well, but if the audience would be interested, we can like create a discount code or something. And people are always so we have like a trial period as well. So people can buy the device online, try it at the comfort of their home. I think that's important because you really understand how it is to breathe with it once you've breathed it with it. That's why we push actually really hard on the trial period. And if there is a reason why you don't like it or you don't connect with it, which can happen. Like some people think it's a great concept and they order it and suddenly they realize that they're not like this somatic person so much, which happens sometimes. You can just send it back and no strings attached, no squat, no questions asked, like no, no worries at all. But we do like love for people to try it because we know that it is helping a lot of people.

SPEAKER_02 40:57

Beautiful. Yeah, I think our community would be very open to that and appreciative. We do offer that. We'll put a link in the show notes and in our emails and connect people with how they can order that. Yeah, and you know, I encourage everyone to check out moonbird.life. Link will be in the show notes. You can check out the moon buddy, I believe they're also on Amazon. And, you know, you can just Google Moonbird breathing, and I'm excited to practice that with my daughter, especially.

SPEAKER_00 41:33

Yeah, looking forward to it as well. And I'm looking forward to hearing your feedback. And thank you so much for inviting me on this podcast and giving me the opportunity to talk about what we do because that's that is helping us a lot in making sure that we can achieve our mission. So thanks.

SPEAKER_02 41:48

Yeah, absolutely. And my pleasure. And I I also just want to share like this is not like a brand new thing. You know, it looks like you have over 80,000 customers, you have almost 800 reviews on trustpilot with a score of 4.7, which is really high.

SPEAKER_00 42:08

Like, and they're all honest reviews. Like, we have never ever faked a review like that. Some authors sometimes do that, but we have lots of just positive customers, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 42:20

Yeah, and they all look authentic. And just reading some of the reviews, like life-saving, love the product, uh love my moon bird, no more bedtime wobbles, a great tool for our kindergartner, Moon Bird Changed My Life, you know, etc. etc. There's just hundreds of them. Like I said, you know, my wife was in the breathing wearables space, and for a variety of reasons, it just didn't take off. But I think the moon bird is like really, really exciting, and I'm optimistic that it'll just continue to catch on. Stephanie, thank you so much for your time today. Thank you for doing all that you're doing for the world and for having this mission. And yeah, looking forward to staying in touch and seeing how this continues to evolve in different spaces and count me as a supporter, and I'm rooting for you.

SPEAKER_00 43:14

Thank you so much for those kind words and for the invitation. And I look forward to keeping, yeah, in being in touch and connecting.

SPEAKER_02 43:23

That sounds great.