This article originally appeared in the November 2016 issue of ELLE.

"What very small, easy-to-do thing can have a great impact on people's lives over time?" That's the billion-dollar question Jay Blahnik dangled before the engineers who helped mastermind the Apple Watch's fitness components. Now the status wearable offers users velvet-glove reminders (a friendly ping and subtle vibration) to move, exercise, and even stand up, incentivizing them with onscreen colored rings that fill in as they reach "move goals." But after two years of prodding humanity to speed up, Blahnik's team has a different message: Hit pause and breathe.

It's a little ironic for a smart watch to encourage us to disconnect, isn't it?

It's not lost on us that people's attachment to our products might be causing them more anxiety. They take fewer moments of quiet time; they can't just sit for a minute without checking their social feed. We know the brain is wired to have moments of calm and clarity. By talking to lots of experts, including an addiction specialist, about deep breathing as a tool for everything from drug addiction to quitting cigarettes, we found that it can relax you even when you can't clear your mind perfectly. It triggers the parasympathetic nervous system.

So how does the watch's new deep breathing app work?

There are a lot of recommended ways to breathe, but generally the exhale is about 50 percent longer than the inhale, amounting to about seven breaths per minute. We focused on short sessions; one to five minutes—we found that people who were comfortable doing more than five minutes tended to already have a really great habit established. We learned that if you dial it up to 20 minutes, that might make somebody feel one minute isn't helpful, when the science shows it really can be.

Why does the watch track moving versus standing—isn't there a crossover?

There's a lot of compelling research showing that exercise can't undo being incredibly sedentary. Lots of hours spent sitting is a separate risk factor. The part that's not incredibly clear is how long you should stand per hour. We believe you should count all movement. World health organizations are interested in this: People only seem to count the sweaty moments, when a brisk walk to work may do more to lengthen your life than an intense workout.

If the optimal standing amount is unknown, why cue us to stand for one minute every hour?

We found that globally there's a notion of an hour—meetings change on the hour, classes rotate on the hour. There's also a real intuitive notion of a minute. So basically, if you've stood for a minute, you've earned that hour.

How have you seen people respond?

At a store event in Tokyo, after 50 minutes, the whole audience stood up! We all got the reminder at [about] the same time. There's real social positivity to it that ends up changing a family, a tribe, a culture—suddenly nobody feels comfortable sitting for long.