Is Loam meditation app free?

Yes. Loam is free to download and free to start. Core tools like breathing exercises, journaling, daily check-ins, and streak tracking are always available at no cost. Premium unlocks the full guided session library, unlimited custom Moments, and advanced features.

What makes Loam different from Calm or Headspace?

Loam composes every session around how you feel right now — the voice, the pace, and the therapeutic approach all adapt in real time. Instead of a catalog of pre-recorded tracks, Loam generates a new meditation tailored to your current emotional state, calibrated to your experience level, and grounded in peer-reviewed research. It also ships with Sage, a wellness coach trained in Motivational Interviewing, and 15 breathing exercises with haptic-synced animations.

Is Loam safe to use alongside therapy or medication?

Yes. Loam is designed with clear clinical guardrails. Sessions never claim to diagnose or treat mental illness, never tell you to stop therapy or medication, and always defer to professional care for symptoms that warrant it. Content is constrained to evidence-based techniques (ACT, self-compassion, MBSR, somatic experiencing, CBT-I) and a carefully reviewed voice and pacing library. Meditation is a complement to care, not a replacement. If you're in crisis, please contact a local crisis line or your care provider.

What research is Loam based on?

Every therapeutic technique in Loam cites primary peer-reviewed research. Loam's breathing library is grounded in work by Balban et al. (Stanford, 2023), Zaccaro et al. (2018), and Lehrer & Gevirtz (2014). The Moment's therapeutic architecture draws on polyvagal theory (Porges), ACT (Hayes), self-compassion (Neff), MBSR (Kabat-Zinn), and somatic experiencing (Levine). A full citation library is available at /research.

Who are the voices in Loam?

Loam uses 13 research-selected voices. Each voice is chosen for the emotional state it handles best, based on polyvagal theory, ASMR research, and voice psychology — low resonant voices for grounding, warm bright voices for light moods, measured voices for heavy ones. Loam automatically picks the voice the research says will work for your current state, or you can override manually.

Does Loam work offline?

Core tools work offline, including downloaded meditations, breathing exercises, and the journal. The Moment — Loam's custom meditation composer — requires an internet connection at the moment of generation, because the session is composed on the fly. Once generated, every Moment is saved to your library and can be replayed offline without using any credits.

Does Loam have sleep stories?

Yes. Loam includes narrated sleep stories, sleep soundscapes, and wind-down rituals. The sleep content uses anti-storytelling techniques — structured to prevent the mind from latching on to narrative — based on CBT-I stimulus control research (Bootzin & Epstein, 2011).

What breathing exercises does Loam offer?

Loam offers 15 breathing techniques across beginner, intermediate, and advanced tiers, including Box Breathing (4-4-4-4), 4-7-8 Relaxation, the Physiological Sigh, Coherent (Resonance) Breathing at 5.5-5.5, Alternate Nostril, Ujjayi, Kapalbhati, and the Wim Hof method. Every technique links to the peer-reviewed research that validates it, so you can read the study if you want to.

Will I lose my streak if I miss a day?

No. Loam's streak system is explicitly wellness-first: streaks pause, they don't break. You get two streak freezes, you can mark rest days, and the app never shames you for missing a session. Anxious users are especially vulnerable to streak mechanics turning self-care into another source of pressure — Loam is designed to avoid that failure mode.

RESEARCH · CYCLIC SIGHING

Every claim cited · Every technique peer-reviewed

Cyclic Sighing — The Strongest Short-Breathwork Result

Name: Loam
Availability: InStock
Author: Loam

In the Balban et al. (2023) RCT, five minutes of daily cyclic sighing beat box breathing, cyclic hyperventilation, and mindfulness meditation on positive affect.

Updated April 2026·5 min read

By Loam EditorialUpdated April 2026

TL;DR. In the Balban et al. (2023) RCT, five minutes of daily cyclic sighing beat box breathing, cyclic hyperventilation, and mindfulness meditation on positive affect.

The Stanford trial

Balban et al. (Cell Reports Medicine, 2023) ran a 28-day study comparing four five-minute practices: cyclic sighing, box breathing, cyclic hyperventilation with retention, and mindfulness meditation. The primary outcome was daily positive affect, with secondary outcomes on anxiety and respiratory rate.

Cyclic sighing — a double inhale followed by an extended exhale — produced the largest daily improvement in positive affect and reduction in respiratory rate. The effect grew week-over-week, with larger cumulative gains in weeks three and four than in weeks one and two.

Relevant research: Balban et al., 2023 (Cell Reports Medicine).

Why the physiological sigh

The mechanism is plausible: a double inhale reinflates collapsed alveoli, improving gas exchange, and the extended exhale is the strongest voluntary lever on parasympathetic activation. Spontaneous physiological sighs occur naturally every few minutes during quiet wakefulness — the intervention turns that background mechanism into an attended practice.

The result is one of the cleanest 'do one thing for five minutes' findings in the short-breathwork literature.

Relevant research: Balban et al., 2023 (Cell Reports Medicine); Yasuma & Hayano, 2004 (Chest).

Caveats worth stating

This is one trial, albeit a well-run one. Effects in a replication might be smaller. The comparison arms were all sensible — not placebo — which is part of why the result is interpretable, but it also means the absolute effect over baseline is unknown.

We cite this paper because it informs a deliberate design choice: cyclic sighing shows up as a default recommendation in Loam's stress and anxiety flows, but we describe the evidence honestly rather than as a miracle protocol.

How this shows up inside Loam

Other research pillars

Polyvagal theory · Slow breathing · Acceptance and Commitment Therapy · Self-compassion · Somatic experiencing · MBSR · Binaural beats.

Or browse the full citations library — every claim on the site, indexed to its primary source.

← Back to home