Meditation isn’t mystical. It’s measurable.

Equa began as a control arm of a placebo-controlled clinical study in the Health and Human Performance lab at Carnegie Mellon University. It did so well that Dr. David Creswell, a leading researcher in mindfulness meditation and cognitive neuroscience, realized that the world could benefit from accessing it. He teamed up with Mat Polowitz, Equa co-founder and CEO, who is a product-minded entrepreneur and meditation trainer as well, to bring this powerful research to the world.

Yes. Equa's methodology is developed in partnership with both Dr. David Creswell's lab at Carnegie Mellon University, and the Unified Mindfulness System. The research underpinning our training protocol is peer-reviewed. We teach what the science shows – not more, not less. If you want to read the studies, check out the Science section of our website to learn more.

Consistent practice – even as little as a few minutes each day for 14 days – produces measurable changes in attentional control and stress biology. Specifically, the science of Equanimity and Acceptance Skills – or leaning into discomfort with a lens of acceptance and curiosity – yield the strongest outcomes in building the foundation of a more positive mindset. That's what our Carnegie Mellon research shows. We're not claiming it rewires your brain in a few days or fixes everything at once. It's a training effect that follows the same logic as physical conditioning. Show up consistently, and the muscle will build with reps.

Training tool. The underlying technique is meditation-based, but the goal is skill development. You're training your attentional capacity – the same way you'd train strength or endurance – with measurable inputs and outputs. If a "meditation app" has ever felt like it wasn't for you, that's probably because it wasn't designed like this.

Other apps give you a buffet of content to consume. Guided sessions, sleep stories, ambient audio. There's nothing wrong with that, but consuming content isn't the same as building skills. Equa is a training platform. Your respiration is tracked in real time, measuring your attention from session to session, and the app adapts to where you actually are – not a generic user profile. You can see your practice improve over time. That's new.

Your breathing is one of the only physiological signals you can both consciously control and observe passively. During practice, changes in your respiration rate map directly to changes in your attentional state. Equa reads that signal in real time. Instead of guessing whether you're doing it right, you can see it. That feedback loop helps us turn passive sitting into active training.

It's not better, but it is different in a specific way. Most people who try meditating and quickly drop off have a hard time trusting that anything is happening. The practice feels challenging, or worse, like nothing, so why stick with it? But we know that certain styles of meditation produce real impacts on stress biology – in everything from systolic blood pressure to cortisol and much more. Respiration feedback gives you an immediate signal that something measurable is actually occurring. When you can see your nervous system regulating, "trust the process" becomes "watch the data." This helps you validate the process, rather than trust and hope that it works.

None! Equa’s respiration tracking uses the Inertial Measurement Unit in you phone – sensors like the Accelerometer and Gyroscope to record your breathing data. 

You can do this simply by leaning back or laying down and placing the phone on your diaphragm. If you want to purchase a chest strap, you can use one to allow you to sit up while you practice. But that’s not necessary.