“We need healthy, creative and resilient children who know how to maintain wellbeing and can manage stress, judge risks and embrace failure as part of the learning process. It’s essential that we find ways of engaging young people with their technologies in order to do this.”

Charlotte Berry, Assistant Head Teacher, The Billericay School

The Problem

By developing emotional management skills, young people can learn to focus and perform better and protect themselves against more serious mental health problems. However traditional training activities, like meditation and yoga, are often seen as boring or irrelevant by this audience.

“When I’m in an argument I don’t feel right, I sometimes feel like I’m in a different planet, on a different world. When I did breathing I’d learnt in the game, I calmed down, came back to earth“

Student, 15

The Solution

A videogame that trains young people in diaphragmatic breathing which helps them to regulate their emotions and learn how to self-manage stress, anxiety, panic, depression and pain. Champion of the Shengha was developed by our mental health-tech spin off BfB Labs.

“Games tap into the most fundamental ways we learn and feel. They are an incredible way of reaching out to young people regardless of nationality and background – and, in as urgent and universal a field as mental health, this promises to equip countless players with a proven tool for transforming their own health and resilience.”

Tom Chatfield, author and technology theorist

So far…

• 5 trials in schools including an RCT
• 84% of players able to reliably raise their HRV during focused breathing time, using techniques taught to reduce physiological signs of stress
• 3 in 4 players reported getting better at staying focused within the game
• 1 in 4 players reported applying these focusing techniques outside of the game by trial end