We make calm you can hold — and we won't oversell it.
Fermata Wellbeing builds quiet, low-tech tools for overloaded nervous systems. Our first is Fermata Chime — a slim steel pendant you breathe out through. No app, no streak, nothing to be bad at.
A fermata is the small mark in sheet music that tells you to hold a note longer than written — to pause. That is the whole idea behind everything we make. Modern life keeps your nervous system revved, and the fastest way down a gear usually isn't more thinking, more willpower, or one more app. It's a longer, slower breath out.
So that's what we build: simple, physical tools that help you take one long exhale and come back to yourself. We're not a meditation app, a supplement, or a miracle. We're a small company that believes calm is a body-state first — and that the tools for it should be honest, analog, and good enough to actually keep on you.
Where Chime came from
Chime started with a borrowed trick. One of the oldest, least glamorous things a therapist can hand an anxious person is a drinking straw: breathe out through the narrow opening and your exhale stretches long — and a long, slow exhale is one of the few fast, drug-free ways to settle the body. It works. The only problem is that a soggy plastic straw is not something you'll keep around your neck.
So we built the version you would. Chime is a calibrated internal airway — set to just enough resistance to pace your exhale to about eight seconds — inside a pendant quiet and plain enough to wear every day. That calibration, not the steel, is the part that does the work. It's also the one thing the cheap $15 lookalikes leave out, which is why they feel like breathing through an empty tube.
Three rules we build by
We're a wellness brand in a category full of hype and knockoffs. The way we stay worth trusting is to keep the promises small and the mechanism real.
Body first
We design for the hard moment, not the journal entry. When you're spiralling, the quickest way out is usually through the breath — not by arguing with the thoughts.
Honest by default
We'd rather undersell. Chime isn't a cure, a treatment, or a replacement for therapy or medication — and we say so on every page, including this one.
Analog on purpose
No app, no login, no streak to break. The thing that's meant to pull you off your phone shouldn't live on it.
The engineered airway creates just enough resistance to pace your exhale — no counting, no technique required.
About the science (the honest version)
A longer exhale is associated with the body's calming, parasympathetic response, and a well-known Stanford study found that a short daily breathing practice did at least as well as meditation for people's mood. Both are reasons we think the slow exhale is worth building around.
Worth knowing, straight from us: that study tested a guided breathing protocol, not our pendant, and a more recent trial found more muted effects. Nobody has studied Chime itself. We think the long exhale is real and useful — and we'd rather you hear the limits from us than from a comment section. Chime is a tool that supports a calmer moment; it is not a medical device.
The honest line: Chime isn't a cure for anxiety, and it's not a replacement for therapy or medication. It's a fast, physical way to take the edge off and a healthier thing to reach for in a hard moment — best used as a daily habit, not a one-time rescue. If you have a breathing condition like asthma, check with your doctor first.
Meet Chime — and try it for 30 days.
Wear it in your actual hard moments. If it doesn't earn its place, we'll refund you in full within 30 days — no need to send anything back.
Choose your Chime