Features/Stress & mind

Stress you can see before you feel it.

The ring reads autonomic load continuously — so a demanding morning shows up as a curve rather than a surprise at six in the evening. Then it offers you two minutes that actually change the number.

StressRing 78%
Current state 1.8of 5

Composed

Right where you like to be for a Tuesday evening.

What's driving this
Heart-rate variability61 ms
Resting heart rate65 bpm
Skin temperatureOn baseline
Start a 3-minute breath
One day of load

A curve, with the reasons attached.

Today · measured, then predicted

1.8now · 2.9 average so far

Relaxed

48%

Elevated

32%

High

20%

06:0010:0014:0018:0022:00
10:30 · meeting, HRV down 13:00 · lunch walk brought it down Dashed · the next few hours, predicted

The shaded band is your own comfortable range, not a general one. Time spent above it is what matters — a single spike during a hard conversation is not stress you need to fix.

How to read it

Nought to five, in words you would actually use.

0–1Restored

Deep rest or genuine calm. Common in sleep and after a session.

1–2Composed

Settled and capable. Most of a good day sits here.

2–3Engaged

Working, focused, mildly activated. Not a problem.

3–4Elevated

Activation you would notice. Worth a pause if it stays.

4–5High activation

Above your usual range. The app offers something small to do.

Stress reflects autonomic activation measured by your ring. It is not a measure of mental health.

The intelligence layer

What lifts you, and what pushes you.

After a few weeks the app stops describing and starts naming. These come from your own data, compared only against your own baseline.

Lifts you

Breath session−1.4
Evening walk−0.9
An early night−0.7
Sauna−0.6

Pushes you

Alcohol+0.8
Deadline day+0.6
Travel+0.5
Late coffee+0.4

Numbers shown are illustrative. Yours are computed from your own tagged days — which is why the notes you keep make the page smarter.

The intervention

When the curve climbs, it offers you two minutes.

A breathing session is what the app puts in front of you when activation stays above your range — paced by an orb on screen, and on Ring 1 by a vibration at each phase change. Afterwards your stress reading is taken again, so the session is measured rather than assumed.

Every intervention card also offers “Do nothing”. Being told to relax is not usually relaxing.

See guided breathing
Breathe in

4-7-8 · 2 minutes

Context

The ring measures. You supply the why.

Tag what happened and it lands on every chart it touches — stress, sleep, recovery, analytics. Seven categories, one tap each, and the correlations build themselves.

Substances Symptoms Lifestyle Environment Nutrition Mood Custom
  • MeasuredHRV, resting heart rate, skin temperature, breathing rate — continuously.
  • DerivedStress score, time in each state, daily and weekly patterns, predicted hours.
  • PersonalYour comfortable band comes from your own two weeks, then keeps moving.
  • HonestA poor signal is shown as a gap rather than filled in with a guess.
  • ScopeStress here means autonomic activation measured by the ring. It is not a measure of mental health, and not a diagnostic tool.
Questions

Before you track stress.

More in the help centre.

No. It is derived mainly from heart-rate variability, with resting rate, breathing rate and temperature as context. HRV is the part that reflects autonomic balance rather than effort.

Physiologically yes, and the app separates it out — a hard session shows as activation with a workout attached, so it is not mistaken for a bad day.

No. Suggestions appear where you would look for them, always with “Do nothing” as an option, and you can switch them off entirely.

No, and it does not try. It measures physiological activation — heart-rate variability and the signals around it. It cannot see mood, and it is not a diagnostic tool. If you are worried about anxiety or low mood, speak to a clinician.

No. Stress tracking is included with the ring, permanently — the curve, the scale, the patterns and the breathing session it offers you.

Weiter

Most of tomorrow's stress is decided by tonight's sleep

See sleep
Woman checking the Circular app while wearing the ring
Lernen Sie sich selbst kennen. Der Kreis schließt sich.

Start with one day.

Wear it tomorrow and watch where the load actually comes from.

Buy now Get a sizing kit
Woman checking the Circular app while wearing the ring
Lernen Sie sich selbst kennen. Der Kreis schließt sich.

Start with one day.

Wear it tomorrow and watch where the load actually comes from.