Feel it. Sit with it.
Let it go.
Ninety seconds with the things that weigh on you.
Solo product owner
2025–present
Solo · 0→1
Strategy, research, design system, SwiftUI
Overview
We carry what we never process.
There’s an old Zen story. Two monks come to a river, where a young woman stands at the bank, unable to cross. Without a word, the older monk picks her up, carries her across, and sets her down on the other side. They walk on. An hour passes. Another. Finally the young novice can’t hold it in: “How could you carry her? We’ve taken vows.”
The older monk says: “I set her down at the river. Why are you still carrying her?”
Most of us are the novice. We carry things long after we could have put them down. Not because we have to, but because no one ever taught us how to set them down. I lived that pattern, and the tools I reached for didn’t fit it. Meditation apps wanted ten minutes I didn’t have. Journaling apps wanted an archive I didn’t want to keep.
Salwa is my answer: a 90-second practice for training your brain to let things go, not just feel better for a moment. I built it solo, end to end, as a full 0→1 product exercise.
Gap
Calm is a state. Letting go is a trait.
1 in 3 adults struggle to mentally disengage from work (Cropley & Collis, 2020). Most wellness apps offer real but temporary relief: calm to consume, or an archive to keep. Salwa goes after the loop itself: you practice letting go until it becomes a trait, what Dr. Davidson calls states to traits.
↑ Release
← Passive
Active →
↓ Keep
Science
The mind can be trained.
Salwa is built on one belief, and two findings carry it.
The 90-second rule · Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor
The feeling ends.
The story about it doesn’t.
“There’s a 90-second chemical process that happens in the body; after that, any remaining emotional response is just the person choosing to stay in that emotional loop.”
Stress hormones fully metabolize within 90 seconds, if nothing restarts the clock. The emotion itself does not persist. The replay does.
Neuroplasticity · Dr. Richard Davidson
Emotional regulation is trainable.
The brain adapts.
“Well-being is a skill.”
Short, repeated moments of attention, not long sessions, strengthen the pathway between the prefrontal cortex and the brain’s emotional centers. What you do repeatedly stops requiring effort and starts being how you are.
The pond doesn’t become empty when the water stills. It becomes clear.
Process
Three steps. Ninety seconds.
Letting something go feels different from just forgetting it. That difference is the whole practice.
Where it stands
Live on the App Store.
Ten weeks from idea to submission. I owned the product and direction, and built it with AI tooling. Offline-first SwiftUI, StoreKit 2, and a Live Activity for the session. Everything you write is encrypted before it leaves your phone. When you choose to let something go, it's deleted for good.
Mar 2026
Idea conceived
Apr
App fully built
May
Beta users · Apple review
Jul
Live on the App Store
Current focus: finding product-market fit.
The wedge is the person who already installed and abandoned a mindfulness app. The honest signals are week-two returns and trial conversions.