How Your Lungs Work
Discover the hidden engine behind every breath. Learn how your body captures air, powers your blood, and how you can use breathing to control your energy and stress.
Like Duolingo, but for How Your Lungs Work. Tomo turns the whole topic into a game you play five minutes a day, until it actually sticks.
A short one: 12 levels across 2 sections, about 24 minutes end to end, roughly 5 days at five minutes a day. It moves through The Mechanics of Breathing and Mastering Your Airflow. It starts from scratch.
Free forever · No credit card · iPhone & Android

Key ideas in How Your Lungs Work
- Lungs are passive tissue similar to balloons
- The diaphragm acts as the floor of the chest cavity
- Lungs lack the muscle fibers to move themselves
- The diaphragm moves downward toward the stomach to inhale
- Lungs rely on external pressure changes to expand
- Moving the diaphragm down creates a vacuum in the chest
- The mechanical action of the diaphragm
- Belly breathing moves the organs out of the way so the lungs can stretch downward
- Chest breathing is restricted by the rigid structure of the upper ribs
- Lung tissue is elastic and naturally wants to shrink back
- Exhaling during rest doesn't require muscle effort
- The physics of a relaxed exhale
- The rib cage provides a rigid frame that protects the lungs
- Why belly breathing is more effective for lung capacity
- Ribs move up and out like a bucket handle to increase lung volume
- Rib movement is essential for maximizing air intake
You've tried the other tabs
Thirty open tabs. Four facts you actually kept.
You watched. You nodded. By Sunday it was gone.
One answer, then back to scrolling.
Eight weeks. You meant to finish. You didn't.
Tomo gives How Your Lungs Work the Duolingo treatment: levels, streaks, and quick quizzes that test what you just learned. That game loop is what the tabs above never had, so it's the one you actually finish.
Here's what playing it feels like
A real question from this course. Take your best guess.
Where is the diaphragm located in relation to your chest cavity?
Get it right to open this lesson and 11 more in the app.
Where How Your Lungs Work takes you
- 1
The Mechanics of Breathing
- How You Actually Move Air
- The Great Gas Exchange
- 2
Mastering Your Airflow
- Taking the Controls
- Protecting the Filter
2 sections · 4 units · 12 levels. Built to play, not to enroll.
Tomo is in ChatGPT
Tomo is also a ChatGPT plugin: the same playable courses, built and played inside your chat.
Add Tomo to ChatGPT- What to ask
- “Make me a Tomo course on black holes.” “Turn this chat into a Tomo course.”
- What you get
- Quick questions with instant feedback, hearts and stars, ready to play in about a minute.
- Where it goes
- No sign-up to start. Connect your Tomo account and your streak carries on in the app.
You pick the voice
How Your Lungs Work is taught in the Bestie style: your friend who just gets it. Want a different feel? In the app you can spin up the same topic in any of Tomo's teaching styles. Same facts, totally different vibe.
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Start How Your Lungs Work today.
Download Tomo, search How Your Lungs Work, and play your first lesson in under a minute.