What the heck is HRV and can it improve your life and health? Explore the connection between your heart rate and your nervous system, and learn how a breath practice can boost your health and resilience!

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In this episode, I discuss:

• 00:44 - Intro
• 02:10 - Grounding and Check-In
• 03:15 - Nervous System Review
• 04:52 - What is heart rate variability?
• 07:23 - Tracking HRV
• 08:07 - Improving HRV
• 10:54 - Practicing Resonant or Coherent Breathing

Episode transcript:

"...today's musings will build a little on the last two weeks. I want to continue talking about the nervous system and our breath. And then start to dive in to the connection to our cardiovascular health. And this interesting indicator of the resilience of our nervous system, called heart rate variability, or HRV. So we'll start by briefly revisiting the physiology of the nervous system, and specifically the autonomic nervous system. And then we'll chat a little bit about the relationship between that and heart rate variability. Talk about some things that you can do to support your HRV. And then if you're into this sort of thing, if you like data, if you like the deep dive, some ways that you can actually track your HRV. And then as always, we will end with a practice.

Today we'll do something called resonant or coherent breath together. So I invite you to start today by actually taking a moment to check in with yourself first. Where are you at in your day? What else is going on? Anywhere in your body that's holding tension.

Gently turn your head side to side. Soften the temple, soften the jaw. Do a few shoulder shrugs. Let those shoulders soften away from the ears. Do a little shake of the arms. If it works for where you're at in the moment, a little shake of the legs.

Take a nice, deep breath in through your nose. And a full breath out through your mouth.

So, you may remember from previous episodes that we have a few different components of our nervous system. And what I'd like to dial back into today is the autonomic nervous system. And this is that relationship between the parasympathetic nervous system response and the autonomic nervous system. It's often called rest and digest. And the sympathetic nervous system response, often called fight or flight. And both of these components are extremely important for our short-term survival as well as for our long-term health.

But of course, we know that in our modern world, with all these new and different types of stressors that are with us hours or days or months at a time, we spend more time in that sympathetic nervous system response. And this can have long-term negative health consequences. So of course, the more things we can do to try to cultivate that parasympathetic nervous system response, the better, the more time we can spend in that rest and digest, when it's appropriate, taking care of ourselves.

And there's this really interesting and intricate relationship between your autonomic nervous system and your heart rate.

So if you think about the things that we would be doing in that sympathetic nervous system response, such as running from a predator or chasing prey, our heart rate would necessarily have to be higher.

And if you think about the things that we would be doing in that parasympathetic state, rest and digest, our heart rate would naturally be lower.

So there's this interesting movement back and forth between the higher heart rate and the lower heart rate.

So the more your body or nervous system are adapted to be able to move efficiently between these two, the greater difference there will be in the time between your heartbeats, between that autonomic nervous system sympathetic state and parasympathetic state.

And then if we drill down to even a more micro layer, when you inhale and your body shifts a little more into that sympathetic state, your heart rate may raise a little.

And when you exhale and your body shifts to that parasympathetic state, your heart rate may lower a little.

So if we think about a traditional yogic breath practice where we are trying to make the exhale longer than the inhale, the invitation there is to spend more time in that parasympathetic state.

And these intentional breath practices, along with many other awesome practices, which we will get into in a moment, have this ability to improve our heart rate variability over time.

When we spend a lot of time breathing quickly, breathing shallowly, such as during intense exercise or periods of stress, this can stimulate that sympathetic nervous system, and this can lead to a decrease in our heart rate variability.

If you are interested in actually knowing what your number might be, the best way, the most accurate way to do it is going to be to actually have an appointment with your doctor and have them do an electrocardiogram.

But that's a big hoop to jump through for a lot of us, and also a lot of doctors.

If you don't have a specific concern or consideration, you may be hesitant to do that for you.

But if you have a fitness tracker or you use a heart rate monitor, some of those will actually track your HRV for you.

So again, if you like the data, if you like to get nerdy, can be a fun thing to look at.

And then I also want to mention a few other things that you can do before we come to our breath practice together to improve your HRV, thus improving your overall health, improving your nervous system, stress response.

So the first one I want to mention is just getting good sleep.

I think I'll probably end up doing at least a few episodes or maybe another focus a whole month just on the importance of sleep because it is so interconnected to all different facets of our health.

And getting good sleep is just absolutely critical, and so many of us are missing that in the modern world.

So if you are getting a solid night's sleep consistently, you're honoring circadian rhythms, trying to keep your bed times fairly consistent, your rising times fairly consistent, that will improve your HRV over time.

Exercise is also wonderful for improving HRV, but it needs to be done mindfully.

So we know that both strength training and aerobic exercise can have a lot of benefit to our overall health, our cardiovascular health, and thus our HRV.

But overtraining can actually have the opposite effect.

So if you are training to the point where you are just absolutely exhausted, or if you're training many days in a row and not taking days off, that can actually decrease your HRV.

A few other simple things that there is at least some evidence that they might boost your heart rate variability is staying hydrated, decreasing or eliminating consumption of alcohol, lowering your overall stress, and spending time outdoors in nature, if you can, actually connecting to some grass or some soil.

And as you start to experiment with these things, especially if you are tracking the data, just keep in mind that your HRV is not fixed, so it might look a little different day to day.

It's certainly going to look different week to week.

And no matter where you are at in your self-care journey and where your stress level is at, you can absolutely improve your heart rate variability.

And the way that I would like to practice with you today is something called resonant breathing or coherent breathing.

And this is six breaths per minute, and this is the pace which has been shown to have the most benefit to HRV.

So six breaths per minute is, of course, about a breath per 10 seconds.

So thinking about your general comparison of how long your inhale is to your exhale is, you can think about what that's going to look like for you.

Maybe it's a four second inhale and a six second exhale.

Maybe it's a three second inhale and a seven second exhale.

So as we usually start with our meditation practices at the end, if you would like here, go ahead and get super comfy.

Get into your meditation posture seated or lying down or walking slowly through a familiar area.

But the lovely thing about a practice like this is you can really do it anytime.

So while you are washing the dishes or while you are walking your dog, maybe thinking about bringing in this resonant or coherent breath, just keeping to that idea of about one breath for every 10 seconds.

So for today, wherever you are at, I invite you to take a moment first to notice your natural breath.

And without any expectation or judgment, particularly noticing if your breath feels rapid or your breath feels shallow or incomplete.

Maybe take a moment to count the length of your natural inhale.

Count the length of your natural exhale.

Hail.

And then if your breath is a little shorter, start to draw out the length of your breath, moving toward about one breath per 10 seconds, about six breaths per minute.

And I'd like you to keep going with this for a while.

So if it works for you, go ahead and just pause the podcast here, or maybe go ahead and finish it, and then move into your resonant or coherent breath later.

So, wherever you're at, go ahead and start to release control of the breath.

Come back to your natural breathing rhythm.

Notice and inhale.

Notice and exhale.

If you are seated or lying down, go ahead and bring a gentle movement back into the body.

The eyes are closed.

Gently blink or flutter eyes back to fully open.

Reorient yourself to your space.

How do you feel?

How do you feel physically?

How's your nervous system?

What did you think of this practice?

As always, reach out to share your experiences, any comments, any questions..."