What is Heart Rate Variability(HRV)?

Simply put, HRV is the natural rise and fall of your heart rate in response to your breathing, blood pressure, hormones and even emotions. In a healthy heart, the rate should increase as you inhale and decrease as you exhale. The greater the heart rate variability, the healthier the heart and the nervous system that provides its feedback loop with the brain. Even more critical, it is reflective and predictive of general health and overall psychophysiological (mind-body) wellness.

Recently heart rate variability has been cited as a prognostic indicator of risk associated with a variety of chronic diseases, behavioral disorders, aging, and even mortality. The discovery of a single risk factor associated with such a wide spectrum of disorders is strong evidence of some underlying connecting phenomenon of disease and health that we are only beginning to understand. Changes in HRV seem to be a common denominator in this phenomenon.

Most important for those concerned with their own health or that of others, is that robust HRV is also associated with the balance of the sympathetic (fight-or-flight response) and parasympathetic (relaxation response) branches of the autonomic nervous system (ANS).

That means:

• Measurement of HRV provides us with excellent feedback about the state of the ANS and its response to stress. It is a measure of the amount of "response-ability" in your nervous system to deal with stress.

• Anything that improves your ANS balance and power and thus HRV will improve your overall health*

OK, so a lot HRV is a good thing to have. What causes some people to have reduced or compressed HRV? As mentioned, HRV is a reflection of the strength and balance of your ANS and its ability to recover from and resist the impacts of stress. When you face a stressor, your body must mount an appropriate response. This fight-or-flight response takes the form of increased heart rate and blood pressure, the release of special hormones, the tensing of muscles, etc. All of these actions are natural and necessary.

Problems arise when, you "go to the well" too often or you don't give your body a chance to reset to normal balance between challenges. When this occurs, the parasympathetic branch that provides the relaxation or reset may become exhausted and no longer be able to stop the stress response. The result is consistantly increased heart rate, reduced HRV, a continued extreme level of damaging stress hormones and the onset of stress-related symptoms and illness.

Although there are hundreds of "stress management" programs available, many do not address the real cause of stress-related problems. Some can even increase the stress in their participants by asking them to learn new and/or complex behaviors in addition to the stress of having to catch up on the work that they have missed due to the time involved.

After years of research into stress and its impact, we have concluded that:

• ANS balance is critical in reducing the impact of stress
• If stress cannot be readily reduced then resilience to the effects of stress must be increased
• High HRV is a good indicator of stress resilience while low values reflect the opposite
• The easiest way to improve HRV, and thus stress resilience, is through a simple breathing exercise that strengthens the dynamic function of the ANS

*Practicing paced breathing at a specific rate can, over time, re-couple the two halves of your ANS to work the way they were designed.