Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to the Heart Rate Variability Podcast. Each week we talk about heart rate variability and how it can be used to improve your overall health and wellness. Please consider the information in this podcast for your informational use and not medical advice. Please see your medical provider to apply any of the strategies outlined in this episode. Heart Rate Variability Podcast is a production of Optimal LLC and Optimal HRV. Check us out at optimalhrv.com Please enjoy the show.
Welcome to the Heart Rate Variability Podcast and Happy New Year. Our first episode in 2025. I just gotta pat me the team, everybody, our two returning guests here.
When we set out to do this many years ago, it's like I wonder how many episodes we can record on one biometric and I think the answer is around 195. So, and we are, we are going strong. So it is great to make it to 2025 and to do so with two people. Not only do I consider teachers of mine, but also friends as well. We got some exciting news to explore too and help you think about how you reach your goals in 2025. So Janae, Scotty, welcome back to the show. Our long term listeners will have remembered your past episodes, but it's great to have you all back and start 2025 with you.
[00:01:31] Speaker B: Thank you.
[00:01:32] Speaker C: Thanks Matt and happy New Year.
[00:01:35] Speaker A: Yes, so, so one of the big announcements we have in Optimal going into next year is we get a lot of people from time to time asking us, okay, I've got my heart rate variability score, I do HRV biofeedback, I get the optimal zone, I get low frequency.
Now what, what do I do with this? And we're really advocates for integrating that into a bigger plan for your health, your wellness or your overall life. And one of the things that we wanted to bring to, to our users is, is world class coaching. And there's two people that came to mind right off the bat when I thought about, okay, who are we going to start with? Who if like a customer reaches out to me, who do I have 100% confidence with making the referral that they are an expert in heart rate variability, they know what they're talking about and can help you with HRV biofeedback and also bring a lot of other expertise to the table because HRV is something that tells you, gives you information about yourself or can supplement other things in your life. And the first two names that popped into my head and my team's head were Scotty and Janae. So I am so excited to have both of you and kind of make this Official, you can find them at optimalhrv.com, you can see bios there as well. With that, you can get contact information. We'll put that in the show notes as well. But I'm just kind of excited to explore what, what coaching can look like and whether you use my two highly recommended folks or you may be looking for somebody you can see in person, more geographically located things that you can bring in and utilize heart rate variability to look at helping you reach your, your mental health, your physical health outcome goals. So just because it's been a while since I've had you on the show, Janae, can you just give us a little bit of quick introduction of yourself and maybe a little bit about your work in heart rate variability?
[00:03:52] Speaker B: Yeah, sure. Thanks, Matt. So I am a licensed mental health therapist.
I have a private practice here in Boston where I live, but I also conduct telehealth in several other states. But I'm just a firm believer as a therapist that we have to look at all the different angles that impact how we both physically and mentally. And so a lot of the training that I had in school 15, 20 years ago was kind of that top down approach. Let's look at the cognitions, what's going on there, how does that lead to how we feel.
But becoming board certified in biofeedback, using it just personally in my own life and then bringing into my practice has been a huge game changer because we get to approach it now as well from the bottom up. What are the patterns that have been built into the nervous system that we can begin to shift and change and then has such an impact on how we feel physically, emotionally and mentally?
[00:04:57] Speaker A: Oh, I love that. Love that. Scotty, go for it, my friend.
[00:05:01] Speaker C: Yeah, thanks. Very, very happy to be here, not just on the podcast, but working with such an amazing team with, with you, Matt and your crew and Janae. And it's, it's pretty fantastic. So, so for me, if you haven't heard anything from me, I used to be a physical therapist. I spent 25 years as a physical therapist and 17 of those as an academic.
I have a PhD in physiology. And you know, we, we, Janae was talking about the top down cognitive versus the body based, bottom up kind of, kind of work. You know, a lot of what I did in the past was body only. And you know, we certainly know that or the bottom only. And we, that's not how things work in terms of our overall health. And I agree with Janae and her comments around the holistic nature of looking at people's regulation, ability to regulate not only their nervous systems, but their thoughts and their emotional responses. And As I said, 25 years as a physical therapist, I also suffered 25 years with anxiety before I found a mindful based biofeedback approach to my management. And you know, I was so successful in my own, in my own care that I had to go down that path and being trained as a mindfulness teacher, doing a bit of research before I left academia on heart rate variability and then, and then going through the process of being certified as board certified in HRV biofeedback. And it's been an amazing, amazing transition, amazing journey. And so now I am a coach who is in, in school again after many, many, many years to, to go through the counseling, psychology and psychotherapy route. And so, so looking forward to bringing that into, into the biofeedback and bringing biofeedback into that realm as well, but certainly using it from a coaching perspective right now, which is, I really feel like it's a game changer for individuals to really understand how their body works and how, how their thoughts and the way that we breathe and the way that we, we look at our body signals and looking at the numbers going up and down is, is pretty powerful, especially those that don't have a huge connection to, to their own bodies. So, so I'm looking forward to being able to help spread the, spread the message and the knowledge.
[00:07:38] Speaker A: Awesome. And to avoid confusion, here is Scotty's joining the team. Janae and I don't currently practice, but are in the mental health side. So we're using coach to describe and Scotty has, he can talk about this in a little bit. You know, a vast history in coaching. We, we will shift that and edit that to therapy at some point. But Janae, I, I know we, we and I talked about it too. And some of this is like, you know, ethical, legal, you know, what do we call ourselves when we do this? And you know, you know, through those conversations we, we did, you were putting you out there as rightfully so a therapist. And so I wonder because I think some folks would be like, okay, maybe I've got past trauma in my life or I've got severe anxiety or grief.
You know, how, how would Janae, you know, integrate HRV into some, you know, teletherapy work with me? So I'd love to just discuss that because we, we talk a lot about coaching in the wellness field, but just kind of what, what you would be doing as a therapist, both with your work with Folks and how to integrate HRV into that?
[00:08:58] Speaker B: Yeah, it, it really depends on the person. It's interesting. Some people will reach out to me specifically. They might already have like a long term therapist that they're seeing, but that therapist isn't integrating any body work of any way. And so we meet just kind of short term even to kind of get their heart rate variability on board, start to grow that, and then they kind of transition back to therapy. So that's one way of doing it.
But if someone's looking for, you know, more traditional therapy for anxiety, for trauma, so often we're seeing how the body is responding with those. And so of course I do a full assessment right in the beginning to see where someone is at and then we decide together where do we want to focus first? Where do we want to take this? I will often start with this because it's such a powerful tool that you can kind of just take home with you and begin to practice on your own. And it literally begins to shift baseline nervous system functioning. So even our work within the therapy process, it can be improved.
[00:10:09] Speaker A: Beautiful. Beautifully said. So. So Scotty, I would love to, to have you follow up on that because I know you do some work, as you mentioned, with anxiety. Obviously you, you've got a background on the physical health side of this. You know, you and I have had private consults about how, how should a 50 year old who probably isn't gonna win Mr. Universe. I, you know, it's, it's, it's, that's something like you can see a lot.
[00:10:37] Speaker C: That bicep wasn't there before.
[00:10:40] Speaker A: I know I've been working, like I said, this is the outcomes you will get with our professionals you can work with. But I'd love for you to talk about also some, maybe some of the physical aspects that you can help people out and have helped people out over the years and then talk a little bit about the coaching and what that would look like for anxiety as well.
[00:11:02] Speaker C: Yeah, it's, I mean, improving your physical activity, just to put this out there as, hey, you know, you know, this is a prime time for this too, being early in January. Now we're, you know, we're talking New Year's resolutions and things along those lines. And physical activity is one that a lot of people really, really hone in on at this time of year. So it's great timing for that. Physical activity is one of the most important activities for physical emotional ment.
I would even, I would throw spiritual health in there and one that is very, very well researched. We know the benefits of physical activity on mental health, on anxiety. There's multitude of research that, that's out there. So a lot of, a lot of where I spent my early parts of my career was on the strength training aspect and, and the importance of strength training, which, you know, as we were commenting, Matt's building up tall, tall, skinny frame. He's building up some muscle, which is awesome to see. It's, it's just so important for our, our overall health, physical health and emotional and mental health. And again, lots of research on that. So I, I think one of the big things to start with is, is that, you know, we don't want to necessarily separate mind, body, spirit, you know, brain, because we know that they're integrated, but we have these pockets of, of information that are based on some of the older approaches where, you know, physical, physical fitness can have a big impact on the physical frame. But it's, it's, we're just recognizing so much more of that integrated piece and, and the impact of, of something like anxiety on, or the strength training and the impact of strength training on anxiety, depression and, and multitude of emotional mood responses. As a coach, being not a therapist, you know, I wouldn't dive as deep into ne the behind the scenes of where those are coming from. We focus a lot on the goals that we would get out of, out of working together and not necessarily the emotional history. But you do talk about it and we do know that when you combine something like a good quality strength training program with some other good practices, like good sleep practices, good nutrition practices, and then now we're recognizing that something like heart rate variability, biofeedback and other ways of, of working with someone to train emotionally and train the mind just like we would train the body can have such a huge impact on someone's health overall. So I love that we're in the space where we're talking about biofeedback as one method to really get people to tune into their own emotions and their own mind to help support the goals that they have going forward and to help manage any of the concerns that they have.
[00:14:09] Speaker A: Awesome. So, Janae, I, I, we're here. You know, the New year last statistics that, that I saw is that people fail at their New Year's resolution around an 80% clip, which if you wonder why people don't make the change you want them to do, just look in the mirror. You know, it is, you know, it don't judge others because we know that across the board we're terrible at change. So, so we're at this time where people may be thinking about now that the hangover from New Year's Eve might be wearing off a little bit. Think about, okay, try to remember what New Year's resolution they said. But, you know, for folks that are wanting to. To live a healthier life, health on all those different integrated levels that Scotty talked about, I'd love for you to speak a little bit about the, the role of social support in that and how, you know, you sort of help people reach their goals, you know, even if that's better. Mental health for, for example.
[00:15:15] Speaker B: So, like, how social support helps with goals overall.
[00:15:18] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:15:21] Speaker B: I mean, I would say in general, you know, you think of having a gym buddy waking up at six in the morning, you're likely not going to get there.
[00:15:29] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:15:30] Speaker B: If you don't know someone's meeting you there. So that type of thing, I really, I do think, whether it's, you know, like I'm saying, the gym, physical health or your mental health, like having someone. I remember one time I was wanting to incorporate meditation more into my daily practice, and so I had a friend who we said, okay, for the next 30 days, we're going to text each other every day and check in on our meditation practice. And that was kind of foundational for me to, like, develop the habit. That's the hardest part, is creating the habit. Once the habit is there, it keeps you going.
So having that support right in the beginning, I think can be so helpful.
[00:16:12] Speaker A: Absolutely. And one of the things that I hear from professionals using our app so much is that there is that, especially around hrv, biofeedback and mindfulness, that accountability. One of the great things about working with Janae and Scotty is, you know, with our dashboard, they can see and support you not only with tracking heart rate variability as you implement maybe healthy changes, but also to make sure that you're actually doing your practice as well. Like I said, I think HRV biofeedback, from my background as a mental health therapist, the greatest homework we can give people. I know, I've said that about a million times on this podcast.
[00:16:55] Speaker B: Now, your very highest charts that. Matt, I get it.
[00:16:58] Speaker A: I know, I know. But homework is only as good if you do it right. And so it is that starting practice. And the other thing just to add on to that that I see too, is we know it. And I hate to let this secret out of the bag, but, you know, you hear this. It takes 21 days to create a habit. BS now, I saw it. BS because it's wrong and it never was right. I guess the history of some chiropractor wrote it in a book. I didn't really even say it, but it caught on enough, even though the book wasn't like a bestseller by any stretch. And so we all think it's 21 days. It's really kind of more like 66 if you look at how long it takes to impact the nervous system. And I think that social support as well, maybe day one through 10, you're motivated. But it's that, that medium stretch along the way that I think getting folks help again to reach your health goals. Well, whatever, however you define that can be huge. And I know with therapy, oftentimes I help people address some of those barriers that have long kept them from living the life that they want as well. So, Scotty, I wonder. I know. I love. By the way, you've got the best name programs of all times. And if you like Star wars and you're not, you're just listening to us. Scott is your guy. He can go marvel with you as well. I'll probably go a little DC Universe too.
You know, he. He is, he is one of my favorite people when it comes to designing and naming programs. So, Scott, I know you. You do a lot of this kind of work of helping people reach their goals as a coach. So I just love to get your kind of thinking around structuring that and then that. That support to help them reach it.
[00:18:50] Speaker C: Thank you. Yeah. And. And thanks for the nerdy shout out, too.
Yeah. I will go DC every once in a while. I'll play both sides. Yeah.
[00:18:59] Speaker A: But starting to be more currently, not historically. I think D.C. is doing a little better right now. That, that's just my personal opinion. That's. That's all. I'll drop it there.
[00:19:08] Speaker C: Yeah, I'm excited, excited for the new Superman coming. But anyway, so consistency is king. Just to.
Off of what. What Janae and, and you had said, it's honestly the, the consistency of doing it day in, day out. Not. I mean, the practice doesn't need to be perfect in. You know, there's ways that we can refine it, there's ways that we can make. Make things more effective.
But really the, the, the bread and butter of it is that you're doing it on a regular basis. And that's where building that habit becomes really important. So, so that is one of the things that I think is really a good.
Have something that you're doing every day, even if it's a couple minutes, even if it's Just a couple minutes just to get going. And you know, it works a little bit as a gateway into being able to build up and to do a bit more. But I really like the idea when I work with my clients to look at it very, very similarly to what I would have done in the past with the strength training program. So you want to assess where someone is at the, at the current moment and there's multitude of ways of doing that. But one of the easies ways to work with someone remotely is when they have the tech like, like the optimal reader and we can see their data and we get that baseline right. So we. I would usually start most of my clients off unless there was a reason not to with, with getting a good solid baseline and teaching them how, how to, you know, how to use the, the app and the equipment and things like that. And you know, sometimes it's basic like that.
But that is that initial assessment is really important. And then what's really what where we progr is good habits around the type of breathing that we're going to be doing to access the right biofeedback to increase our HRV and to look at that. So it sort of starts off with that assessment and then looking at are they breathing with a good breathing pattern. And so it's just like taking someone at the gym and saying we're going to assess your strength, we're going to look at your movement patterns, make sure you're going to be safe while you're doing this and effective while you're doing this and then gradually going to increase the load. That's the, in essence what we do with biofeedback training is, is the same thing we start with with a baseline. We start with making sure the mechanics are good, they're breathing well, they're not exhibiting any signs of over breathing, which can change the balance of chemicals and you know, carbon dioxide. And there's lots of good research around hypocapnia and things like that, which is low CO2 levels. And then get them into progressively looking at how do you slow your breathing down to a pace that's going to be somewhat similar to start with as your resonance frequency and start developing that habit. Once there's some good learning that's happened there, then it's a matter of progression and again progressing to well, what is the optimal load? Well, maybe we might start at what everybody starts at as an average of six breaths a minute while they're doing some of the work. But now we can use the app to, to help walk them through a resonance frequency assessment and, and help make sure that you're, you know, that they're staying with the right breathing format and, you know, avoiding the over breathing and, and really getting a good sense of what that's like, and then it becomes a progression. So again, you know, if you're familiar with any exercise training programs, that's in essence what we do in, in this HRV type coaching with biofeedback is to teach people how to do it right and then help them progress and make sure that they're consistency.
[00:22:52] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely.
You know, and Janae, I just want to open up because I know, you know, biofeedback has been, you know, big informative to your work. Anything that you would add to what Scotty was saying there about integrating this into, you know, the mental health goals, people might come to you with. With the resident's frequency assessment, I knew virtually you don't have the expensive equipment in the office, but, but how do you look at how that could look for individuals who might be interested in working with you?
[00:23:29] Speaker B: Well, I was thinking as Scotty was talking, I am such a big proponent of making small changes first and so that, you know, a lot of times with breathwork, you know, if we're working on, okay, we found your baseline, we found your resident frequency.
Some people, it depends on the type of personality, but some people, like, gung ho, like, okay, I'm gonna jump in, I'm gonna do it seven days a week for 20 minutes. And most of the time that doesn't hold. And so being able to like, even, okay, I'll only do 10. How about we just do three every other day? Let's see what happens with that. You know, like so small that it almost seems like nothing. But once that habit starts to, then it can grow for there or sometimes I'll even say, you know, just set it for two minutes. You know, you do two minutes. If you feel like going for more, go for more, but you only have to do two. And so often once you're there and you're in it, you're going to go for longer. And that applies to resident frequency breathing, but so many other things when it comes to therapy, I mean, we're learning new skills and ways of interacting with our environment, grounding skills, mindfulness skills. And so I use that tactic with most things of less is more in order to kind of create a different pattern.
[00:24:57] Speaker A: I love it. I wish we could give people, maybe Scotty, from a sci fi perspective, you can work on this. But like, okay, if you practice this this is what you will feel like. Like, I almost think, like, three months is enough to kind of feel it, but if you keep doing it, like, I've been practicing mindfulness almost daily for about 15 years and I'm just a different human. Like, like, it has been so transformative to me. You can still tick me off, but, like, my joke is it's usually my toaster oven. Like, an appliance can still get to me. Like, I'm not battling a dishwasher right now, you know, because I don't want to buy a new one because I'm frugal. My wife says I'm cheap, but I'm frugal. But it's like, yeah, the dishwasher can still get, get a few cuss words out of me, but then I breathe and I realize, just a dishwasher, like, so it's like, it's too bad we can't just give them a pill of five minutes of. Here are all those benefits you're going to get, you kind of gotta, you gotta trust it. But I know working with Janae and Scotty too, you know, really crafting that around meeting your goals and supplementing that as well, it's not, you know, they, they can both look at your heart rate variability numbers and give you some good feedback if you want a one time sort of coaching thing. But I think the real benefit is working with a real expert in this, a trained expert in heart rate variability, while being really, really good at supporting you, bringing HRV into helping you reach your other goals, too. And that's why I'm so excited that you are two inaugural coaches that we get to work with on this because I, I think we couldn't, couldn't bring two better people, you know, two folks. So I just appreciate you both. Yeah, I had to pass my test where I love talking with you. I'd love to share a kombucha with you or whatever your drink of choice is now at New Year's resolution. So, you know, and you know, just respect the hell out of you both professionally, man. If you want more, you can go back to their past episodes in the podcast to really listen to that expertise as well. So, Sky, Janae, I want to thank you both for taking this journey with us. You know, anytime you launch something, we're going to figure some stuff out together.
But just like I said, you two have been great teachers to me over the last several years and I can't think of two better people to offer this to our clients. And I just appreciate you both so much. So thank you all for your good work. Happy New Year's, everybody. Again, you can find, obviously, information about Skyengine in the show notes here. Go to optimalhrv.com for more information. We have a coaching therapy page. Also, just a quick plug is that we're launching our 2025 training series later on in January with the Science of Heart Rate Variability followed up. And I think my two guests here will acknowledge this two hours of Ina Hazan talking about HRV biofeedback, which if you're not an HRV biofeedback nerd yet, you gotta join us for that. So we're offering continuing education credits and all that good stuff as well. So, Scotty, Janay, thank you so very much. Happy New Year, everybody. And as always, I will see you next week.
