Speaker 0 00:00:00 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 L L C and optimal H HR-V. Check us
[email protected]. Please enjoy the show. Welcome friends to the Heart Rate Variability podcast. I'm here with a very special guest today, uh, Dr. Patrick Stephan, uh, from b y u. Um, I met Patrick at, uh, the A A P B conference this year. Um, actually gotta see a workshop with, uh, some of your students and was just, uh, really excited to see your work, uh, fascinated with it. And then we were able to connect and I was like, I got at Patrick on the show. Uh, so I'm really excited to bring you to our audience, uh, thank you here. But before I dive in and let's get us talking about heart rate variability, I'd love, uh, just to kind of give a little bit more formal introduction of yourself, uh, you know, and your work there at B Y U.
Speaker 1 00:01:15 Yeah. Um, I have been doing biofeedback, excuse me, sorry. I've been doing biofeedback since 2012. So the, the director of our clinic decided to buy biofeedback equipment with nobody trained in how to use it. And I thought, well, that looks really cool. I like to do more with that. So I got trained, started going to A A P V. My original training is a clinical psychologist with a health emphasis. So I've done a lot with C B T and ACT as far as like stress reduction in psychotherapy, go. And I think H R V biofeedback in particular, is a great adjunct to psychotherapy, something to integrate into our, um, psychotherapeutic approach. And also like stress management in general.
Speaker 0 00:01:59 Absolutely.
Speaker 1 00:02:00 So, so starting in 2012, started using it, finding ways, how can we integrate in the clinic, how can we integrate it with, uh, psychotherapy? And then it's been great since then. And go, like you say, going to a p b is a great meeting. Yeah. Got to know Paul Laer and Dicks there, and, uh, Fred Schafer and Don Moss, and a lot of other people. So it's been a great experience,
Speaker 0 00:02:21 All friends of the show. So, uh, yeah, we've been really fortunate enough to have some of y'all that are really leading, uh, the push here. So I would love to talk about that, that sort of transition. Well, maybe transitions the, the integration may be a better word of when you started to do biofeedback. Uh, it sounds like you were already doing psychotherapy and then integrating that in. And I'd love to just kind of see like how, how'd that start as the integration of technology change, kind of maybe how you practiced your approach. I'd love to kind of hear that experience of, Hey, somebody bought this expensive piece of equipment, <laugh>, uh, somebody's gotta use it. So let's throw it, uh, Patrick in there to figure this out. I'd love to, like, how has it informed your work since uh, you first got your hands on that machine?
Speaker 1 00:03:11 I think it's important to start with a, uh, a grounding in that we are both mind and body and that our, our minds impact our body, of course, but our bodies also impact our minds. So if we learn to become more aware of ourselves, you know, mindfulness is integrated across psychotherapy now. And I think biofeedback similarly adds a lot to learning about what's going on in our bodies. And then learning to move towards self-regulation so we can be aware of, and then, um, change for the better, or at least regulate in a positive direction. So we have stress. Depression is also related to heart rate variability, more depression, less heart rate variability. We've also seen that with h i v with anxiety. It's really helpful. A lot of people with anxiety sometimes feel like, oh, people are just trying to say it's all in my head.
Speaker 1 00:03:59 Yeah. But it's really, it's a whole body experience to feel anxious. You know, you feel it in your heart, you feel it in your hands, you feel it everywhere. And I think a lot of, uh, clients really appreciate being able to see in real time that there's nothing really just all in your head. There's no magical line at your neck where this is your mind and this is your body. It's all interconnected. Yeah. So if we're having a stress experience or a stress, a really strong stress response that's gonna impact our minds as well as our body, and we're gonna start feeling that, that worry, that anxiety. We had a client once that did not want to be in psychotherapy, but they'd been through a million doctors, and doctors kept trying to, you know, roundabout tell them, you know, it sounds like anxiety, but they didn't want to hear that. But when they saw it in real time, their physiology and realized, oh, it's not just all in my head. Like everyone's just trying to like, you know, indirectly tell them that they're crazy or something, that if they learn to be aware of their physiology and then regulate their physiology, that they can change their anxiety experience. And that was just like, you know, this aha moment for her to say, oh, there's physiologically there's things I can do that have a, a tremendous impact, not just on my body, but also on my mind. Both, both ways.
Speaker 0 00:05:13 I lo I love that. So, and, and bringing that integration in, like, you know, obviously being there at B Y U as well, like, so you got this fancy machine sent around you, you jump in, start, start using it. I, I, you know, obviously I met some of your students, uh, at the, the conference. So I'm assuming something, uh, you obviously liked it. Uh, you obviously saw some benefit on it. And then kind of, I, I'm just curious how that that machine started to get other, you know, maybe research going and other things, uh, there that are also, uh, in your orbit.
Speaker 1 00:05:50 Yeah. One of the, the first studies we did was looking at resident frequency breathing. Most people when they do studies will pick about six breaths per minute. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So instead of identifying their, i, their exact resonance frequency, which could be anywhere from like, say 4.5 breaths per minute to seven, 7.5 breath per, most people just pick like six. 'cause it's simple. Yeah. And it takes like, you know, 20, 30 minutes to identify someone's exact resonance breath. So we wanted to see if, if we have people breathe at their resonance breath versus breathing at their resonance breath plus one breath, which means they're gonna be off from what the resident is. So we had them practice that. Then we had 'em do some simple math stressors and then a recovery period. And we found that people, when they were breathing at their ance frequency, they did better in response to the, uh, math stressor.
Speaker 1 00:06:41 Physiologically, they didn't respond as much. They recovered more quickly. So we found that there, you know, there's benefit to the, the, you know, resonance breath or resonance frequency breathing to take time to learn to do that. So that was one of the first things we did. And two of two of my students at that time have now moved to the counseling center at B Y U that works directly with the students. And they run a, they've created within the counseling center, they're a biofeedback lab, like a stress management biofeedback lab where they teach people, um, some basic H R V and teach 'em how to use the equipment. And then they allow students to come in on their own and use it. You know, they have like those different games that you can play
Speaker 0 00:07:19 Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:07:20 Where you can, uh, learn to regulate physiology as you play games.
Speaker 0 00:07:24 How cool That, that, that's amazing. So I wonder like, as you introduce this to your students, and obviously they, they kind of got the bug as well, uh, with this too. I sort of, I, I'm wondering kind of the, as, as they, maybe a lot of 'em hadn't heard about heart rate variability. How, how was it like to, for them to sort of, uh, include that as far of their learning experience, uh, as students?
Speaker 1 00:07:48 I think the, the younger generations, like, you know, I'm, I feel like I'm an older <laugh>. I'm definitely an older person now. The younger students, the clinical psychology students, I think it just makes sense to them to think of mind body as being interconnected. And it's important to treat the whole person Yeah. To work, to work with the whole person. And so for a lot of 'em, they just clicks immediately and they're like, oh yeah, this is great. And they wanna learn how to do it. Um, we're also working with, uh, Michael Larsson, who's a neuropsychologist, and two of his students are looking at H R V biofeedback one with, uh, post-concussion or T B I. Oh,
Speaker 0 00:08:22 Cool. Uh, post
Speaker 1 00:08:23 T b I patients or currently have T B I and another's looking at aging. So looking at people in their fifties, sixties, seventies, looking at H R V and aging, if there's differences and they're doing a, a brief H R V protocol to see if, if, can you change that somewhat their, their symptom profile or their experiences by doing some H R V biofeedback? So people that aren't even in neuropsych, you know, I don't usually think of peop, you know, they're not usually your biofeedback people 'cause they're much more about assessment Yeah. About the intervention. But now they're excited, like, oh, we can do more than just do assessment in neuropsychology. We can maybe do some interventional things.
Speaker 0 00:09:00 Amazing. So when you, when you look at just, and, and I may be asking a question that's a little in left field. So if, if there's not a really good answer for it, I, I, I'll, I'll accept that as an answer. But I'm interested with, like, a traumatic brain injury is something that's always, uh, been a, a real fascination, I don't know is the right word, but like, uh, I know that a lot of my work, like in homelessness, uh, addiction, that when you do a thorough assessment, traumatic brain injury pops up. Yeah. At alarming rates incarceration. I had a, uh, a friend of mine do a study in a prison that like 90 plus percent had traumatic brain injuries, which I think makes us think about criminal justice a lot different in some ways. And I, so I wonder, you know, we do have a hypothesis, at least, uh, maybe before you get some data on maybe resident frequency breathing and how it might, I don't know if help traumatic brain injury is the right word, but I, I'd love to maybe get some of the thinking behind that study.
Speaker 1 00:10:05 Yeah. We don't know if it'll help, but that's why we're doing it. But there's a large research literature out there're showing that with traumatic brain injury that H R V will go down. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So this has like, been known for a while. Yeah. And there's been no intervention. So we're just, you know, dipping our toes in charting new waters here that to look at. Well, maybe H R V biofeedback might be of some help in these situations. That's, so hopefully we'll find out. So with, with um, mentioning incarceration and homelessness with a lot of TBIs, you'll get more impulsive behavior. So your ability to inhibit goes down. Uh, probably also your ability to focus. So that's really important for a lot of aspects of mental life and probably for occupational success, is to be able to focus on a task and follow through on a task. And so if you've, if your T B I has led to difficulties with mental focus as well as inhibition or impulsivity, those are gonna make your life, you know, that much harder to be able to, uh, succeed in whatever area of life you're in.
Speaker 0 00:11:07 Absolutely. So I wonder, you know, having kind of gotten exposed to this back in 2012, uh, you, you, you beat me by several years, uh, with that date, just kind of wondering, like, it seems like the whole H R V world has, at least in my opinion, like being obsessed with it for about six or seven years continues to expand. And I, I'd love to sort of get your experience of, hey, somebody bought an expensive machine. What is heart rate variability? Uh, at least that was my initial, like, what is this, uh, to, to now really an integrated part of your work, lived it, like over the last, uh, 10, 11 years. Uh, how have you seen it sort of grow and expand over that time?
Speaker 1 00:11:54 Yeah. I think, like, just going back a little bit in time, like 20, 30 years ago, they started accumulating evidence that HRVs related to like everything it seems like, yeah.
Speaker 0 00:12:02 <laugh>
Speaker 1 00:12:03 Longevity, it's related to heart disease, it's related to all. And of course in depression, we mentioned, um, low H R V is is seems like it's, it's, it's a marker of how well are we doing in life. Yeah. Kind this general marker of, of general functioning or I think Julian Thayer called it like a measure of adaptability. Yeah. Well, are we adapt our, maybe our intrinsic capacity to adapt to life situations and stress. And it got me excited first, learning about h about feedback and then learning about H R V is, I think, like you see in this last 10 years now, people are like, well, what can we do? We know this is bad if it's not, if it, we have low H R V, so what can we do about it? And so there's all kinds of things happening now where people are exploring what are the possible interventions.
Speaker 1 00:12:52 We even see, like, I think I find it really intriguing, like wearables, like people that try and measure themself, um, not just rings and watches, but like, they have these shirts that have sensors in them. Yeah. That they're, like, there's, what is that movement called? The quantified self movement where people are just really intrigued with collecting data about the self. You can store it on your, your watch or I guess through your watch, but onto your cell phone. There's so many opportunities for increasing awareness of, and then ideally u using this in treatments or interventions or therapies, you know, how can we help people?
Speaker 0 00:13:27 Yeah. And that, that's the exciting, like, like you said, if you put that together with a different understanding of self, like there's, there's a physical reaction which, uh, whether I'm talking about like the neurobiology, you know, what's going on in the brain with trauma stress or the autonomic nervous system, I, there's something freeing about that. Like, I call it kind of like trauma and stress literacy. Like, how, how do we as professionals understand this enough to help teach others. 'cause I've just seen some pretty powerful examples of people's lives changing once they realize, okay, I'm, I'm, there's something there. And it's not just like hypochondria or making it up or something like that. Which I think is like Yeah, exactly. So a weirdly powerful thing, uh, in a lot of people's recovery and ability to live a better life as well.
Speaker 1 00:14:23 Yeah. I think it gives people hope that, well, there's something that I can do. 'cause I think a lot of times people get involved with some new thing. Yeah. And you get a week or two, and then you get tired of it. Where, like with H R V, within five to 10 weeks, you can start seeing significant effects, which you've gotta get to that point. Yes.
Speaker 0 00:14:40 People
Speaker 1 00:14:40 Have to have that hope, oh, this is worth investing that time. And then they start seeing, oh, this does make a difference.
Speaker 0 00:14:48 Absolutely. Yeah. And that's like the whole thing with my, so many people I like talked to about mindfulness. Like they, they're, I, you know, and as, as someone who's not maybe genetically great in it, like this thing, just, my brain never stops spinning like that. There's not that kind of positive feedback loop, at least initially with folks. And to see, to see that, even if it does take a few weeks, but to start to see and feel residents frequency breathing, like there's, I think one, we get to that nice mindful state a little bit better with RF breathing, and then, you know, you can start to get data, which, uh, can hopefully for a lot of people I know, can be really motivating to continue to move forward.
Speaker 1 00:15:30 Yeah. This reminds me of a, an an early, one of the first days I did with Michael Larsson looking at, um, the impact of it was just doing mindfulness audio clips. It was like John Kazen doing mindfulness of breath. We wanted to see what are, what is the impact of doing a 15 minute mindfulness of breath exercise on physiology, but also on the self-report of anxiety and stress. And the interesting thing was we were seeing significant changes in physiology and very little change in self-reported at first. So the body's changing, but the mind's not quite aware of it yet. And so I think for biofeedback, that's the really important thing, is they get that immediate feedback, even if they don't feel like, wow, I feel magically different. Yeah. You can see the body's changing and the bo the heart rate's changing, the, the resonance frequencies changing, or like, I mean, the, as they engage in resident frequency breathing Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:16:26 You can see the, the level of H R V changing. So you have that immediate feedback of the physiology. So even if the mind's not like, well, I don't feel like my anxiety's gone down a hundred percent, you know, this may be a little bit, when they see that, I think that's really reinforcing and gives them the, the hope and the the, uh, desire. I'm gonna keep, I'm gonna keep up with this 'cause I can see this is really making an impact. And then over time, like for example, we did a study, one of my students looking at people with depression. Um, it led, it led to faster change in depression. And H R V went way up in the, um, the H R V plus psychotherapy group. So the psycho who had psychotherapy, psychotherapy plus H R V and the H RV made a huge difference, not just in increasing the H R V, but also the, the depression improved. Um,
Speaker 0 00:17:18 Yeah. Oh, exciting stuff. So when, what is like, you know, and this is what I love about that this field is it's, it still feels, even though I know H R V has been around for a while, it, it still feels new and fresh and like,
Speaker 1 00:17:35 I think it really is.
Speaker 0 00:17:36 I I think in the example of, of, of you, which I, I hope I, I imagine this will be a compliment to you. 'cause I, I hope this is said about me, but as Dr. Uh, ina Haan is, I'm like any podcast guest, uh, your name was right up there with the Leers and others of, of the world that you mentioned. Uh, thank, thank you. And, uh, which is pretty impressive with just 10 years of, of experience. So, you know, I I kind of wonder what were maybe some of the other insights, uh, along the way, uh, in your journey is obviously, uh, you were having success with it and then to, to continue to grow, um, and, and become a leader in the field. Uh, what was that kind of maybe some interesting points along that progression for you?
Speaker 1 00:18:23 Well, going back to 2012, I, I took the, um, you know, go to a p b and they have those workshops. Yeah. I took the ones with, with Laer and converts. And then I had, the next year I had the opportunity to do a postdoc. So I went to Rutgers with Paul Laer. Oh, how cool. This summer on that. And so it really got me thinking about, you know, there's a lot more we could be doing in psychotherapy than what we're doing. Yeah. So thinking about how can we do that in a way that's, um, I guess simple. 'cause a lot of therapists are like, my life's hectic enough.
Speaker 0 00:18:53 Yeah. Exactly. Throw
Speaker 1 00:18:54 Another thing at me to add into this. So how can we, and I think biofeedback, h i v biofeedback is pretty simple when you get to Yeah. To the root of it in what you're doing. And so thinking of how can we do this in a way that, um, engages people and makes it so it's not burdensome, but you know, useful.
Speaker 0 00:19:12 Yeah. So,
Speaker 1 00:19:14 And then, and then getting involved at a p b, it's, it's a wonderful place. And going to conferences each year. Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:19:19 We
Speaker 1 00:19:19 See each other people's presentations and it gets your mind thinking, oh, that's an interesting way of thinking about it. So it's being able to go to conferences like that where you get to get to see, you know, what are the current things that are happening and what are some cool studies that're going. Especially like anytime I see La Vert or in Kaza or, uh, Schaffer or Don Moss or the, you know, and there's a lot more people right out there. And, um, to be able to see their stuff. It always gets me thinking, oh, that, that, that could be a, you know, play off that idea or build off of that. There's, there's, like you said, the, the, it's, it's all brand new in terms of the interventional stuff. It's like last 10 years is when this is really taking off.
Speaker 0 00:19:58 Yeah. It's really exciting. And I, I always try to plug the both a p p, I've got my, uh, I got my journal, uh, right here that, uh, cool, cool mo most journals, I might look at the table of content, but there's always like, at least three or four articles, if not more, that, uh, are good there. And then I agree with you, like the conference, I, I don't think there's a lot of arenas that you get access to. I can come up and talk to you. I come up and talk to Moss and like, just to be kind of after two years feeling, um, uh, accepted. The podcast kind of helps. 'cause I get to talk and they get to share their stories with me. But at the same time, it's like so cool to like, sit at the feet of y'all and just like, be accepted. Um, you know, and, and welcomed, uh, and no question is, I mean, you can add, you've got the world experts in the room, but no question is sort of a dumb question that, that there's like this beginner's mind that permeates throughout the, the conference that I love as well.
Speaker 1 00:21:06 And the cool thing about it's, you've got, you know, there's psychologists like me, but there's also people in exercise. Yeah. In sport. There's people in, uh, medicine, nursing, and then there's people from all kinds of areas. And then you like some bioengineering people that make the devices. Yeah. So you got all kinds of different people, which makes it really interesting. 'cause you get so many different perspectives on, on this area. So it makes a lot of fun.
Speaker 0 00:21:32 Yeah. You really do. And early plug, uh, they're, they're coming to my hometown at Denver, uh, next year. So, uh, yeah. I'll, I'll just have at my place, we'll take a, we'll take a bus down to the, the hotel, but, uh, sure, sure. Yeah. Excited, uh, excited to host. So, uh, I'm, I'm hoping to get, you know, a lot more, because like I said, it's very accessible group, uh, as well. So even if you're new, you're, you don't necessarily get overwhelmed, uh, with what's there. And, uh, yeah. I, I'm just so excited it's coming, uh, down the road from me, so, yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:22:09 I like the meetings that are more like, you know, couple hundred people. Yeah. More intimate, more conversational, like you say. I went to a, I've been to a P a p A a couple of times and it's like an ocean of people. Yes.
Speaker 0 00:22:20 <laugh>. It's just
Speaker 1 00:22:21 Overwhelming to find something specific to what I'm interested in. 'cause it's, there's lots of general stuff, but I like to really get specific towards stress and health is my research area. So I'm really intrigued by that and looking at that. Yeah. That's one area we'd like to do more of is looking at, um, a minority group. So Yeah, most of the, you know, for a lot of psychology, it's like, it's just a study of white people for a lot of time. Yeah. We're looking at like Hispanics, we looked some, some studies looking at Polynesians in general, looking at H I V, but we wanna get into biofeedback. We have, I had one student that, um, she was native Spanish speaker and she, part of her PhD, she was working at a Hispanic clinic, and when they brought in biofeedback, the Hispanic people loved it. They were like, oh, this is, this is really cool. Oh, that's cool. They love the idea. So looking at how do we, you know, it's probably not identical across groups that they're gonna see things the same way or the, the approach is the clinical. Yeah. So how do we make this or set it up in a way that's that's, that's accessible to people across the world?
Speaker 0 00:23:27 I love that. I love that. So as you look sort of forward, uh, you know, as, as you look maybe the next five or 10 years, obviously you shared some current interest and studies that you're working on. Where, where do you think this'll be? Where, where are we going with all of this? Because I, as H R V kinda saw more people's watches. It's on their wrists, it's on their arms, uh, you know, that there, there's, you know, the Bluetooth sort of movement in there as well. But as heart rate variability gets, I, I don't know, mainstream is probably too strong right now, but Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's more and more people are learning about it. I think really getting excited about it. Uh, Kristen Bell, uh, my wife says, do, do you know Christian Bell? I don't think my, I think my wife thinks I made up the idea of heart rate variability, uh, in a dream. So she's like, Christian Bell's talking about this now. And I'm like, oh, that's great. So, you know, at least we got one celebrity, uh, talking about it on our side. But, uh, I guess love to, love to get your idea maybe from academic studies and also just kind of for the general population is that this gets more and more, uh, prevalent. Uh, and the understanding of H R V is, is growing fairly rapidly.
Speaker 1 00:24:43 Yeah. There's two things for the future that I would hope to see if wish to see. One is more integration between, for psychotherapists of any stripe to, to, to have an easy module or easy way that they could integrate it. You don't have to become an expert at it to like, use some basics. Um, Don Moss and I are editing a book for Oxford University Press called Integrating Psychotherapy and Psychophysiology. Awesome. And we have chapters from Paul Laer and Dick Andina Kaan, as well as people like if you know Paul Gilbert, who's compassion focused therapy, he Yeah, he created that approach. And we have like Stephan Hoffman looking at, uh, different approaches. And Tim Smith from the University of Utah, we got all people from all over the world, and this will be coming out this fall. So really excited about getting people thinking about how do we bring in psychophysiological approaches, like biofeedback, you can even say mindfulness really is in a, in a way, it elicits a lot of psychophysiological benefits. You'll say mindfulness impacts H R V mindfulness impacts. They do a lot of neuro or m r I type studies. So it's definitely there. The research is there. Now let's find a way, like you're saying, how do we get this into the mainstream of psychotherapy? How do we get this into the mainstream for people in general, having famous people doesn't hurt. Right. That yeah.
Speaker 0 00:26:12 <laugh>
Speaker 1 00:26:13 Or someone famous is doing it, then they're gonna be like, oh, that, that person's doing it, so maybe I'll give it a shot. I'll, you know, check that out so that, you know, between the, you know, the publications and maybe creating simpler things that people can integrate. And then, you know, getting the, the general population as well, the GE average person access and knowledge.
Speaker 0 00:26:35 Awesome. Any, any other, uh, uh, points on your journey that, that we haven't covered yet? We've kind of kind of gone in the past on the future, but I don't wanna, I don't wanna end the podcast if we've missed any, uh, other gems that, uh, might've been, uh, lying with within your experience or interest, uh, with this,
Speaker 1 00:26:57 I think we covered the big ones. I know this is, uh, appropriate for podcast. I was gonna ask about your journey, but maybe you've already done that in a, in a previous podcast.
Speaker 0 00:27:04 Yeah, so I mean, I'll share it here because I, I think that it, uh, it, it sort of fits a little bit into, into, I, I think we overlap in, uh, a, a pretty meaningful way. So my work, uh, has historically been, uh, with trauma, trauma informed care has been pretty much central to my career ever since I saw the Adverse Childhood Experience study in around 2003. Yeah. So, um, working in c child welfare, homelessness, those reals, you know, trauma was always there. We just weren't talking about it. Uh, we were talking about people making bad decisions, and there was that behavioral, like I got trained like right. Cognitive behavioral therapy was, you know, we could measure it. We could get evidence. So that way we were moving away from like strict behavioralism into that. Um, but we weren't talking about trauma, so we were told still talking about like decision makers and punishment rewards and weighing consequences.
Speaker 0 00:28:02 So, you know, when I started to see the impact of trauma, especially when, you know, going again to our discussion, like how it impacts neuro development, um, and really looking at like brains developing different, and all of a sudden the behaviors of the youth and then adults that I'd worked with made a lot more sense. Like, it's one thing to think, hey, they're weighing the consequences and the rewards of their behavior, and then making a well thought out volitional choice. Um, with the behavioral issues that a lot of my clients had, it was more because of a dysregulated that's hard nervous system or a trauma trigger. And so that, that really, as we're talking about, it's like, oh, all of a sudden when I saw this biological injury, um, it, it really like made me think about my work in a total different way. So I, I kind of dedicated myself to, I'm not gonna shut up about this until anybody that wants to hear me talk about it, well hear me.
Speaker 0 00:29:01 I didn't necessarily set off to do a lot of trainings and consulting around it, but it kind of evolved in, I guess I talked about it fairly well, at least enough for, uh, that to become a good part of my career. Um, but one of my frustrations was I knew there was this disrupted neurobiology that, that was pretty much a given. Um, however, was the, was the housing programs or my clinical interventions helping to heal that underlying, uh, in neural injury? And so, you know, while I had a fantasy for about five seconds until I Googled how much it cost about getting a functional m r I into a, a residential treatment center, uh, that, that, that, uh, dream died fairly quickly, um, you know, when I started to learn about polyvagal theory and Steven Porges work, um, heart rate variability just came up more and more and more.
Speaker 0 00:29:57 And I, you know, initially I got passionate about how it can be an outcome measure and really looking at, you know, if we can, now that we've got Bluetooth technology, we can take relatively expensively, inexpensively, you know, uh, daily readings, uh, we can pre and post test different things. I can see what state a client's in before a therapy session. And so that's sort of where I, you know, was looking, um, about three, four years ago for some of the athletic apps out there to say, do you wanna look at mental health? And nobody, you know, it's kind of sexier to have LeBron James on your app than you know Yeah. Experiencing homelessness. But, uh, you know, I, he,
Speaker 1 00:30:43 He use a SUM app. Doesn't he mean he was calm? I
Speaker 0 00:30:46 Think he was Yeah. Yeah. I, yeah, he, he's on whoop too, so I'm sure, uh, mean yeah, takes care, takes care of himself. He's a good role model. But, so yeah, that's where it led me to, you know, eventually that frustration turned into optimal H rv. And then, uh, our good friend Ina Haan, uh, you know, I I, she's the one person that returned my phone call when I was trying to get somebody to care about homelessness. And they said she called me back. And I always knew there was the biofeedback side of H R V, but I also understood the learning what low frequency and high frequency and very, that was like, okay, I think I know the time domains. Um, I think I know enough to say R M S S D is a pretty good metric to use for daily readings. Uh, but boy, do I need to build a whole nother expertise on this.
Speaker 0 00:31:38 And, uh, fortunate for me, uh, one of the, uh, nicest, kindest and smartest, uh, people in the field, uh, joined. And so that's where I really caught the bug for the biofeedback is, in some ways, as a therapist, probably the greatest homework we could give people is helping them establish their rf, uh, rate. And then, uh, having them practice that between, between sessions like that, that to me is so then working to integrate that into, uh, the technology as well has been a long road. But, uh, sure, sure. It's been, uh, real, like really fruitful. And somewhere along the way I thought, Hey, why don't we do a podcast? 'cause nobody's has a heart rate variability podcast. So, uh,
Speaker 1 00:32:25 And thinking of poverty, you know, that's, that's, you know, lifetime of poverty, H R v biofeedback is just gonna be like one piece of the puzzle, right? Yes. We want a multi-pronged, multidisciplinary approach where this is a piece, but, you know, trying to create, um, you know, there's so many different aspects to that. How do we, you know, hit all these different pieces from the, not the psychological and the biological, but the social context?
Speaker 0 00:32:50 Absolutely. And doing it at a rate. The other thing was like, it was, it was hard to afford a lot of the higher end so that the price point and trying to find an affordable, that's true reader and, you know, with accuracy. So that, that took several years as we went through everything on the market to try to find, you know, something both affordable, but to make sure it's accurate too. So it's, you know, trying to keep that price point low while providing the best possible accuracy, as you know, uh, I've learned a lot, um, <laugh> Yeah. In a very short period of time. And I know, uh, yeah. Uh, I've got a lot more to learn, uh, as, as all this great research just seems to be coming out each and every day.
Speaker 1 00:33:35 Well, it seems like you have a lot of, a lot of energy to move forward and focus to get some good things done.
Speaker 0 00:33:41 Well, I appreciate that. I, I appreciate like, you, you and, and all, I mean, I know we've thrown a lot of names out there, but it's just like so great to, uh, the openness of this community to, to talk about your experience, talk about your research. 'cause you know, I, I don't think there's a lot of conversations going on about this, and I know my audience sue, after I think this will be like episode one 17 or 18, like have stuck with us, uh, through this exploration. And, uh, the numbers keep ticking up. So, uh, that's great. You all are both entertaining and brilliant, which I appreciate.
Speaker 1 00:34:19 Thank you. Thank you. It's been good talking to you.
Speaker 0 00:34:22 Yeah. Well, Dr. Stefano, I wanna thank you for your time and, and your work. Um, uh, obviously you're at B I U B B Y U will pull a little information about you in the show notes. So if people, uh, wanna learn more about you, they can visit our show notes. But, uh, I just wanna give you an open invitation. Uh, hey, if you get a juicy piece of research for us, uh, know the door is always open. Uh, love to have you back, uh, uh, share, share more of your journey as it it plays out.
Speaker 1 00:34:49 Thank you. That'd be a lot of fun.
Speaker 0 00:34:51 Thank you. As always, you can find show notes, everything
[email protected]. And, uh, I will see you next week.
