[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.
[00:00:34] Speaker B: I'm Matt Bennett and I'm here on a solo episode today to really hit one of the key topics that whether I'm talking to professionals or individuals around the world always comes up and that's adherence to an HRV biofeedback practice. Even some of the top experts in the world I get to talk to have trouble sometimes finding time during the day to do their own practice, even though they've written research articles, some meta studies, and dozens of articles on the benefit of HRV biofeedback. So I just kind of want, as somebody who's known as an expert on motivation, I want to bring my expertise on motivational interviewing and how do we help people make change and growth to this very simple yet difficult idea of how do we get someone practicing for most people, getting up to that magical 20 minutes a day. So there's a few things that I have my study of motivation throughout the years that I think can be really helpful here. Now I want to speak to you twofolds. One, if you're an individual wanting to integrate HRV biofeedback into your own life and get those juicy benefits that we talk about on this podcast, or you're a professional trying to find ways to help someone successfully integrate a practice of their own. So at first, and it starts out with education, you know, I have found so often that a basic understanding of the nervous system, understanding about how the prefrontal cortex down regulates the amygdala, understanding the ventral vagal break, and a little bit about the polyvagal theory and how the vagal break puts a break on that sympathetic activation and what that all means to physical, emotional, cognitive and social health, that educational side of things. My study about medical adherence over the years with my work in public health, that there's a research finding that always stuck with me is the better someone understands the disease, the more likely they are to be adherent. So just telling someone, hey, practice HRV biofeedback because it's going to help you reach your goals or it's going to help you feel better, or it's going to help you feel less anxious isn't really enough. We need to give them a basic understanding. Now, throughout this podcast, if you go back to past episodes, if you search for things like the cup analogy, for example, example, you know, for some folks, you may want to use analogies to describe this. Other folks that I find, don't underestimate people's interest in learning about their nervous system because they're really learning about the core of themselves, giving them a fundamental understanding of their autonomic nervous system and connecting that a little bit to. To the brain as well. So we give them the understanding of what is this practice doing. Because if they open an app like ours and start practicing biofeedback, yeah, they'll see things like low frequency and maximin and optimal zone and their heart rate. But if none of that means anything to them, they're going to be less motivated to really get a practice going. So. But this is a challenge for. I know it's a challenge for me. Many years ago when I started talking about trauma and trauma's impact on the nervous system, I didn't even know how to pronounce amygdala at the time. So that's how basic my understanding was, is I had to learn to pronounce hippocampus and hypothalamus. As somebody who's not all that good with words, that is where I started and I listened to audiobooks over and over again to get that basic understanding. So getting some basic understanding, getting some analogies around those, like I said, my favorites, the cup analogy, easy to find. You know, if you can't find it in your podcast screen because it was 170 episodes, you can go to YouTube and find it as well. So that basic education challenges us to have some of that knowledge ourselves.
The second thing is to really connect it to the outcomes. For example, if you're listening to a heart rate variability podcast, how do you want to position HRV biofeedback to as part of the life that you want to live to help you reach your goals? So a lot of professionals may be working with folks on anxiety or depression, relationship issues, just overall health, maybe fighting inflammation, you know, heart health, gut health, all these things that HRV biofeedback we know through research really improves, really connecting of how does breathing for 20 minutes a day impact irritable bowel syndrome, impact heart disease, improve anxiety, improve depression, and really connecting it with a little bit of research, it doesn't necessarily mean you need to give somebody a peer reviewed journal article to Go read however some people want that. So to be prepared to, you know, give that to folks that are interested in it, but at the same time, really connecting that to their outcome. So, again, if we can say that, hey, you want to feel better, you want to feel less depressed, here is what we know HRV will do from that. So understanding depression, how's that impact autonomic functioning? And then showing them that, hey, this thing I'm asking you to do has been proven to help you get the outcomes for why you're seeing me in the beginning. Now, some of my listeners, it may be, hey, you're looking to feel better yourself, feeling less anxious, that's all of us. Or you may just want to perform better, Right? So you've probably been listening to this podcast. You know that these outcomes exist, but reminding yourself when you sit down to practice, why are you doing this? And that brings me to my third driver of motivation, and that is connecting that to our values. I love this piece of research. And I know for folks in, sometimes in my profession, the helping profession is mental health. We overlook this at the detriment to ourselves and the folks that we're trying to help is what do you value in life? Again, there's outcomes maybe of why they're seeing you, or outcomes that you want to get. But how does better performance lower anxiety, better patience as a parent or a spouse or a teacher, whatever your role might be, how does that help you live a life more aligned with your values? Now, this takes getting to know somebody. I know the coaches out there, the mental health professionals and others. Some of you do this, you know, automatically, of course, you're getting to know the person. You're building that rapport. You're building the trust, you're building the relationship. So you're looking for, okay, well, what is. What motivates this person in their life? What's the rules that they live their life by? Who do they strive to be? And then again, we're positioning HRV biofeedback right in there. So we don't want to just do one of these things, right? We build a basic understanding of autonomic nervous system functioning.
We really look at sharing some of the research of how this is going to help you reach your goals, whether it's you listening and waiting to reach your own goals or, again, a lot of you. I know professionals working with others to reach their goals. And then how does this help align with their values? Now, here is the thing that we learn from motivational interviewing is that when I start to understand that I'm not living a life aligned with the values or what means the most to me. Like, again, if I wanted to be the best spouse possible for my wife, and I realized my anxiety is really preventing me for do that, or my anger is really making me struggle to be the parent that I want to be, you know, that creates discrepancies of, you know, that there's the life we want to live and then there's the life we're leading. And if those things don't match up, that creates this feeling of cognitive dissonance, and that that's uncomfortable. You know, that's where we realize our behavior is not allowing us to be the person that we strive to become. And then that transforms into motivation. So while thinking about sometimes how your behaviors are getting the way of living the life you want to be or being the person you want to be isn't the most comfortable thing to spend some time thinking about. It really can create motivation if we have a way to address those discrepancies. And guess what we've already done. We've already talked about how HRV and a regulated autonomic nervous system and HRV biofeedback is going to help us get there. So really tying to their personal goals, the person that they want to be. We also know in motivational interviewing that two things really drive motivation, especially early on when somebody's contemplating and planning out a new behavior, like integrating HRV biofeedback into their practice. And those things are, is it important to them and their confidence. Now, we've already talked a lot about the importance piece, getting the specific outcome that may have brought them into your care or brought you to HRV to begin with, but also looking at, you know, what's important to them as far as longevity in their life as well. So what is important to you? Obviously, we've talked about this a lot already, connecting that to their values, to their goals, to being the person they want to be. And then there's the confidence piece of things. Now, this one, I think, can sometimes get overlooked at everybody's, you know, detriment. And that is the confidence side of this.
The confidence to find 10 minutes a day, 15 minutes a day, 20 minutes a day. I know for some clinical issues, 40 minutes a day is ideal, though I don't think anybody, you know, realistically got to have a really motivated person to get there. But so let's keep the 20 minutes a day of how confident are you? You can find that time in your day to have a practice. Now, this one to me is fascinating because I even know, again, I've interviewed some of them about this on the podcast, that the experts of the world struggle to find that time because they're busy people, right? So it gives us some empathy of even the people that know, you know, that this is the best thing for me to do this every day can struggle to find that.
So one of the things that we really need to do is problem solve that out. Now, let's. Let's start by building up confidence. I would never, you know, I'm talking to you all because, you know, you. This probably isn't your first episode here. I would never start out trying to get somebody to go from zero practices if they're not practicing mindfulness or not doing any biofeedback to 20 minutes. That's setting everybody up for failure. It's going to be a miserable 20 minutes for the vast majority of people.
So I would start out just with a few minutes. Our lowest setting on the optimal app for biofeedback is two minutes. Not a bad place, honestly, to start. So trying to find some time in the day to practice, I would say most people probably could go four to five minutes. Now, at this point, there's a few things that we want to do. One is get that resident's frequency breathing assessment done. Now, that's going to give people, again, we got to educate a little bit, their unique breathing rate.
So again, I encourage a lot of professionals that if you have the time to go through the assessment with them one on one, great work with them through that. Again, it's a pretty important 14, 16 minutes because that's going to be your breathing rate pretty much for the rest of your life. And so we establish that and then to get them practicing. Right? So four minutes, you get three minutes of optimal zone feedback. You get to start to see and adjust your breathing rate. You get curious. And I would not, again, for week one, keep it at four minutes. We want people to be successful. So if you got a highly motivated person that just wants to get to that 20 minutes, maybe going a minute or more a day, that's about as far as I would push it. Because we don't want people getting bored, we don't want people getting frustrated. Right? So even if you do three to four minutes for a week and then I'm seeing somebody else again or I'm, I'm, I'm zooming with my coach, let's work it up to five minutes a day, we also want them to learn what's going to increase their Low frequency, what's going to get them into optimal zone. I am just astounded what I have learned about my own breathing. Once we got the optimal zone ruler in place, my exhale is totally different, my posture is totally different. I started to integrate HRV biofeedback into my Tai chi, you know, with a, with a chest strap, not non arm strap because that would be moving too much and learning about how to breathe to stay in optimal zone during these practices. So just getting people to, hey, four minutes, turn off TV if that's okay for you. Sit in an upright position.
Again, getting that little four minute practice in getting success, feeling good. After that, the optimal zone will probably be giving most people some positive feedback as they go through. So again, get that residence frequency established, support them in doing so. Like I said, if you can do that in person with folks, if you're a coach, if you're a therapist, I think it's worth that time because then they're set up to succeed later on. If you're doing this by yourself, my message to you is take it seriously. Make sure you have basically 30 minutes of quiet so you can take a little break in between if you need to. But really get that assessment done, get that resonance frequency breathing rate there. The other thing that we can adjust and when we start to go five minutes and longer, I really think that this comes into play is what do they need to be doing during the session. So you know, we're not the only app that does this, but we offer a range of mindfulness, self compassion activities. So if you're doing this solo, if you're a professional working with somebody, what sort of mindfulness has been shown or self compassion to address some of the key issues that the folks are facing that you may see. I always like to tell people we basically have the greatest hits of mindfulness and self compassion built into the app already. But if you have something else for folks, you may have them play Spotify as they go through this so they can listen to that on their own with that as well. So trying to craft the practice with that I use for me what works, I'll just share. It's my spiritual practice. So you know my spiritual mantra, prayer, you know, comes into my mindfulness activity. I've kind of got it pitched with the inhale, exhale, you know, what would I use during my practice? So it's the mantra, it's the prayer. I connect spiritually during that time with that as well. I need to occupy my mind. I've learned that about myself. And the fact that I can do that and doing meta statements, loving kindness statements, which there's some really cool research behind, really occupy my mind in a way I stay focused. If I try to empty my mind, it's going to wander into places that are going to be distracting to me. I'm going to forget to be looking. I'm going to, I'm going to see my percentage in optimal zone drop dramatically. So gamify it. And as well, right? Is, is we've got increasing low frequency, increasing max min, as if you're helping somebody needing to know what, what those are so they know what they're looking at. The optimal zone is going to be that, that big kind of lay person's gamification of trying to improve time in low frequency or improve time in optimal zone as you practice. The next one is accountability.
You know, I often joke, you know, if you're a longtime listener, you've probably heard it. We worked so hard to create this dashboard for professionals to track progress. What most professionals tell us is we've created a great accountability tool. In other words, if the individual knows that their therapist or their coach is going to be checking of whether or not they practice, you see adherence go way up. If you're an individual, find a buddy, right? Or find an accountability partner, whether or not the person is going to be practicing or not. This can even be like an alarm in your phone. Did you practice today? We're not working on shame here. We want to hold ourselves accountable.
Another tool with this as well is before you start your practice, remind yourself why you're doing this. If you set a little alarm in your phone, maybe the alarm is, hey, it's time to practice. HRV biofeedback. Remind yourself why. Why are you taking 5, 10, 15, 20 minutes to do this practice? Right? That reminder is going to get you through. Because what happens eventually, at least of what I've heard, and I know a lot of other people, you start to get the benefits, right? But it's going to take a while for your nervous system to start to feel the benefits of mindfulness. I often share, like, you know, my analogy of comparing mindfulness to shooting free throws, like growing up being a basketball player, Never love shooting free throws. I'll be honest, never really get excited to practice mindfulness. But I shoot free throws to build skills, right? So with the games on the line and there's a lot of stress, I can step up to the free throw line, knock down shots for my team. Same thing with mindfulness. When things get stressful I can take a low and slow breath. The peace I established in my practice, I can bring that into my body. What I know is I built that ventral vagal so that low and slow breath is going to help suppress that sympathetic activation. I get that one breath. Such a calming tool. And now I can ask, this is really worth getting upset about. And I can catch my stress start to rise. Take that breath to really suppress that stress response. You've got a logical, emotionally regulated person instead of somebody who's yelling and screaming and acting the fool. So again, why are you sitting down? And maybe it's an external. That's fine. Maybe I want to be a better person for somebody else. I want to be a better therapist. I want to be a better coach. I want to be a better spouse. I want to be a better teacher. Yeah, hrv biofeedback is going to support those outcomes. But reminding yourself of your why is going to be a key, key motivator there. Moving forward, we also have ways to practice. Right. Some people will be so motivated. I was like this when I first learned about biofeedback. I would take like 20, 30 measurements every day just because I was so fascinated with hrv, the science behind it, the fact I could see how my autonomic nervous system is doing right now. So you'll have some of those folks that will just go for it.
Most people will be less motivated and excitable than I am, which is good for our society. So it's. It's. Again, I love the term titration. You know, how do we ramp yourself up or the folks we work with up? And. And this is where, while there may be some benefits of practicing 20 minutes straight through, Boy, I wouldn't start folks there. Well, what I would really look at is could we do two practices throughout the day?
And this is one of the reasons I say that, is because there are very few things. If you listen to this podcast, you know how valuable I believe sleep is. Um, sleep's really the best thing you can do for all the systems in your body, including your hrv, including your autonomic nervous system. But can you set the alarm 10 minutes earlier to get that 10 minutes of time before the kids wake up, before you've got to make breakfast, before you check emails to have that time to breathe? This is why I like two practices a day, because we're not asking people to wake up 20 minutes earlier, maybe just 10 minutes earlier. Right. It's cutting that time in half. And then maybe sometime before bed or another free Time throughout the day, can you get another shorter practice in? So instead of 10 straight minutes initially, maybe it's five minutes. I work my way up to six or seven and then I'm going to go to two five minute practices throughout the day. So trying to break those up and really trying to find a couple things here with motivation, repetition, time where you can build a habit. Right. If you do this every day before work or when you wake up in the morning, you're going to build that habit then trying to find another time. So I do mine, you know, and I, I've just got to own the fact I don't have children. I want to own that. That makes this so much easier. I don't even want to use myself as an example because I don't have to get kids off to school. That takes your whole day. That's why waking up 10 minutes earlier is probably, you know, the good strategy for folks, especially with kids. So really looking at I do it before work and then I do it before I go to bed. But you know, it's kind of like when I turn off television after the basketball game's over, we watch TV and then I'm going to do 10 minutes of HRV biofeedback before bed. I think for most people this is a good strategy, not for everybody, but for most people because you really get that benefit going into sleep. And for folks with anxiety, like just poor sleepers like myself, my ability to go to sleep, practicing HRV biofeedback for 10 minutes at night, really focused in on it again, connecting, spiritually calming. I just find my time from going to bed to sleep has been cut drastically. Rarely am I up, you know, an hour, two hours later, which previous iterations of Matt has really struggled with that. So trying to find time to build habits, maybe it's. There's a little break at lunch that folks can do this. I wouldn't start out, you know, with that, the car ride or commute maybe eventually, if that's safe, they could do a little bit of that practice. But we really want people initially, at least paying attention to that. Inhale, exhale, and safety first. So if you do it while, you know, driving, you've got to be really good at this before you do anything like that. So be very careful with that. But trying to find times throughout the day. Maybe you park your car and you're in your car before you go in and be a parent or whatever and you get to practice that 10 minutes of breathing. Prioritize your health, prioritize your Wellness again, you're doing this for a reason, right? And remind yourself what that reason might be and then celebrate, right? This is the thing is I can tell you people that I talk to in the APB world, the biofeedback, the neurofeedback world, not all of them are doing their own practice, right? This is the reality of it. And you don't have to be doing your own practice to be a great biofeedback person. Though I probably think it helps make you a better biofeedback person. But really celebrate, right? Give yourself credit, you know, remind yourself at the end of it not only why you did it, the why you did it will get you sitting, breathing, begin with, but what benefits you will keep getting from this. If again, if you want the. If it's a mental health issue, just remind yourself of that research. If it's physical health, remind yourself of the research. Give yourself credit for doing something that's going to allow you to live a better life. So in motivation we talk about the stages of change. If you're listening to this, you're probably at least in contemplation. That's when we think about it again, that's where the education is going to help. Talking about the nervous system, that's where how's this going to allow me to be the person I want to be, address those discrepancies. Preparation, this is really where you come up with that plan of how to integrate this in, you know, so starting out small, as you get bigger, maybe at some point getting ready to break that up into a morning and an afternoon sort of practice and then really building it into a habit.
I remember I got a vaccination.
It just for some reason my immune system hates vaccination, so I'm always miserable the next day and I got the shingles vaccination with my immune system hated. So I was just fever, just a mess. And I just like it was one of the first times in a long time I just couldn't do my biofeedback practice. And believe me, I know it probably could have helped. But I could barely like watch Netflix. That's how bad I was feeling. I just remember how good it felt after not doing it for 24 hours. The next morning when I felt good again and could practice, it's like, okay, I'm back to myself. But I needed that practice to kind of get there as well. That's what biofeedback mindfulness will do for a long time. Anybody who's practiced mindfulness biofeedback for a year or more will tell you it's changed my life. Right. I think if you're done that, you know, and I can say this, it's changed who I am. It's made me a better person, it's made me a calmer person, a more regulated individual, you know. But you have to get over those first few weeks to get to that kind of month, to get to the six weeks, to get to the two months to get those big time benefits. Obviously you're getting something benefits from that first one on, but to really start to feel its impact on your nervous system, you know, getting those first few months in, eventually you'll get to where I do that. If I don't practice for whatever reason, I feel it and, and boy, when I get that breath going the next day, like I said, I think it was 48 hours. It's my longest stretch in about 15 years. Boy, do I feel different. So thank you for joining us today. I hope this has been helpful for you or your work. As always, you can find show notes and other
[email protected] and I will see you next week.
