[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
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Welcome friends to the Heart Rate Variability podcast. I'm Matt Bennett, just here to do a quick introduction of a replay of a classic episode. This episode is my interview with Doctor Ina Hazan around residence frequency breathing. This is a topic that has really, we've seen a lot of interest in, especially since we launched the optimal zone in the app. And I just thought for our new listeners, this would be a good episode to bring back up in the feed and also for our long time listeners relistening this episode. Myself, I always learn things from Doctor Ina Hazan, so wanted to bring this back into the feed either as a refresher for folks or if you haven't listened to this episode, it is one of those classics, one of our most popular episodes. So without any more to do, here is Doctor Ina Hazan talking about resonance frequency breathing.
Welcome friends to the Heart Rate Variability podcast. I am so excited today to have my good friend colleague Doctor Ina Hazan here to talk about a subject we've actually had people reaching out for us to talk about and Ina and I have tried to schedule this for months now. So I'm glad we actually found a time that works both for us to talk about residents resonance frequency breathing. And so, you know, welcome back to the show. It's been a couple months. I think our last one together was when we published the book. So just a reminder to folks, the heartbeat of business is still out there and selling copies. So always good to see when your sales tick up here and there. So Ida, welcome to the show today, and since most of our audience are probably familiar with you and your work at this point, let's just jump into rf breathing. So I know, and I've shared with our audience probably a few dozen times at this point, I really believe this has changed my life.
It's definitely changed my heart rate variability. And everything I know about HRV is that it's connected to so many things that, and I'm overdramatic, as you well know. So I'm gonna say you introducing me to this topic and getting in my app has at least been a huge contributor to my all time average, going from about 40 to now over 80. There are some other things I contribute to that, but if I was looking for one thing, I changed. It was integrating this into my mindfulness practice. So let's start out with the basics for our listener. Rf breathing.
What is it?
[00:03:20] Speaker B: All right, well, first of all, thanks so much for having me back. I'm so glad that we got a chance to finally schedule this conversation. And I am so impressed with your heart rate variability.
And the difference you've made for yourself with resonance frequency is amazing. We could all hope to be a little bit like you.
[00:03:43] Speaker A: In that way, at least. I don't know if I'd encourage much else, but at least in that way.
[00:03:48] Speaker B: Well, that's a good way, right? That's one good way. So, resonance frequency breathing, it's an optimal breathing rate that stimulates the heart rate to oscillate in ways that produce the highest heart rate oscillations, meaning that your heart rate goes up as much as possible with each breath in and goes down as much as possible with each breath out, which is heart rate variability. And that is what we want. And resonance frequency breathing is a way to train heart, your ability to produce these high oscillations at the time of practice, it's like a workout for your nervous system.
Just like when you go to the gym and lift some dumbbells and throw some kettlebells around, your muscles get stronger each time. And you don't need to keep those dumbbells and kettlebells around with you in order to keep your muscle strength. So if you've been working out for a couple of months, a friend asks you to help them lift a couch.
You are much better able to do that without anything special at that point. So that working out you've been doing is doing its job in the background. Resonance frequency breathing does the same thing for your heart rate variability and your autonomic nervous system in general. So for your ability to regulate your activation, your ability to adapt to changes in your environment. So by doing a resonance frequency breathing, ideally 20 minutes a day, trains your nervous system to regulate itself better so that when you encounter a challenge, your nervous system is already better. At meeting that challenge, it's going to be easier for you to respond in healthier, more helpful ways without necessarily having to do anything special. Those 20 minutes a day where you. Resonance frequency breathing drives maximum heart rate oscillations. It trains, you know, the, it trains the foundations of heart rate variability, trains the main sources of heart rate variability, so that when you return to normal breathing, your heart survivability becomes a little bit higher, you know, and over time, you know, gains strength. You know, just like, you know, Matt, you've noticed with resonance frequency training, your heart survivability at baseline, at normal breathing rates increase.
That's the idea. Your heart rate ability goes up over time, signaling that your nervous system is better able to regulate itself.
[00:06:27] Speaker A: Okay, so let me ask you, that's a great, great simple definition. I think I'm just going to listen to that over and over again until I get that down. So, great introduction to it. So, a couple of follow up questions here. One is, where did this come from? Because it is a. And maybe you can talk a little bit about how we establish, because I'm someone who's probably read, oh, man, at least 30 books on mindfulness over the years, if not more. Probably double that with everything I've read podcasts and until I met you and got into heart rate variability, even with heart rate variability, getting into that, hadn't even heard this term. So something that I credit to doubling my heart rate variability. I have a master's degree in psychology. I'm a brain nerd, I'm a polyvagal nerd and never heard about this. So I love maybe just a little bit of kind of history. And why isn't this out there in a bigger way in the mindfulness arena, which I know leads to a lot of your work in this arena as well.
[00:07:44] Speaker B: Why it's not more out there? I'm honestly not entirely sure. I guess that's what we are doing is helping get this be more out there. But the history goes back to some of this work was initially done in the former Soviet Union, particularly in Russia, by a scientist named Evgeny Vasilo.
So he met an american scientist, Paul Lair. Paul Lair at Rutgers, at Robert with Johnson Medical School. And so doctor Lehrer went to Russia, to St. Peter, well, Leningrad at the time, and he was interested in psychophysiology. So he met Evgeni Bashillo, who was doing this work on heart revolability. They started talking about it, working on it together, and eventually doctor Basilow came over to New Jersey and doctor Leia were working together for many, many years. And it. So it's from their work that resonance frequency breathing as a way to train heart survivability emerged.
So the way this works is many systems in the body oscillate.
Your heart rate goes up and down, your blood pressure goes up and down. And they were working with, how do these systems oscillate together and how do they play off of each other? So this term resonance came into play. You know, residence is a physics term, right? It's not a term that's specific to HRV. It's not a term specific to physiology. It's just a term that describes a system where that has two parts that interplay with each other, and one part of the system stimulates another to produce maximum oscillations. So that's resonance.
You can think of it as pushing a child on a swing, right?
[00:09:48] Speaker A: So as you get to that analogy.
[00:09:51] Speaker B: Yeah, I love that analogy.
As you, you know, you as an adult, you know, pushing the child in a swing. So that's the two parts of the, of this oscillating system, right? The, you know, you and the child in a swing is the other part. And you can push the swing in many ways. You can push this wing, you know, like once with a lot of force, and the swing is going to go up, but not evenly. Right. It's going to be quite bumpy, and that's going to come down and then, you know, not go up much after that. And the child is not going to be too thrilled with you. And where you can push the swing with short, frequent bursts. Right. And the swing is going to go up just a little bit and come right back down. And again, the child is going to be quite unhappy with you. You're not doing a good job of entertaining them.
Or you can figure out a way of pushing that swing in even, measured ways, right. Push up, let it come down. Push up, let it come down. And figure out a way to push that swing so it goes up as much as possible. And come down as much as possible. It goes up as much as possible. And comes down as much as possible. It does that again, this is a regular, measured, smooth way. That's when the child is happy, right. And then, you know, they're flying up, they're coming down. It's smooth, it's fun, it's safe, it's entertaining.
The same. So that's a resonance frequency rate of pushing the swing, right. It maximizes the way in which the swing goes up, in which it comes down.
Your heart rate and your breath work in the same way. Right. So you stimulating the swing is just like your breath stimulating the heart rate. As you breathe in, your heart rate goes up. As you breathe out, your heart rate goes down.
And you can find an optimal way of breathing that will produce these maximum oscillations, the maximum way for the heart rate to go up and come down maximally as well.
And this is that interplay that Doctor Lehrer and Doctor Boschello found and tested to see how exactly this works in the cardiovascular system. They found that for most people, breathing somewhere between four and seven breaths per minute creates this resonance interplay relationship. We all have our own resonance frequency breathing rate that will maximize our heart survivability.
We need to find what that resonance frequency breathing rate is for each one of us and then use it to maximize the efficiency of HRV training.
[00:12:25] Speaker A: So I think we've well established that four breaths a minute is the best rate to breathe at. At least that's what I'm putting on.
[00:12:34] Speaker B: The t shirt certainly is for you.
[00:12:38] Speaker A: I want to start get the 4.0s together, but. So we have, I know in the app you do, I believe, seven two minute exercises at different breathing rates to establish your specific rf breathing rate. And mine is four breaths per minute, which sometimes I find even if I'm sitting down doing it, I can work up a sweat doing, especially early on. I mean, when you call it a workout, especially when I go up to high altitudes here in Colorado, it does feel like that. Now, the more I do it, just like any other activity, the less I feel like exertion. It becomes more of a natural, like the child on the swing. I feel like there's a flow to it that develops. But what are we looking for? So what is happening when I go through our assessment at 4.0 and for other people's, maybe seven breaths a minute, that this is good for ENA, this is good for Matt, and we all just shouldn't breathe at six breaths per minute, which is kind of standardized in the literature that I have seen before, really diving into this.
[00:13:59] Speaker B: Yeah. So let me address the six breaths per minute. That is the breathing rate that kind of gets close enough for enough people that quite a few research studies, rather than determining everyone's residence frequency breathing rate, would just have everybody breathe at six breaths per minute.
And, you know, six breaths per minute is better than not pacing yourself. We're not breathing within that range at all, not doing any of this training. But there are a couple of studies that have shown that determining your actual residence frequency breathing rate does produce more efficient results. You know, increases HIV a little bit more, reduces symptoms a bit more. So given that HRV training is something that we really commit to and make time for in our lives, residence frequency assessment takes 14 minutes.
So adding that one little step and determining what your residence frequency breathing rate is then maximizes the efficiency of your training. So all the time, as you're dedicating to doing your HRV training, if you just add this little 15 minutes part to it, your training will be that much more efficient. And it's possible that your residence frequency breathing rate is indeed six breaths per minute, which will serve to confirm that you are getting the most out of that training. But there are certainly quite a few people for whom six breaths per minute is not exactly it. Right. You are at four. I'm normally at five. There are people who are at six and a half, five and a half, four and a half, etcetera.
And I think it's very much worth it to determine your own unique resonance frequency breathing rate. It is also important. I'm glad you mentioned this idea of exertion when you're slowing down your breath that much. Most people breathe 1415 breaths per minute at baseline. Slowing down to seven breaths per minute or below is not necessarily natural.
[00:16:02] Speaker A: Right.
[00:16:03] Speaker B: And for some people can feel effortful.
We do want the breath to be effortless. That does seem, that does make a difference, certainly makes it more pleasant, but also more efficient.
So one thing I recommend for people to do prior to determining their residence frequency breathing rate is first practice breathing at, say, six breaths per minute, just for the sake of learning how to slow down that much. So I don't want people breathing at six breaths per minute just all the time. Again, I do think that determining your rf breathing rate is incredibly important, but it is first important to learn how to slow down.
For folks who jump into resonance frequency determination without becoming comfortable with slow breathing first, the assessment might not actually be as accurate because you may not be able to keep pace if it's uncomfortable. You may not be able to actually slow down to four breaths per minute.
There are people who say, oh, I feel so much more comfortable breathing at six breaths per minute, but the data shows that their resonance frequency is four. The question becomes, well, is this accurate? Should I be breathing at six?
The data most of the time is actually, if it's pointing you to four, I would go with that. But it's really important to learn how to be comfortable. It is possible that your residence frequency breathing rate is initially uncomfortable just because you're not used to breathing that way, but it is the one that's producing these maximal oscillations in your HRV. Spending a little time getting comfortable with low and slow breathing around six breaths per minute is.
I really can't emphasize enough how important it is. And I know quite a few people have tempted to skip that step and just get to the good stuff, figure out your breathing rate, but don't do it. Get comfortable breathing first.
[00:18:03] Speaker A: Well, and I love our listeners, if they happen to go back to Doctor Dave and my episodes on nasal breathing too, of how we take in air and get air out, can just add bonuses to this as we go through and really practice this breathing.
You know, one thing, you know, and I won't make this just about Matt's questions about his rf, but, you know, here in Colorado, we have a unique thing. And as a traveler, having sometimes traveling, I was in DC a couple weeks ago, and then I spent a lot of time up in Keystone, Colorado, which is about 10,000ft and obviously very different oxygen levels. And then I live sort of halfway between those at about 5000, a little over 5000ft. So I believe I've learned from you that altitude really doesn't make that big of a difference, and I should still that it's more of the rate that's important.
We're not really dealing with oxygen, carbon dioxide, that's kind of a whole nother podcast. Very important, but not really what we're doing with rf frequency. Am I in the ballpark with that?
[00:19:24] Speaker B: Yeah. So your residence frequency breathing rate does not, does not change.
Let me expand on this a little bit. It does change for kids. Once a person reaches their final adult size, their residence frequency, breathing rate does not change. The only aspect that seems to influence a residence frequency is how tall we are. That seems to be the only thing. So, and there is a correlation. Taller people tend to have lower residence frequency breathing rates. So, you know, Matt, you're at four. You know, you're certainly following that correlation nicely. It's not a perfect correlation. I have seen people whose residence frequency is four, and they're not like math, and I've seen people who are tall with higher resonance frequency, but there is generally a correlation.
Let me also say that lower resonance frequency is no better than higher resonance frequency. It's just what it is. It's not a competition, even for you, Matt. Not a competition. It's just for now.
It's just like, what's your hair color? What's your eye color? What's your resonance frequency? Breathing rate? It's just what breathing rate produces maximum oscillations of your body, and that's it.
So it doesn't change. You're not supposed to increase it or decrease it. It's just a characteristic that's yours.
If you have kids, their residence frequency will change as they grow until probably the age of, I don't know, maybe 20 or so. You want to retest your residence frequency. Every year, kids residence frequency tends to be higher, maybe six to ten, depending on the age.
Once they hit about 13, the residence frequency becomes that same as it is for adults about four to seven. But it might still keep changing until that teenager gets to their final adult size.
So just something to keep in mind. Once you are at your final adult, height and weight does not change your residence frequency. Just to I comfort those with weight changes as we go through our adulthood. But once we are at the final adult size, resonance frequency remains the same. And it doesn't matter if you are at sea level. If you are at 5000ft, 10,000ft, it does not matter.
Resonance frequency breathing does help at altitude because it helps with oxygen absorption.
If you find yourself in keystone or in Quito, Ecuador, 10,000ft, what helps to get the most oxygen out of the air is actually do some resonance frequency breathing, because what happens is you're breathing in at the same time as your heart rate is speeding up. So you're extracting as much oxygen as possible from the lungs, and then the heart is able to get it to the rest of the body.
The amount of oxygen in the air actually doesn't change. There is 21% oxygen at sea level. There is 21% oxygen at higher altitudes. What changes is with atmospheric pressure, the distance between oxygen molecules becomes larger, so the oxygen molecules are more scattered. So with each breath, once you are past five, 6000ft, that you are effectively taking in less oxygen with each breath.
And when you're at 10,000ft, you may not be getting quite enough.
It doesn't really change what you're supposed to be doing with your breathing. You just want to make sure that you are getting enough oxygen. You acclimated to altitude, etcetera. At some point, obviously, as you go up higher, there may not be enough oxygen or the oxygen molecules are so spread out that you need supplemental oxygen, but usually not at 10,000ft.
[00:23:42] Speaker A: Yeah, if you're up that high, you're probably planning to be up that high.
[00:23:46] Speaker B: Exactly. Hopefully.
[00:23:48] Speaker A: So the other thing that I find interesting, and it was funny, it was Dave Janelle, who's been on our podcast, we were at the applied, applied bio.
[00:24:03] Speaker B: AAPB, Applied association for Applied Psychophysiology and biofeedback.
[00:24:08] Speaker A: Yeah, such a mouthful. I need to really memorize that which you are currently president of if I'm president elect. President elect. All right. So we were huddling, and one of the things with our app, and I know we've got a really, really exciting upgrade coming out soon, and we'll hold off on that upgrade until it comes out because I'm so excited about it, both with my own practice and to get it out to the world.
But the interesting thing is we were kind of huddling and as, oh, we're all HRV nerds and comparing our rf rates, trying to argue that ours was the best, even though we know better.
The one thing I thought was interesting that I hadn't paid attention to because I do this, my 20 minutes, really mindful practice in the morning, and I don't usually hook up to a biofeedback device. Though I've started to do that a little bit more because I do kind of a Tai Chi moving mindfulness meditation at rf frequency. And I just find that spectacular gets is my pre work kind of warm up, pregame kind of warm up for work. And then I do like 20 minutes at night while I watch tv, basically as bonus. It's like an extra credit project where you're not, you know, you're not probably doing everything you need to do, but you just want to pick up some points along the way. One of the things that I got alerted to, I think, was Dave, but Janelle was talking about it as well, is when we focused on the breathing, turning off the television and really focusing, doing a mindfulness. With the biofeedback, we'll actually see more fluctuation in our heart rate. So initially I thought, well, I'm doing it. Focus isn't that important because I could do curls and watch tv at the same time in the gym. I don't think my biceps are getting any less of a workout.
But we were all kind of seeing this thing. Well, when we're actually paying attention to only our breathing or a mindfulness activity playing in the background, we saw a lot more fluctuation. Then I went home and tried it. I'm like, oh, wow, this is really cool stuff. So do you have any idea what's going on here and why mental focus improves the variability during rf frequency breathing practice?
[00:26:48] Speaker B: Yeah, I do think we need a lot more research to pinpoint exactly what's going on. So I will give you some educated guesses.
I think partly it just may be that we're actually better able to follow their resonance frequency breathing rate when our full attention is on it. I think that's sort of the simplest explanation.
Part of your brain is focused on something else. You're probably not following your resonance frequency breathing rate even if you have a pacer in front of you, not following it as accurately. So that's one, two, what's driving these oscillations, the ups and downs of the heart rate, the accelerations and decelerations, is your vagal nerve, which is one of the cranial. It's a 10th cranial nerve that comprises most of our parasympathetic nervous system.
The vagal nerve has projections, obviously, into the body and it has projections into the brain. So when heart survivability training stimulates the vagal nerve, and we do know that there is an association between more mindful states and an increase in heart rate variability.
So I suspect that what's happening when you're more focused and you're engaging the parts of the brain that are also helping to engage the vagal nerve and further stimulate the heart rate oscillation. So I think you're getting just more bang for your buck by engaging both the mind and the body.
[00:28:25] Speaker A: Fascinating. It makes total sense too, with what we know about the vagal nerve. So the final piece here that I kind of want to touch on a little bit because I know I've got the world's expert on this question on the podcast with me today is I need a new analogy here. So if you can help me with that, that would be great. But having integrate rf frequency into my mindfulness practice the best, and I love my analogies, as our listeners know. So I always have to find an analogy or I don't understand the world. So I really, I've used this analogy of basically integrating rf frequency, breathe or rf breathing into my morning. Mindfulness practice is like mindfulness on steroids without any of the bad stuff. It was just like this, this supplement. I mean, I'm sure a lot of our listeners know the tremendous research behind, you know, different forms of meditation out there, mindfulness activities, things like yoga, Tai Chi, loving kindness. There's all this research into these various techniques. I felt like, as somebody who does moving meditation, that RF just is just like steroids. It's like I said, I haven't come up with a better analogy, so I would just love to get your one. If you have a better analogy for me, I'd love to hear it. But two, I just bring us with this connection, give the title of your book, which was just a huge resource for me to bring these two together. And I think, brilliant piece of work that we need out there in the world in a very important way right now. But just the overlap as your work has done, bringing RF breathing into, I guess, more traditional mindfulness practices.
[00:30:26] Speaker B: I kind of like mindfulness and steroids without.
[00:30:29] Speaker A: Okay, okay. I did.
[00:30:30] Speaker B: It works.
[00:30:31] Speaker A: People get it.
Don't take steroids.
I'm not promoting steroid use. That just that caveat.
[00:30:40] Speaker B: Yeah. I'll see if I can think of another analogy. I guess you can think of it as feeding two birds with one bagel.
You're accomplishing two goals at once.
The interesting part is the research on mindfulness and HRV shows a couple things. One is, you know, heart rebility is a really good index of self regulation. So, you know, HRV is an excellent way to assess the effectiveness of mindfulness based interventions, for example. But the research around, you know, does meditation increase heart survivability is actually quite mixed.
Sometimes yes, sometimes no.
And again, we need more research on this. But I suspect what's happening is when people are meditating, they don't necessarily slow down their breathing, and they certainly don't necessarily slow down to their residence frequency breathing rate.
Some very experienced meditators actually slow down way more. They end up breathing at 2.53 breaths per minute, which is slower than optimal. Right. So they're not maximizing their heart durability or people who breathe a little bit faster during meditation. Again, they're not maximizing their heart durability.
So I suspect that that's the reason for the mixed research. Some people probably end up close to their residence frequency, and that helps increase HRV. And those that are higher or, you know, or lower don't increase HRV sufficiently there. You know, a couple of studies that have looked at mindfulness using slow paced breathing and they usually pace at six breaths per minute, are finding very positive results. And I suspect that that's exactly why that they're pairing, you know, you know, they're pairing two of these really powerful interventions together. So we really do need more research, you know, to see how the combination of the two works compared to, you know, each one of them, each one of them separately, you know, as far as increases in HRV, in HRV go. So when I do think you get more bang for your buck, you are, you know, utilizing the good, you know, steroids or, you know, you're feeding two birds with one bagel, whatever you want to call it. You know, if you're going to be spending your time, if you're going to be dedicating the 20 minutes a day to practice, why not combine two interventions that will engage both the autonomic nervous system and the central nervous system, your brain, in a way that helps in some ways, actually synchronize their activity. And most importantly, they're both working on self regulation.
Mindfulness is a self regulation tool. HRV Biofeedback is a self regulation tool. So you're combining the two together and you are just getting more out of the practice. Interesting.
[00:33:48] Speaker A: So almost maybe like in the swing analogy, which I love, is like the six breaths per minute that's usually integrated in these studies might not be the optimal, but it's going to create a happier child than if you're not pain, if you're just kind of all over the place.
[00:34:07] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:34:07] Speaker A: Yeah. You're still, you're getting there. You're going to make the kid happy. Some will be like perfectly in bliss because six is close enough or at your rf. But somebody like me with a four, I could make a small adjustment to make that child even happier and get more benefits out of. Out of the practice.
[00:34:31] Speaker B: That's exactly, that's exactly right. It's a small, it's a fairly small adjustment that can make a really big, can make a really big difference.
[00:34:40] Speaker A: Awesome. Well, let me get you out on this kind of future thinking question is, like I said, somebody who's been, I think I read my first mindfulness book. My grandfather gave me something when I was like in fourth grade, and I've been fascinated with it ever since and then got over being bad at it and practiced it consistently for 15 years. Never came across this until I started to learn about picking up your book was the first time I really learned about this and started to think about this clinically as a mental health professional and like, holy heck, like, you know, one of the reasons I reached out to you initially was like, how do I get this on folks, trauma, homeless, like, how do I get this to populations who maybe we think about mindfulness a little bit, but folks that really need to maximize any recovery time. So I just love for just to look into the future. It's something that I think with technology where I think one of the reasons I may have not have heard about it is if most of the history of rf time breathing, the, I'd have to probably get hooked up to a very expensive machine to get my rf breathing rate.
So I just love to ask you a question as now, you know, with our app at $5 a month, with 14 minutes, with a fairly inexpensive monitor on, so a very, very, you know, you probably pay good for two years of our app. Just what it would take to initially establish it historically. What is sort of your hope for this as a leader in this field who's written, again tremendous books on this subject speak so eloquently about it. Where do you hope that the power of this goes in the future?
[00:36:51] Speaker B: Oh, I certainly hope it goes to being available to every single human being out there. Because if you, if you really think about it, it's fairly simple. And we found a way to make this be inexpensive. Right. Between modern technology and a lot of the work put into the app, this is now available to anyone who is interested. Time investment is, on the one hand, fairly minimal. 20 minutes a day. It can't feel like, wait a minute, I don't have 20 minutes a day. So it certainly is a time investment. But in a grand scheme of things, it's not a huge time commitment. It's, you know, it's very possible to integrate this gradually into your life. And I really do hope that everybody takes advantage of this. This is not just for people who, you know, have issues, although I guess since every, every single person out there has issues, I guess it is for everybody, you know, who has issues. The point is, this is not necessarily, you know, to work with a particular problem. You know, HIV training is a really powerful way to work with, you know, with trauma and with, you know, chronic illnesses and, you know, depression, anxiety, etcetera. But it's also just a really good way to improve our lives. It's a really good way to improve our well being. So I really do hope that everybody gets a hold of this, because why? You know, who can't get better at self regulation, right? You know, who couldn't benefit from responding in health, in healthier, more helpful ways to stressors coming our way, right? There isn't a single person out there who doesn't wish to respond in a more hopeful way at least some of the time. So I really hope that folks pick up a HRV monitor, get our app and get started with this training.
All this process is described in a lot of detail in my book by feedback in mindfulness in everyday life. And we walk you through this step by step in the app.
Optimal HRV is the only app out there that will walk you through in this very concrete, easy to understand way for how to get your residence frequency breathing rate. You learn how to breathe slowly first. As I mentioned, that's quite important.
And optimal actually provides a way for you to do that. Just experimenting with different pacers and getting comfortable and then getting to your residence frequency determination where you breathe at two minutes, at seven breaths per minute. Six and a half. Six. Five and a half. Five, four and. No, five, five, four and a half. And four.
So 14 minutes. There is a little, a little bit of a break between each one. You know, if you need, if you need a break between the different breathing rates, but you go through them in the soda and at the end the algorithm spits out, this is your ideal breathing rate. You know, the app is looking at several determinants of ideal breathing rate and tells you which of these breathing rates produces that for you. And then you can use that residence frequency breathing rate or your ideal breathing rate in your subsequent HRV training. So it's not simple in a sense that you do need to dedicate some time and you do need to commit to doing this, but it's not complicated otherwise. And the app really does make it as easy as possible.
Once you have your residence frequency breathing rate, you can integrate it into your mindfulness and self compassion practices and get on your way to improving self regulation, improving well being, and just being healthier and happier. Awesome.
[00:40:44] Speaker A: And as part of that, I know I've asked three last questions. Now, one of the things that I've seen, and you sort of led into this as well, is one, is I've seen mindfulness for quite a while now as both a practice and a skill set. And I think in your book, using flare is what I've adopted because it's such a good model, bringing in some of the skills. And how do you. Yeah, I practice and then I'm sort of building those skills like you gave that great analogy as I go do curls, kettle balls in the gym. Then when somebody asks me to move, I can perform at a higher rate.
I've also found just within my own stumbling through life as I do with RF. I found also, like, if I have a few minutes of quiet before a training, I do a little rf breathing rate.
I do it a little bit when I'm on. This is a great practice for me when I'm on the ski lift going up the hill before, if I go on a good run, I practice rf. We get, just because I'm on a chairlift, I don't have anything else to do.
But I also have found this to be a useful tool just to almost, I guess the best way I could describe is I almost level out, whereas at least for me as a trainer, you've got a whole lot of things going on. You're trying to set up your technology, you're talking to people, this, that and the other. And if I can just sneak away for a quick moment and even do like two minutes of rf, which I know is probably not changing a whole lot of my physiology. But I've almost practiced it for so many hours now that, that calm, almost just getting at that four breaths per minute, it's like, okay, I'm ready to go. Not necessarily even relax, but I'm ready to perform. And I just kind of. I know you work with athletes, special forces. Have other people found kind of the usefulness as a tool, sort of in the moment of performance or right before performance?
[00:43:01] Speaker B: Yes, absolutely. And this is a really good way to point this out. Matt, the 20 minutes a day is like this, you know, just like this workout that prepares, you know, your body for self regulation, that trains the ability of the nervous system to self regulate. And then when you are preparing for a performance or before something stressful or in the middle of a stressful situation, as long as you have that foundational training. So this is important. Just doing a couple of minutes of resonance frequency breathing every once in a while is not going to do a whole lot. It might help a little bit in the moment, but not a whole lot. You do have to establish that foundational training. But once that's there, and let's say you are preparing for that ski run on the chairlift, getting a couple of minutes of breathing does two things. One, is it just you can, at this point, quickly get into your body, into that better self regulatory state. It's a nice way to remind your body to self regulate, because at this point, with all the training you've been doing, your body knows how to do it, so it just needs a reminder. And our bodies learn a lot. Bodies and brains learn a whole lot by association. So called classical opavoluvian conditioning, where when one stimulus gets associated with another, we can then start producing the result that in the past would not have come about. So that state of self regulation, as you said, Matt, it's not relaxation.
And I think this is really important. This is not a relaxation practice. This is a self regulation practice. When you do this practice before a ski run or before a presentation, your body prepares for performance and action. If you do this before going to sleep, your body is going to prepare to wind down and go to sleep, because that's what self regulation is all about, adjusting your activation to whatever your needs are.
By doing this foundational practice, you are associating this kind of breathing with better self regulation. That's the problem. Conditioning. You do the breathing, it creates better self regulation. That's the natural part of it. Then just taking a few breaths, which in the past would not have done a whole lot now, because of this association, because of this conditioning, produce a state of much better self regulation because your body is used to that. And that is a really powerful in the moment tool. You can be going into a stressful meeting. You take 30 seconds to take three long, slow breaths at your resonance frequency, and your body is in a much better regulated state. So it can be helpful in the moment as long as you're doing your longer practices as well.
[00:45:41] Speaker A: Awesome. Well, I think that's a great way to end up. You said it really quick. Say the name of your book one.
[00:45:46] Speaker B: More time by a feedback and mindfulness in everyday life.
[00:45:50] Speaker A: Get it? People really, you know, and I love Ina just as a friend and a colleague, but the book really is so important to really from a user perspective because it's really, I read it in all I could think about the first time I read through it was me because I wanted to pull the goodies into my life and then thinking about it from a clinical perspective, really integrating this in. We've got the technology now to really supplement mental health care. I really see like rf breathing practice. Throw some mindfulness on it, use mindfulness on steroids. It's like as a therapist, the old school homework was always journaling. Journaling is still important. There's a lot of really cool research behind journaling. This is just like the ultimate homework assignment for folks in therapy. I think with all the health benefits that we associate with an increase in heart rate variability, this just, I really believe, is a huge revolution that your book really gives us a roadmap to help implement both into our personal lives for our family members, loved ones. But also, you know, if you're in the healthy and healing or if you're a trainer, if you're a coach, like I said, getting people to do this and practice this between sessions, between workouts is just going to boost your outcomes and your work with folks. So it's exciting to be like right at the, you know, beginning of this end wave and swimming out there with you, my friend. So thank you. Like I said, we've got some really incredible updates to the app coming up around this, which, you know, I'm going to have to have you back to talk about because we're even taking this up, maybe adding growth hormones to our steroid regimen here coming up. So I will continue to work on my analogy. But Ina, thank you so much. And as always, you can find show notes, links.
Reach out to
[email protected] and we would look forward to our next episode. So, Ina, thanks so much.
[00:48:13] Speaker B: Thank you, Matt.
