Morning piece of wisdom #2 — HRV and Heart Coherence

First, let’s identify both.

Heart Rate Variability (HRV)
HRV is simply a measure of the variation in time between each heartbeat.
HRV calculations derive from your RMSSD which is actually a measurement of the activity of the autonomic nervous system. Having a high HRV means your body can efficiently change your heart rate depending on your activity.

Important to know about HRV:
HRV is influenced acutely for example by exercise, hormonal reactions, metabolic processes, cognitive processes, stress, and recovery.
HRV can be improved or degraded.

It is to say that the higher your HRV and the higher your RMSSD, the better.

Heart Coherence
You may or you may not know, but your neurons are not only in your brain.
Heart coherence is the state in which you have access to your emotions.
We could say that the neurons of the heart area are the gateway to the senses.
Take the mind alone and you have the logic and the self but add the heart and you have the senses and the image of the self. To feel confident, you need the image of the self to embody the emotions of it. You cannot simply think you are confident, you must also feel that you are confident for instance.
Weird? Maybe? Maybe not?

What do those two things have in common?
Their both refer to the autonomic nervous system.
In your body, you have the ability to be more toward the Parasympathetic part of your nervous system or more toward the Sympathetic part of your nervous system. What does it mean? It means that you have two operation modes.

Let’s talk more about the Autonomic nervous system (ANS)
When in the Parasympathetic nervous system, you are at the state that we call Rest and digest. Your heart rate is low and you are relaxed and calm.

When in the Sympathetic nervous system, you are at the state that we call Fight-or-flight. Your contraction and your heart rate are increased, you are in high alert mode, you are active rather than at rest, and not necessarily calm.

The sympathetic nervous system, let’s call it SNS, is what you are thrown into when you are taken by surprise, destabilized, attacked, or even too stressed.

The parasympathetic nervous system, let’s call it PNS, is what you reach when you are able to slow down, relax, and get back to conserving your energy.

How to be more Parasympathetic?
Getting in sync with your breath is one great way to reach your PSN. And reaching your PNS is one great way to calm the mind and the body.

Why Parasympathetic over Sympathetic?
It is almost as if in SNS you were playing in survival mode and in PNS you were playing in creative mode. What might have seemed too complex or impossible when stuck in SNS at a moment, might have seemed easy or ridiculous from the PSN perspective.

Personally, I aim to be in Parasympathetic most of the time.
Why?
Because I feel strong in it. I feel like anything could happen and I wouldn’t care. It feels like nothing could affect me because I am somehow more easily detached from the outcomes.
It’s cool to be in Sympathetic and to feel either anxious or excited, but what is even cooler is to be able to return to calm in between those moments.

The reason you should aim for heart coherence from the moment you rise in the morning is that you want to be the one that decides the operating mode.
Now.. now... I am not saying that everyone lacks heart coherence, absolutely not. What I will say though is that people that have learned to hide their emotions or suppress them, or worked against them, in general, are less likely to be aligned mentally and emotionally. Their self and the image of their self might not be the same thing. We could almost say that there is a certain dissociation between the mind and the body.

Personally, I used to not be able to understand most of my emotions.
To me emotions was weakness, everything could be achieved with the mind.
Which led me to quite a lot of stress and anxiety and a lot of ups and downs.

It’s okay to lead with the mind. To have mindset.
But to lead properly, the mindset must first incorporate the emotions.
Otherwise thinking and decision-making might be impaired.

I have learned about HRV no earlier than in 2020.
But since then I dedicated myself to increasing my score.
In only a few months I could already see improvement.
Now after a year, I have seen tangible results.
My HRV score has increased by 20%.
My RMSSD went from an average of 100 to an average of 200.
I feel less tired all the time and I feel more potent to be in the state of flow.

At the same time that I learned about HRV, I learned about heart coherence.
I started to realize how important it was to be in heart coherence in order to reach the state of flow. If you are not familiar with the state of flow, there is another piece of wisdom that is coming in the next weeks about this topic.
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A quick summary of this article's topic
HRV score means more energy, more aptitude to adapt to situations.
Heart coherence means that not only the brain is engaged but also the heart.

Why do you want a healthy HRV and constant heart coherence?
Because as you slow down and spend more time in the PNS it becomes your default state and as you are calmer, you have more patience and more time to observe your emotions and your thoughts. You also gain the gap between event and action. Which leads to responding to events rather than reacting to them. You also gain more control over your flow. Instead of rushing head down into the action, you can constantly go back to planning before acting.

Before the end I want to show you a small passage extracted from my journal:

I am grateful for my body. I am grateful for life. Even in pain, even in incapacity i know i can be grateful. No matter the discomfort, I can bear. Progressively for sure, and listening to my body off course.
I will keep at this heart coherence thing because i think it brings a great deal of stability to my life, as much as learning to stay, or to go into the calm zone, staying in tune to the breath, to the heart feels really great.

I was feeling crappy the day I wrote this, and yet it didn’t matter to me.

— — —
That’s all I had to say about HRV and Heart Coherence today.
I may very well refer to it in the future. I think it’s really important.
All you need to measure your HRV score is a phone and an HRV application.

Wish you all more influence over your autonomic nervous system.
I will be back next week to talk about Attention and Concentration.