Breathing, Resilience & HEART RATE VARIABILITY (HRV)

Firstly, what is HRV and what’s it got to do with well-being?

If you own a relatively recent smart watch/device it likely has an HRV stat on it somewhere whether you’re aware of it or not! HRV stands for Heart Rate Variability and to explain it simply, it’s the variation in time between your heartbeats. 🫀 

This time in-between your heartbeats is measured in milliseconds and generally speaking the higher this variation, the healthier and more resilient you will be to stressors. But it’s a little more complex than that. It isn’t just about searching for the highest possible number (although most people say the higher the better), it’s about your HRV being optimal for you! There’s no point, for example, in comparing your HRV to someone else’s as they’re a completely different human being with different biology.

To give you an example of HRV I’ve put a screenshot below from my Oura Ring which is the device I use to track my sleep and well-being:

As you can see the high point of my little graph is 60ms. It has risen over the course of the week and then dips towards the end of the week, likely because I had been working out, teaching and engaging in things that “taxed” my body a little bit. I’ll go into how much healthy stress we need towards the end but I include this simply as an example for anyone who is brand new to this sort of thing as well as to refer back to as we go through the blog.

Research has shown that a higher HRV is associated with improved mood, better emotional regulation, reduced depression symptoms, reduced anxiety symptoms, improved sleep quality and enhanced cognitive function. It’s become one of the best markers of physiological stress, meaning that we can actually tell how resilient somebody is to stress and even to some extent, their risk of physical and mental health conditions.

When you track HRV yourself, like I do, you can sometimes predict whether you might be about to get a bit rundown or develop a cold etc. because you begin to see a downward trend in your HRV number over a few days.

A drop in HRV directly after something a little stressful is normal. For example, let’s say that my “optimal” HRV is 60. When I do a heavy workout in the gym, I’d expect to see my HRV drop a bit the next day as my body begins to repair itself after the strain. However… that number should relatively quickly bounce back up again if I am functioning well. It’s when that number doesn’t bounce back up in a couple of days that we may start to look a little more closely at what’s causing the aforementioned downward trend. For those suffering with PTSD, trauma or chronic anxiety/stress, they may experience this downward trend more easily as well as it taking longer than the average person for it to rise again. This is where clinical interventions such as therapy are extremely helpful as well as addressing our breathing and physiology to build more resilience to stress and triggers. Let’s dive into this a little further…

physiology? Breathing? tell me more.

HRV is influenced by a nerve called the Vagus Nerve. This nerve, if you’ve never heard of it, is one of our cranial nerves and it’s responsible for all of our rest and digest functions.

For a quick recap of the autonomic nervous system, we have two branches that we mainly focus on when it comes to well-being - the sympathetic nervous system (your fight or flight response that mobilises your body for stress/threat/play) and the para-sympathetic nervous system (your rest and digest response that allows you to relax, sleep and digest your food etc). Having a beautiful balance between the two is what we are ultimately aiming for as we need both to be balanced and functioning optimally in order to be healthy.

Unfortunately, due to the busy, achievement driven, technology focused world most of us now live in, it’s very easy for the body to assume we’re “at threat” when we aren’t. This can be due to stressors at work or even over-use of technology/screens. This up-regulation of the nervous system is of course necessary, but long-term if we’re unknowingly stuck in this state, it can lead to anxiety, stress, sleep disorders, GI issues and lots more stuff we’d probably rather do without.

This is the part where our breathing comes in. Breathing is one of the best and most efficient ways of influencing the vagus nerve and therefore improving our HRV. Why? Well, because the vagus nerve travels down through both the heart and the lungs they can’t work without each-other! And our breathing is unique in the sense that it can be both an involuntary and a voluntary function - we can manipulate it at will, whenever we want to. When we purposely slow our breathing down to between 5 and a half to 6 breaths a minute (I’ll go over this in the next section), we stimulate the vagus nerve. When we stimulate the vagus nerve we down-regulate our nervous system, reducing stress/strain and allowing the body to return to its natural state of balance (homeostasis) - doesn’t that sound just lovely! In the next section I’ll walk you through how to practice this slower breathing rhythm and give you some more tips on stimulating that vagus nerve.

Voluntary, slow breathing

To reduce your respiratory rate (how many breaths you take in a minute) down to 5.5 - 6, you simply need to find a suitable cadence. The cadence that is spoken about most in the world of breathing and wellness is an inhale over 4 seconds and and exhale over 6 seconds. There are two reasons for this - 1. it reduces your breathing rate to that golden 6 (ish) breaths a minute and 2. it extends your exhale. Extending your exhales is another star tool in relaxing and reassuring your nervous system

Give this a go with me now wherever you are: Inhale gently through your nose for 4, 3, 2, 1 then exhale for 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1… and then repeat. Simples!

Most of the research on improving HRV through breathing is all about cadence and points to what we’ve just discussed above. But there is also growing research on reduced breathing techniques and optimising your overall breathing and fitness. I’ll go into reduced breathing techniques in another blog but if you’d like to learn more about optimising your breathing then have a read of my free E-book. You get it when you sign up to my mailing list and it also has a free MP3 breath-work included too.

Other ways to stimulate the vagus nerve & build resilience to stress

Stimulating the calming mechanisms of the vagus nerve can happen without us even thinking about it too hard. Listening to music, singing, smiling, playing instruments, engaging in play/creativity… these are all actions that can have a real calming effect on our nervous system.

Interestingly there was a song recently dubbed “the most relaxing song in the world” which was commissioned by The British Academy of Sound Therapy. The track “Weightless” by Marconi Union was designed to induce a state of deep relaxation through slower tempos and flowing, gentle rhythms. I’ve read in a few articles about the track that the 8 minute version of the track lowered anxiety levels by up to 65%! I’ve listened to it myself and it really is relaxing… maybe don’t listen to it if you have to be alert or do any driving!
There are many ways to create that resilience to stress I’m talking about but it’s not just about down-regulation. If we only ever focused on relaxing the body, we’d start to get lethargic and irritable and we’d actually have the opposite effect in the long-term! The body needs balance and stress is a necessary part of that balance. Think about exercise - we all know that exercise including resistance training and cardiovascular exercise are necessary for our health but these types of exercise are stressful! They add load onto the body and challenge it in order that it can adapt and get stronger/fitter. Even exercise such as yoga still adds a demand to the body but it also creates resilience, increasing range of motion, mobility, strength and also connecting us to and improving our breathing, which we know is important for HRV, health and well-being.

So how much stress is too much & is tracking HRV necessary?

To keep it simple… stress is good and relaxation is good. Too much of either will have an effect on our overall health and well-being but more often than not, in this busy and achievement driven world we live in, it’s the “too much stress” we need to address. If you find yourself with insomnia, racing mind, rapid breathing, anxiety, gut issues etc. then looking at reducing stress in your life will always be a good thing to do.

As we begin to wrap this blog up, let’s remind ourselves of my HRV graph and what I mentioned about when we see a downward trend in our HRV. We know that when we see this downward trend it indicates we may have been under a little too much stress recently for whatever reason - maybe we’ve gone a bit too hard on the workouts, had personal stress in our lives or been under pressure at work etc. With this knowledge we can then put things in place to reduce that stress and hopefully see it start to rise and balance out again. However, we may not need or even want to track this statistic! For someone that is a little less body aware, then seeing these numbers could actually be really helpful! That individual may start to reflect a bit on what has added the extra strain and could contribute to better body awareness and overall well-being. I personally (and this isn’t always a good thing!) am quite hyper-aware of my physical and mental state. Over the years I’ve become really in tune with what my body needs, wants and how to find that place of balance I’ve been banging on about... doesn’t always work out of course, I’m not superwoman 😉 But therefore for me, the tracking of HRV isn’t always necessary. It’s there as a point of interest and I just find it fascinating to see how it’s affected by my hormones, moods, food/drink consumption, sleep quality etc etc.

If you are suffering with chronic stress or anxiety/panic disorder then tracking HRV is likely not going to be for you. My biggest bit of advice is that if it’s going to add extra stress or anxiety to your life then leave it. Do your breathing exercises, do some restorative practices and all the good stuff we’ve mentioned, in the knowledge that it’s making a real difference to your nervous system and well-being.

I really hope this blog was useful and interesting. If you have any questions, drop me a message. I’ll be continually updating this blog as my knowledge grows so if you think I’ve missed something, let me know!

Happy breathing and if you’d like to book a free call to discuss you own well-being and to work with me 1-1 then click here.

Jess x