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Hello. All right, so we're going to be diving in today deep. We're not going to be able to diagnose specific things necessarily, and even though even if we could, I don't do diagnoses to them, a coach. But what we want to realize is that Vangletone and HRV is sort of a real indicator of how you're doing. And we want to understand, what is your HRV Vangletone?
and how is it trending up or down and how is it compared to population norms? Okay, so vagal tone again cardiac vagal tone represents the contribution of the parasympathetic nervous system to heart regulation, you're going to regulate your heart and your cardiac system. And there's an acknowledged link between this phenomenon and psycho physiological research, meaning how does your physiology impact your mindset, including self regulation at cognitive
emotional, social, and health levels. Everything we've been talking about inside the program, right? Relational, social, environmental, aspect, semantics, all of it, how all of it is doing, is sort of represented by your valuable term. Does that make sense? Okay. And we want to understand, it helps you understand how are you doing? How are you doing? And it's how are you doing in in comparison to how you have been doing and how you could be doing. Okay. And so what is heart rate variability?
So heart rate variability is sort of a marker for vagal tone. And we define heart rate variability by the Cleveland Clinic. Very basic. It's the amount of time between heartbeats and they fluctuate slightly. So you don't want to have the exact same amount of time between every heartbeat you want fluctuations. And the more variability you have in your heart rate, the healthier you are. If you have a less variable heart, that is sort of an indicator that you're under a lot of stress,
heart rate variability, right? So when we want to improve or increase heart rate variability over time, okay? And we don't have to get into how to do that. We'll talk about that later. But it's important to understand that we want more variable heart rate responses because that basically means that your nervous system and cardio system is more flexible. So you can think about increased heart rate variability as the biomarker of how flexible is your nervous system, how regulated
is your nervous system. Does that make sense? And so an HRV is a measure of a valetone in a way. Okay? And so HRV is able to index cardiac vagal tone. That's what the research is showing. So we look at HRV heart rate variability as a way for us to assess how our system is doing. And I predict in the next 10 years that HRV will become more and more important as a marker. And I can tell you in the 2023, our programs, especially our retreats,
are going to be including heart rate variability. Because what we can do in our retreats and stuff like that is we can measure before and after meditation, how did that impact HRV? Did that put you into a parasympathetic state, a sympathetic state? And sometimes you drop into into a sympathetic state because you have used stress or good stress. And then the next day you're in a better state, right?
So we want to look at you can look at you can measure HRV before and after look at therapy session, before and after a coaching session to see how it's impacting you right before and after a massage. So we want to be able to understand how is your system doing in the moment? Like for example, you may have decreased HRV after a workout because you just stress your system, but over time that may help improve your HRV in general. Right. Does that make sense? Right.
Now, if you go too hard, that could decrease your HRV because you're not getting enough recovery and HRV numbers are really starting to change how athletes and entrepreneurs and people who want to perform at a high level, decide to do and there's a more of a focus now on recovery than just exercise or training. And I tracked my HRV and I will literally like look at my HRV. I'd be like, well, I was going to give a soul cycle today and probably go on that long hike.
And instead, I'm just going to do some long slow breathing and stretching. So it helps me understand I'm starting to tax my system. And I can tell you during launches, during high intense moments, my HRV drops. And I try to, afterwards, create recoveries that HRV can come back into balance. So it's a way for us to measure stress. So HRV, heart rate variability, is impacted by stress and supports the use of HRV for an objective assessment of psychological health and stress.
So that's what the research is showing. This is not just me saying it to you, giving you the research, okay? So basically we can measure your stress now, which I think is so awesome. I think that's really, really cool, okay? Now, HRV also measures your ability to recover after a stressful event or period.
And if you think about the difference between post-traumatic stress and post-traumatic growth, the only difference really physiologically is the trauma that you went through, Could you recover or not? Post-traumatic stress is an inability to recover. Post-traumatic growth is an ability to recover. Does that make sense? OK, if I'm in a post-traumatic stress response, I'm not recovering from what my nervous system and whole system went through. I'm going to say that again.
If I'm in post-traumatic stress, I'm not able to recover from what my nervous system has gone through. OK, if I'm in post-traumatic growth, That's an indicator that my nervous system is recovering. And so when we start to look at like, you know, World War II, for example, you know, a lot of the mindset around World War II and veterans who were in that war, they called it shell shock. They blamed the veterans for not being strong enough without realizing that they over stress their system.
And then I mean, World War II was like, so in both the World Wars were so intense. Right. But what we have to realize is, especially if you're trying to recover from trauma, Okay, or you're trying to regulate your nervous system is that if you're not giving yourself a chance to recover, you're never going to be regulated, right? And we're so used to carrying such an intense, heavy load of getting through it, having grit and all that stuff that we actually never recover.
Who follows this makes sense? Okay. So also heart rate variability helps us measure stress associated with future events. So when you start to think about what you want to achieve and do and have and become, Okay. Like we want to realize that HRV will help you understand how capable are you at actually getting there when you ponder a future event.
How does that impact your heart rate variability in your vagal tone? When you have improved a little tone, when you have a more resilient vagal tone and nervous system in this way, you have a greater capacity to take on greater stress. That's what we're building an emotional fitness, right? Is your capacity take on more stress and not be taken out in the ways that you have been before.
So HRV doesn't just impact how you are now how it impacts your perceived appraisal of how difficult the future will be I'm gonna say that again. HRV helps impact how hard you think the future is gonna be to achieve your goals So if you feel like your goals are really hard and you're feeling super exhausted
There's a degree of reality of that happening in your physiology. This is why it drives me crazy When I hear life coaches say it's only as hard as you want it to be It's all these easiest you want to be right that is like nonsense Okay, because what to realize is over time what we'll see is the state of your Vagel tone has been impacted physiologically Okay, so it's only as hard as the capacity that your nervous system has
Okay, and sure the way you think about things the way you perceive things the way you would praise things has an impact on that But if we can't be honest about your current capabilities Logically, I don't it's like I don't care how strong you think you are if you've never lifted a weight in your life You can't go to a 500 pound weight and say this is only as strong as I this is always heavy as I need it to be
Right makes no sense. I'm only as strong as I decide to be I can pick that up Right so we really want to understand have more compassion and being more in tune with Your HR Viva tone and I would love love love love love love love to be able to take some of these coaches and therapists and Look at their HR V measurements and see how regulated they actually are
right to me that's more that would be a more important disclosure than their tax documents right are you actually regulated that would be my question Okay, so when we talk about improving HRV and vagal tone, so we're getting a little more sciencey now The myelinated vagus which is basically from sort of your chest and diaphragm up Okay, that the the dorsal part of the vagus branch is sort of from your diaphragm down
It is non myelinated the ventral branch of your vagus nervous from the diaphragm up. It is myelinated Okay, and it functions with what's called an active vagal break So the myelinated Vegas which I won't get into all the mechanisms of action of how this works because it's way too detailed for your for these purposes But what it realizes the ventral branch of Arvega system Has a mechanism that's called the vagal break which can inhibit or disinhibit How fast your heart is beating?
inhibiting how fast your heart is beating means it would down regulate heart rate. That means if you want to call down We want to activate the vagal break and if you want to be excited or if you want to be in sympathetic We want to it take off the vagal break Okay, and so we're gonna talk about how to do that So the vagal break when you know about it how to use it can be used to either Calm you down or get you going and like for example I'll use my vagal break.
Like if I'm in a stressful situation, it just really calmed down. Like very quickly within five or 10 minutes. At the same time, I track my heart rate in like soul cycle classes and when I'm exercising, I can improve and increase my heart rate variability by knowing how to breathe properly to increase my heart rate without moving more. Which means I can actually work out harder in terms of working my heart out harder based on my breathing patterns, not just my movement patterns.
Does that make sense? Does that land for you guys? Yes, no. I'll say it again. A lot of times, especially if you want to have high intensity interval training, if you want to exercise your body, we look at heart rate. We want to get that heart rate really high. And we associate getting the heart rate really high with moving a lot, which is certainly important to move a lot to increase your heart rate. But your breathing patterns can also increase or decrease your heart rate.
So you can move at a steady amount. And by changing your breathing patterns, increase or decrease your heart rate also. So for example, if I want to get into like the 150s, 160s when I'm trading, I can still keep the same movement of like walking or my bike or whenever I'm doing and depending on how I breathe, I could get my heart rate down with the same type of movement down to like 115, 120 or up to 151, 60 based on breathing.
So I could be on my cycle, I could be bicycling or in my SoulCycle class doing the same output. And if I change my breathing patterns, I can increase or decrease my heart rate by that much. Who falls? Does that make sense? I'll say it differently. Okay. The same is true just for stress. Okay. So what we realize is the mild part of the Vegas actively inhibits the sympathetic nervous system. So when the vagal break is on it, you calm down the sympathetic.
That's important to say when the vagal break is on, it calms down the sympathetic. So think about when you're stressed, how are you breathing? What's your body posture? Right. Usually it's shallow breathing and your body posture is not that great. Right. So we're going to talk about how to activate the vagal break, but it's important to understand that, you know, as simple as it sounds, the breath is so very important.
Okay. So when we talk about improving HRV and vagal tone, functionally, okay, the vagal break modulates visceral state, meaning your somatic state, your viscera, okay, and enables you to either rapidly engage or disengage from calming or activating behaviors. So depending on how you utilize your vagal break, you can either stress yourself out or calm yourself down in your nervous system in your body, just based on breath alone.
Think about this, if I'm hyperventilating and I'm just walking, what do you think I'm gonna get stressed or calm? What do you think? Seems pretty obvious, right? Now, what if I'm doing long, slow, exhales while I'm walking? Who thinks that might be more calming? Seems kind of obvious, right? So our breath, when we're intentional about our breath, we give a major impact on our physiology, okay?
So also develop mentally from when we're born, and as we age and grow, the number of mild-native bagel fibers in your vagus nerve, okay, increases from about 24 to 28 weeks in gestation until full-term birth, when the number of fibers is comparable to those observed in adolescence. So what this basically means is as we're growing, the safety of in utero, and the first few months, but certainly for the first couple of years, will set up your vagus nerve to be able to have resilience or not.
So if you're in a stressful situation in utero and when you're younger, the younger you are in more stress, you don't get as resilience of a vagus nerve wiring for the malated part. Okay, so that's why some of us are more susceptible to stress than others because some of us have a better ability to regulate our nervous system because we were set up from birth differently. We were born into the world with a greater capacity to calm ourselves, or not, or less capacity.
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