Biofeedback
Did you know you can learn to be in control of your own nervous system?
Heart Rate Variability training guides us with mindfulness and being in control of our nervous system.
Coherence training is designed to give our body/mind a way to balance the nervous system. With stress, the system gets out of balance, and with chronic stress and trauma it can become nearly impossible to relax. Similar to the way a thermometer gives us biofeedback about our actual temperature, Heart Rate Variability (HRV) gives us direct immediate feedback about our body/mind interaction. With repeated instruction, we gain increased mindful awareness. Combined with coaching, biofeedback can be used to assist in returning the nervous system to a more consistent non-reactive state of mind and body.
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There is a significant positive trend toward people learning to diaphragmatic breathing and mindfulness exercises. What I find is that primary US culture does not have awareness of an internal connection to these exercises. Heart Rate Variability training shows us what we can only guess about. An example of this is that when we have a fever, we use a thermometer to give us accurate information rather than relying on a guesstimate. HRV training gives us direct visual and auditory feedback that shows us when we are a “coherent” state of mind and body. What is coherence? It is when the nervous system is balanced between our heart, brain, and emotions – optimizing psychophysiological state.
I have been around meditation techniques since the age of 13. When I started using HRV training, I was surprised to see how little I was really relaxed. Then I started working at a treatment center for women with eating disorders and began to teach them breathing techniques that were passed down to me by a brilliant biofeedback provider who was a nurse. I learned to master teaching diaphragmatic breathing using technology. Most of the women had dissociative patterns and did not have a bridge to safely connect them to their inner experience. Using biofeedback equipment afforded them the ability of choice over how much or how little they wanted to be connected internally. I call that a healthy choice. Biofeedback provides us with choice – but it takes practice. It is a process of retraining the body including small muscles in our lower abdomen that we may not have used for years. Included in that process is identifying the thoughts and feelings that we might be avoiding. Being “present” isn’t always comfortable, but learning to be present with healthy control over our nervous system is appealing.
HRV biofeedback can be used for many people including those wanting to improve relaxation, sleep, worries, pain, and enhance mindfulness and peak performance in sports and music. I remember working with a gentleman who had been an avid Yoga practitioner for 20 years. He had been practicing breathing techniques that are naturally integrated with Yoga. He was shocked at how much he improved his breathing skills in just one session, reflecting on how much unconscious thoughts interfered with his ability to deepen his breathing and increase his coherent state. HRV training can help most of us in ways we can’t anticipate.