Can you explain what that is? Because I don't think most people would know.

Yeah, yeah, totally.

And it's actually a metric that it's interesting.

It's used a lot in exercise physiology and performance and recovery.

But in our world, like applied psychophysiology, it's not used much.

But I would argue, and I'm kind of here to defend, that I actually think we should be using it a lot more.

I think it's a very interesting metric that here in the last probably, I would say, five years or so, there's been some very fascinating research on on its application and its use as to why it's a good metric for looking at basically global nervous system stability across time.

Actually, I do have the sensor right here because I've been testing on it.

So the next big question is, well, how do you do that? And you're the expert in that.

The default that a lot of people end up having is they think, okay, so if I'm experiencing, let's say an emotional difficulty, stress, anxiety, depression, or even a mental health concern that the default should be, okay, well now I need to go to therapy.

And I want to be very clear here because again, just to be transparent, I'm a psychologist by trade.

So I definitely think that there is a time and a place for mental health therapy, talk therapy, psychotherapy.

I think, though, that what ends up ultimately happening and why so many people drop out, and again, this is kind of more of my own personal experience and opinion than it is something that I would say is necessarily truly validated, is I think that so many people are going into therapy and they just don't have the physiological or I would say psychophysiological capacity to get into a lot of the deeply rooted stuff that they're experiencing.

So if you think about someone who's got deeply rooted relational issues or even trauma or something that is indeed a problem that they need to address, going straight into it, it's like, well, now I'm opening up this can of worms to talk about all these things on top of a base that is your nervous system that isn't ready to handle it.

And so I've heard a lot of people talk about this whole phrase of when you try to address problems of the mind with the mind, you end up kind of like at this impasse.

So how have you put that together today in what you do? What are the ways you operate and how the listeners can access some of that?

Great.

So HRV, uh, yeah, HRV is the single greatest proxy that we have for looking at how your nervous system is either adapting or not adapting.

In other words, is your nervous system showing signs of stability that we're holding in there? Vagus nerve is working strong, doing its thing, holding things kind of stable in your environment, what we would call homeostasis, or are things being a bit dysregulated? The nervous system's not very capable at that moment in time of handling the stressors that, that, that we're encountering.

'Cause if we think about our nervous system, like what is the whole goal of our nervous system? It's just to keep everything stable.

Like, it is constantly receiving and sending messages, 'cause it's m- a, a pathway of messages, to say, "Is the environment right now safe, stable, relaxed, in a good position, capable?" That's what we wanna have.

Or on the opposite, we wanna know that.

Like we wanna know if the opposite is true, and it's like, uh-uh, all systems go, threat involved.

[chuckles]

All right, so back to the HRV measurements.

Yeah.

So obviously, like with wearable data, HRV, it's quite ubiquitous.

I mean, we like, we all have it.

I mean, I have multiple devices.

Nah, it's my regular watch [laughs] that's not really tracking my HRV right now.

Uh, but we all ha-we all have it.

It works really well for just lulling you to sleep.

It's a cool new metric that nobody has a clue what it does.

Yeah, indeed.

So the way I like to explain heart rate variability is first by giving a broad definition of what HRV actually is, and then I like to backpedal a little bit, because I think that the definition that I'm gonna give is probably a little bit too broad, and heart rate variability in and of itself is actually quite nuanced.

So when we think about HRV or heart rate variability, and I'm gonna say HRV probably for the rest of the podcast, 'cause heart rate variability is a mouthful, HRV is the single greatest non-invasive proxy that we have for measuring the adaptations of the nervous system.

HRV is a signal.

It's a window into how the nervous system is responding at any given time or the time we're actually measuring it.

And so when we think about HRV, I want people to think about adaptation, to think about resilience, and to think about flexibility.

in this context.