My last brain biofeedback session may've been a washout, but as I mentioned in my blog post, I achieved a huge milestone, one I had thought impossible: my HRV looks like a real one.
HRV stands for heart rate variability. Basically, as you inhale, your heart rate rises, and as you exhale, your heart rate drops.
My heart rate usually does whatever it wants independent of my breathing. My breathing technique has always looked like what you see in the above chart (the blue waves) and usually close to six breaths per minute. My heart rate (pink waves) has never been in sync. Never. I had to restrain myself from squealing and clapping my hands and jumping up and down when I saw the above.
The other part of HRV, in simple terms, is that the higher your HRV amplitude, especially in the low frequency purple bar in the above chart, the healthier your heart. You can see mine is almost up to 2.5 (it had reached that level earlier in the four minutes of deep breathing).
First time ever.
Usually you need a magnifying glass to see it. The goal the ADD Centre gave me was to get it up to 10. This is the first time I thought that doable.
