[31] Harnessing Heart Coherence: Biofeedback, Breathwork, and the Power of Group Meditation

12:04AM Dec 13, 2023

Speakers:

Andrew Holecek

Ed O'Malley

Mayra Lorenzana-Miles

Laura Reske

Beatrice

Keywords:

heart rate

people

coherence

heart

rhythm

variability

state

breathing

heart rate variability

technique

put

great

feel

measure

hand

breath

palate

oral appliance

talking

hooked

It is Hey everybody. Andrew here for our once a month sleep doc session which is one of the highlights for me every month so I super appreciate that Dr. Ed doing his thing. We send him some things sometimes rather straightforward, sometimes rather thorny, but he addresses them all with basic preparation, often doing slideshows and stuff. So I'm here basically just do quick, brief introduction. You know the ropes. If you have additional questions to what we're going to address that were pre submitted, raise your hand, submit something in the chat column. If you have some follow up to what he's discussing, you know how this rolls, but in the meantime, I turn it over to my dear friend.

Well, thank you, sir. Yeah, so this is actually a continuation a part two from from last month and we didn't get a lot of new questions in so you know, feel free to open the discussion. The question the presentation from last time had a lot to do with Heart Math, and I got about halfway through and and I realized in preparing for tonight that starting in the middle where I would have been starting because we only got halfway through it is kind of like starting with something hanging in the air and wondering where it attaches to. So I thought I'd go back to the beginning of the HeartMath pa portion and redo that to lead into the finish of what we have. And then yeah, then we'll open the floor up because there'll be time for questions. The nice I know you are hard to try to hear about red light. So we'll we'll talk a little bit about that at the end. But yeah, let's let's get started. And I will as always share my screen in some ways. It's just a lot easier to talk about things when I have a prop oops, have it connected to the Get rid of that. There we go. Okay, everybody see it? Can we see it? Okay, thank you. So, I'm HeartMath is biofeedback. And I actually have a couple of devices with me if we need to look at them. People want to see I didn't I don't think I had them last time. But anyway. So you know, I think we're all familiar with what biofeedback is, but in case we're not I'm just going to say a little bit about that. You know, biofeedback is hooking up something biological something within a biological being something within our system and hooking it up to something on the outside. That allows us in a sense to see within. So something like blood pressure or heart rate, galvanic skin response, a lot of measures of stress levels, you know, and how we're dealing with the world. Those kinds of things can be, in a sense, reflected back to us by something outside the body. So we may not know what our blood pressure is or our heart rate is right at the moment, or how much tension is in the frontalis muscle, or how tight you know, our vessels are on our hands and our galvanic skin response. But we can hook up some kind of external stimulus, some kind of accelerate external signal that will feed back high or low depending on those signals within us. So we have a lot of tension. We could feed back a high tone, and when the tension goes down, the tone goes down and we learn to lower the tension by lowering the tone. So HeartMath is a biofeedback device. The bio that's being fed back is heart rhythm. But not a direct heart rate. So we were feeding back a single we could do it sound or we could do it with an image. And in this particular case, it's going to be about heart rate variability. Okay, and I'm going to show you what that is. And another slide or two, but heart rate variability, it's this variation that occurs when we have a heart rate of 60. It doesn't meet me we're having excuse me, a beat once per second for every single minute. Okay? Over a minute's time, or 15 seconds or 30 seconds. You know, when the nurse takes your pulse, where someone's taking your pulse. They're counting and they're looking at they're watching. They're counting how many beats in a specified time and they given you what that rate is, okay, that's an average rate. But within that rate, there's a lot of variability. In general, the greater the variability, the healthier the physiologic state. So if you think about it, when you're sitting quietly you're going to be at a fairly regular low heart rate. But when you're active or when you need to jump up and go do something. Or when there's, you know, the saber toothed Tiger coming at the ancestor. They need to move really fast and martial. A lot of blood flow and get going. And so there needs to be some variability. So the heart's able to respond to the environment in whatever way it needs to. But there's a point to which too much variability and then the atria and the ventricles misaligned. So you can no longer pump blood, right? If he is going at, you know, 100 times a minute and the ventricles are going at 20. They don't match up. Okay, so, in general, the better the physiologic state the better we feel. So that's why we want to you want to do this. Oops, okay. So here's what a heart rate would look like. This is across over 25 or so seconds, they're 23 seconds. And what this shows is that between if you notice, here's the QRS right if you've ever looked at an EKG or you know, you've seen them on TV, there's the beat, you know, so it, it's bum, bum, bum, bum, bum. That's what a heart rate of heartbeat is. And so the big part of the beat, that's the EKG that big part of the beat right there. If you measure the time between that beat and the next beat, it'll occur within a certain number of seconds time. And then the next one, you'll notice it looks pretty similar, but it's slightly different. And then the next beat is actually occurring in a shorter timeframe than the couple that happened before. And in fact, if you notice, each of these beats now are getting closer together, right to this space right here. And then they're getting further apart very far apart. And now they're coming closer together again. Okay. So this illustrates two things. One is that their variability is a variability across our heart rates over time, even short periods of time, like 10 seconds, 15 seconds, right? But this also illustrates one more point which I thought this is a great slide for and that is, when we breathe. When we inhale, we apply more pressure to the heart, because our lungs are expanding, and our chest capacity is now being filled. With lungs. And so there's more pressure, there's smaller space for the heart to pump. So it has to pump more blood so the beats quickened and then when we exhale, the beats actually now have a lot more space to heart as a lot more space in the chest, because the lungs have decreased in size. And so the heart can be less to pump the same amount of blood. So even with our it's called the respiratory sinus rhythm, even with our normal breathing, we're going to have some increase in decrease, but a fairly regular heart rate variability. Okay. Any anyone coming up with questions around that while I'm here? Okay, no, there's nothing Yeah. Okay. So, during a session, and actually, you know, actually, you might remember we didn't look at all this data because we were just doing a simple let's see what we could get the callers to do. But when you do when you put it out on the computer, you could actually see so here we're looking at the heart rate, and here's what the heart rate is doing over time. This is one minute, 30 seconds, three minutes. So this is over minutes time. And down here. There's a measure of how variable and how regular that heart rate is. And you can see this different information here. We're not going to get into all that. But you can see the slope of this line is oh, they're slowly building and then they're slowly dropping off. But they're getting at a pretty regular rhythm happening here. And then something happens to handwaving. Something happens. You get a worried thought you're starting to stress out or something and you begin dropping out. The heart rate variability drops, and then it increases again, you go back to your happy place. And in fact, that's what I was saying to Andrews during one of these test sessions is you know, find that happy place go to you know, think about gratitude, appreciation. So when you want to send positive energy to someone that makes you feel good, any of those kinds of positive emotions will then bring you back into this space where you'll start to increase again, and then they give you different various ways of looking at that on. You can have, you know, green is in when you're in the most variability at this level.

Blue is like you're on the way to get into the green and red is you're out of it. You're not quite there. So this is probably when Red was happening. And so many others were blue and green. Here's a really nice session. Okay, that's where they're variable here is a nice regular increase staying within this zone. of good variability for the entire beginning of the session. Again, this is only a few minutes in but this is someone who just baby and you can tell by this here's a regular is their heart rate again, but it's beginning to look almost like a sinus rhythm. You know, it's getting very regular. And he over here you can see they were 80% of the time and really good variability, took them very little time to get in there and they were basically staying there. And so that's what I look at when people come in and they and they sit in a chair. I put it up on the screen and I asked them to keep it up here as much as they can. And I have sometimes I let them close their eyes, and I say okay, just go to your happy place and see if you can maintain that. And some people are pretty good at doing it for the first couple minutes. But then after three minutes, four minutes, five minutes. They start going, you know, Oh, it's right there bills coming in this week. Do I have enough to cover that bill? Who's picking up the kids when's, when are we going shopping right. Now there's one more measure here that I think is really interesting. And this is the frequency the person who initially asked this question about heart rate, variability and coherence. We were talking a little bit about the difference between relaxation and really getting into this zone. And there's a there's a bit of a difference. We can be relaxed, but in order to really induce the relaxation response. There is a fine frequency and this is roughly six breaths per minute. Okay, so let's go on and then you can look at your progress over time. Okay, so here's a bunch of dates. And you can look and you can see that you know, it's starting out there's not a lot of green at first and then some really good sessions with green. This is after a bad day or you know, so you can start looking at this over time and seeing if you improve, or you get to the point where you change your challenge level from the lowest to medium to high to the highest. And you want to be able to get really good at your coherence, which means you're basically staying in that deep meditative state for a long period of time. So what's a good HRV number? That's a good question and a good HRV number is variable because it changes with age, right? It's a physiologic measure of your cardiovascular system, right? How well it's functioning. And as we age, what was good for a you know, 25 year old is not going to look the same for a 75 year old. So the best way to look at that is to do your own measures. When you're in a really good healthy sleeping well, not ill state and see what your numbers are. And then by working out you can see the numbers increase. And when you're ill or when you're rundown, you can see the numbers decrease. And a lot of these devices you know, I still have the ring and I have now I have an Apple Watch which has gotten a lot better. I have the Fitbit and they're you know, they're all measuring this to some extent. And what they're giving you are really relative numbers, you know, so the ring will give me numbers in the 40s and 50s. The watch will give me numbers in the 20s the Fitbit is really cheap, it only gives me numbers in the teens. But the same day you know for the same night for this. So they're all relative numbers and you want to use all these devices in a relative way. Okay. So what's nice about Heart Math, and again, I get nothing back on them. I just like it because of the way they talk about the heart and how important the heart is. And they're doing some studies with global coherence, where they have people at certain times of the day across the globe go into this, you know, into their happy place and sending love out and sending peace out. And they find that people's individual coherence numbers go up. Okay, and so there's this really cross this community effect is community impact of getting in the same it's almost like all meditating at the same time. It's interesting. Anyway, coherence itself reflects the aligning or balancing of all of our systems. Okay, they're all kind of in tune. We're breathing regularly. Our you know, heart rate is going at a certain rate our circulatory system is moving in a certain way. Blood pressure is staying fairly constant. And so when a system when a system is coherent, it's kind of like being in the flow state, right. It's kind of like being in that zone where we everything seems to be flowing where kind of like an open focused kind of way. Okay. And I'm not gonna go there. So, this I showed last time, but I want to show it again because I think this is really important because when we're looking at really strong focus, we can have a when we're in a focus state, we don't necessarily we're not necessarily in a coherent state. And it depends on what we're focused on and what the rest of our body is doing. But mostly, what we're looking at is really low variability, low amplitude, and our heart rate can vary somewhat, but it's not all that rhythmic. When we get angry, the signal almost looks like an angry signal. You can see heart rate is just rising. If you're looking at somebody's blood pressure, it's rising, that might be not actually in sync, but it's actually getting more erratic. More noncoherent. And then when we look at relaxation, we can see that relaxation now brings the heart rate down in general, and it gets fairly regular, but not as regular as when we're in full coherence. Where again, it looks like a sinus rhythm down here. Okay. And so this is a very different rhythm than even relaxation. So, coherence is really induce a relaxation response. It's shifting out of just being relaxed into a coherent state where the entire body is kind of in the same rhythm. Okay? And so that's what this excuse me, that's what this this is the power spectral density of the rhythm and it focuses right around this point one hertz point one five hertz, and you can see the amplitude of this because all of this signal is occurring in one peak. And so you know the scale is broken here to show you how high this value have the power spectral density, which is another measure a different type of measure of heart rate variability, and you can see that that same amount of activity is being distributed across many different frequencies. And the amplitude is so much lower. It's not even reaching 150. Here, we're getting up to 650 700. Okay, different states entirely. So that's where we ended last class. Oh, you know, let me put this one at the end. Someone did ask about restless legs. So I'm going to bring that down to the end and go back up to age. So, one reason another reason why like heart rate variability or Heart Math itself, is because it can give us

it's sort of a sense of what our emotions are. And why that's important is because in real time, in real time, it can give us what we actually are feeling like so if we notice were doing this Heart Math, can we notice? You know, there are different ways we can get the feedback, but let's say we have it hooked up to the tone. So listening for this tone, and we hear the tone and it's the tone of oh, we're really in this great state. And we're really in this great state and we're really in this great state and boom, it bumps us out, and we get a different tone, which says, Oh, you just came out of coherence. And like what was I just feeling what just happened? And so it gives you great feedback about when you start drifting in your mind to a stressful thought or you're drifting away from that happy place or you're drifting away from wherever you were, why are you becoming more frustrated because that's a really big difference. Not too different from what anger looks like. And so the idea is that it gives you immediate feedback bout your emotional state, that you may not be as sensitive to as you think you are. At certain times. So it's just like in meditation, right? We don't, we don't recognize until we're four or five 610 thoughts down the road that we just drifted away from the present moment, and we do and then we bring ourselves back. So there are a couple of techniques that actually beat you there. Remember, I mentioned this happy place we can do that. We can find a way of appreciation and we can find some someone who makes us really happy thinking about that person. All of these variable ways we can do to bring ourselves into this really great rhythm, this great coherence, but the people at HeartMath develop this quick coherence technique, and to show you how rapid it is. So we're looking at you know, this is five minutes, wherever you are, and then apply the quick coherence technique. And in seconds, you're in a coherent state. That's how rapidly you can change. And so when you're recognizing you're having a hard time, you can do this technique which I'll give you in a minute, something you might want to take home and I'm not gonna go we did all this enough. Okay. And we did the relaxation and appreciation or again, high coherence and you can see the difference here. So there really is a physiological difference. And that's where we want to be if we can, is not just relaxed, but in a deeper coherence state. I mentioned that they're doing these global coherence studies. They actually did a couple of experiments where I think I mentioned this last time, I'm not sure where people were. There were three Confederates and one person who didn't know that there were three Confederates at the same table and they were all doing something I don't remember all the details right now. But the three Confederates went into a coherent state. Okay, they did that quick coherence technique. So there were they were in a very coherent state. And the fourth person had no idea what they were doing. But when they brought their coherence to bear on the fourth person who they knew didn't know anything about this, then he went into a coherent state as well or she or whatever the case may be. So it was really interesting, these community effects of being able to share this across across the globe. But you could also do this in your groups. You can do this in a meditative group. You can do this in the Sangha. You can do this. In any group, who's willing, essentially. So the quick coherence technique is a great little practice. And so you'll have this on the PDF that convert this to and send it out, but it's a great technique to do exactly what I said, you know, when you're kind of feeling off, and you want to center yourself and really bring your whole system into coherence, and you'll feel the difference. Okay. So you slow down, deepen your breath. Bring your attention to the center of your chest. I imagine, you know, the Heart Chakra The Heart Center, not so much your heart itself, but the heart center, that's where the energy is heart energy is that where you know brain mind cheetah, that's where this is. So you bring your mind to the heart center. Bring your attention here, and then you feel your heart expand with each inhale. And then you exhale love into the world. Doesn't matter who doesn't matter how you don't have to pick anyone in particular. You just want to be able to share love with the world. Okay, and if peace works better if you use the word peace, if care if appreciation, whatever that word is for you. I like the word love. You know, as Andrew says, we don't use that word enough in the meditative world. But that's what we need so much with these days as well. So you feel your heart expand. And the way I modify this is, I feel by heart expand with the energy of the universe. Right? When we're really connected, we're connected with all that is and so when I breathe, I'm breathing all that in and expanding my heart, and then I'm sharing that with the world. I do that for three breaths, and I'm in coherence. And I'm feeling pretty good. And then you can to sustain it. To sustain that feeling of sharing love with the world is then bringing in something you really appreciate some someone something and just give thanks for that ability. And that will sustain it. And anytime you feel that drifting, go back into expanding your heart with the energy of the universe, and sharing love into the world and then bringing appreciation into this alright. Going to stop this for a minute and I have a question. Okay.

A little bit more or wait before I forget. I don't mean to interrupt the flow of things. But can you see what I've got here? Can you see this thing?

Yeah, you read it? Yeah. The older I get, the more I regret all the people I've lost over the years maybe being a trail guide wasn't such a great idea after all. Yes.

Sorry. I did. Somebody sent sent David Lloyd sent this to me I had to share it was like the funniest thing I've ever seen. It being a travel guide wasn't sure great idea. Can you say a little bit more about the thing you were just talking about like sending it the the three people at the table and how they kind of blended into the fourth person? Yeah, more about the mechanics behind that because that that's actually pretty cool. Yeah,

so they were all hooked up there. Everyone at the table all Had a Heart Math hooked up, you know from the year which measured the pulse and they had their little devices in front of them. And you can look at instead of having a tone, you can look at the screen and see a change into the green color or the red or the blue, whatever. And so and these were Confederate two, well versed in practicing and generating coherence, so they could bring themselves into coherence. The fourth person at the table also was hooked up and he was there under some other pretense. Like, you know, we're gonna get together a bunch of HeartMath people and we're going to learn a couple of techniques, maybe how to improve ourselves. And we're going to be talking about how this happens. And we're going to begin with that shortly. Okay, so you know, just perfectly a person there and he's got the thing on and he's seeing, you know, he's somewhere not really in any coherence, but yeah, maybe he's in the red. Maybe he's in a little bit of blue but nothing much is happening. And then, at a predetermined time, the three Confederates go deep into into coherence. And a beam it just like I was talking about the quick quick coherence technique, you beam love to the universe, it will be mean love to him, to the Confederate, and his coherence immediately came up and he went into the green and stayed there the entire time. They were doing it. And this was so cool, that I decided to try it live in my entire spiritual counseling class. Oh, we took a confederate. We put her up at the front of the room. And she had headphones on and we had her hooked up, and we had her signal going to the Main screen so everybody could see it. But she could. And you know, I just said to her and she had headphones on and so I went up to and I whispered in her ear and I said, you know, just hang out for a little bit. We're gonna set this thing up, and then when we get going, we'll let you know. Okay? And she said, Okay, fine, you know, so she was just hanging out there. And I said to the group, I said, I want you all to go to your happy place, right and then spiritual companion, not a problem. Everybody's got their, you know, like, Okay, I'm going to God, the divine, the Buddha, whoever they needed to boom, and they were right there. And she had headphones on, and I had them all in their tones. So the tone for the green would just keep going, Boo. Boo. Boop. So I can tell when they all got into the green. And they could tell when they got into the green. And we all looked at the screen, and she was in rhythm. That's pretty cool. And then I and then I did the opposite. And then you know, this is like, gotta be careful here. I don't want to hurt anybody. But I said, you know, look, you guys, it's really hard for you not to be in your loving space. But I want you to stop for a minute. I want you to think about the person who cut you off on the way to this to the class today. I want you to think about you know now just creating chaos in the room. And you watched the signal just break up on screen. And she was right there. So we recorded it but because everybody's face was on and we couldn't keep it and share it but yeah, it was wild and I was convinced. What comes to mind

is shall Drake's work with morphic fields entrainment and morphic resonance kind of thing. You know, there's something going there about the just breaking down the usual sense of boundary and that we have this capacity to work at these deeper levels and benefit people. That sounds really awesome. Yeah, sure.

So I got Hemi sync and definitely yeah. Tim is saying he got a Hemi sync from the Monroe Institute. Yep. We were talking about that a little bit. Yeah. It is still relaxing. Yeah, very relaxing. Yeah, the Hemi sync is basically something that provides a it's not really subliminal, but it's a sync that entrained a signal that and trained your brain activity to the lower frequencies, theta delta into the quieter ones even alpha and you can help you when you want to establish that state to really deeply relax and yeah, they have a nap tape and they have actually an overnight sleep tape and variety of things. So good stuff. Anyone want another technique for going into this really cool space? Yeah, a couple of heads shaking. Okay. All right. Let me go back to the videotape here, where the screen so this is one that I learned. I don't know where everybody went. I lost everybody's view, but that's okay. This call the shamanic coupling technique. Let me see when I see what happened I didn't share my screen again. That's what happened with that back and looked. Okay. So this is the shamanic decoupling technique. And this is a really, really cool one too, and I've taught this one to other people. And so, if you want to try it out, you want to kick back, you could do it sitting up. If you want to lie down, you can do it. But what you want to do is you want to, again, you know, and I'd like to start any of these practices with a few deep breaths just to signal that you're changing your state. But you put your hand over your heart chakra sent to your chest and you feel for your heart rate. You know, you don't put it over your heart. Just put it in the center and feel for your heart rate. You notice your heart rate notice your heart beating, feeling that feeling when you find that rhythm

is you're slowing down. We allow your awareness. Good time to do this too, because it's the end of cop 28 And they're trying to really come up with a all encompassing statement that actually does something about getting rid of all the oil and gas so feel your awareness now traveled down into Mother Earth and if you feel deeply into that rhythm feel Mother Earth's rhythm. Not unlike a heartbeat

can feel your rhythm matching hers. Whatever that feels like for you feel like you're in tune with Mother Earth

and when that's working for you, when you feel whatever that feels like for you. You take your right hand and you place it over your sacral chakra which is just below the belly button. So anyway below the belly button just rest your hand and feel whatever rhythm you feel in that place

you may notice they're not the same, same be not the same. Rhythm and then allow your heart rhythm, which is the Mother Earth rhythm. Breathing the sacral rhythm into to where they're both beating to the same rhythm that seems low

and when you feel them come into two with each other, just rest there for a few minutes

then when you're ready come back to the room. Just notice how you feel.

Any comments, anyone want to speak to that? They're like a leading meditation session here which I didn't really intend to do. But it's it's a nice, it's a nice practice. So it really it's really nice doing it lying down to that's probably just a lot easier to feel that rhythm. Okay. Yeah, yeah. Good. All right. And so the last bit let's see if we get the Dalai Lama I love this match religion, the best kind of religion All right, and the last this was a question from 1114 But it was asked again, came in again about restless legs in a different form and so I just figured I'd put this up here. For anyone I wanted to put this in the very beginning. So didn't end up here but it's in the last presentation, the last PDF that's associated with the presentation and it's in this one as well. So I'm not going to unless anyone here wants to talk any more about it. I'm going to stop here. Pretty self explanatory

and open the floor. We have some time. So in Laura's hand is raised although and you know not just coming

back online. Okay. So let's be visible. Yeah. Anyway.

Laura, your had your hand raised you can unmute yourself, I think. Yep. Yeah.

Okay, good. So, yeah, I have a question. I have Osa and this past week I was reading or a couple of weeks ago in my newsfeed about the new vivos oral appliance to basically expand the palate and I found someone who can do that. And I just want to know if you have any, any experience with that or

the new oral appliance? Yeah, it's

from vivos. And it's supposed to expand the palate and maybe kind of reshape the airway. But

it's something you put in your mouth right over the lower is in the upper, like 12

to 18 months to actually change the bone structure.

Oh, you know, I'm not I'm gonna have to look that one up. That sounds like that's something that works on you over time and then you stop using it.

Right? Apparently, some people can get off of CPAP.

Oh, well, so there are two things here. One is in general, the dental appliance is zero appliances which Andrew can speak to as well. And were designed to, you know, individually to each person to fit over the uppers and lowers and then over time, since it's attached over time, it's advanced, so that you're pulling the jaw forward a few millimeters, and maybe a millimeter or two a week or a month depending on how what you can tolerate this. And then that pulling this forward applies tension to the upper airway muscles and keeps the airway from collapsing by applying that tension by pulling it forward.

Yeah, this one apparently that is a part of it, but it also is a palate expander so the dentist that showed it to me showed me plaster casts of before and after the actual space between the palate actually flattened and widens over time, and changes the architecture of the airway. So it's kind of new, so I just wondered if Yeah,

no, I'm gonna what was it How could you spell it for me?

Yeah, vivo says V i V O S. Okay.

So they're not calling it a mandibular advancement device. They're calling it an oral appliance, or permanent, reshaping the palate. That would be interesting.

Y'all talked I'm sure your dentist mentioned this. But with those things, I mean, those are pretty common with children and when you're doing orthodontic work, so when you when you're expanding that you always have to be careful about occlusion and malocclusion issues. So I hope the dentist is addressing that as well. Because unless somehow and I can't imagine this to expand the palate without affecting the occlusion, so you might want to at least ask about that. That's something to be aware of. Because if you bike it's all wigged out and you get to that's not going to be so great. Yeah.

And plus TMJ and all that you got to worry about and you know, in kids again, kids with high palates have more likely you're going to develop a rare resistance syndrome or sleep apnea as they get older. So yeah, and they're much more malleable. So but

he said he said ideally, you start doing this therapy and kids when they're age three, they have a retainer or some sort of thing. Where to right from happening.

So no way the bike goes with the extension of the pallet. But this is yeah. So interesting. But oral appliances these days are so good by themselves the mandibular advancement devices, that they can be used in place of CPAP. But you need to continue to use it. It's not going to change your shape. Yeah, no, it works symptomatically at the time,

from mild to moderate OSA I mean, if you're getting really high into these numbers, then sometimes CPAP is mandatory. So they're there. They're fantastic to know and it's still staggering how few general practitioners doctors know about it. They just automatically refer to see peps and stuff not and that's just, I think, gross negligence honestly, because a lot of this can be treated very effectively with these mandibular advancement devices.

And in fact, they're now you know, what their first line treatment for people who refuse CPAP or just say there's no way you're gonna get that thing on me. Whereas in the past, we used to make everybody do CPAP first, and then if you fail it, then you can go to an oral appliance, but there's so much better now that even you know, even in severe apnea, if you can't use CPAP, they would rather you use that and nothing at all, and you know, it'll knock it down by half. But other questions?

We had that one that came in us via our address it in January. About your your thoughts about time change?

Oh, that came in this time. Yeah, you

didn't get I thought I thought I sent it to you. There was a question about just what, what, what your thoughts were about the swing, swinging back and forth in spring and fall? Okay.

I actually thought I didn't do that last time, but who knows? You know, so many of these questions are coming up again and again, and I've covered so and so. But yeah, so my my immediate answer is worst thing in the world for ourselves. That keeps switching the times number one number two, standard time is the better choice. Even though people love and crave their extra daylight in the summer. The fact that this sun is overhead at two o'clock in the afternoon is really out of sync with our circadian rhythms. So standard time is basically going with the sun and the seasons. Daylight Savings Time, throws us all out of whack and then throws us back into whack but we kind of overshoot and then finally settle again. There are more accidents after spring daylight savings time or when we switch because we lose the hour. So for health, not a great reason to switch and all the initial reasons saving energy and the war story and all that that none of them holds up anymore. So for health, the best time is standard time year round. And if they've actually done some studies where they've looked at either states or countries that don't switch and overall better health just if you're looking really grossly. So Myra, good to see you myRA. Been a while.

I'm always handling but always here I follow you typing when I was doing the exercise I loved it, um, the two hands and then I found that maybe I felt like the lower one being a lot faster and more like a fast sticking heart and hear slower and I felt that it was going to get slower but actually the whole thing became a lot slower instead of keeping up with a heart I felt like he was almost like a grounded a lot more and he became like really very, very, is that but but I bet that it's just individuals.

Um, to some extent, yes. But you know, it's an actual you know, I didn't want to get into that because I didn't want to set anybody up for failure. But when you put your hand on the sacral that's always linked to the stress, the level of pressure and, and so I have no, no, no, not even that. You know, it's not even that even even in we're sitting here we're not very stressed, it will be faster. And when you bring it into rhythm with a heart which is slower and your earth which is slower, you feel that you know you relax more, but I liked what you do because you're probably because you're a yoga teacher, and you like all the way down what everybody has, you know. And that's actually the the rhythm of the Earth is a little bit slower than our slow heart rate anyway, so if we can get

it was almost like gravity pull.

Yeah, yeah. And when I when I did that, you know, in shamanic practices, you know, I would do that I would put a hand here and a hand here. And I guide the person's hand, you know, the heart down this way. And when I could feel that rhythm, then I would feel this rhythm and I would say bring them together. And it was the most remarkable thing because they started resonating. And they could feel it, they could really feel it and they had and then I you know, then I just teach them to do with themselves at home. You know, this is something Yes, you can try this at home because it's a really great practice. Yeah.

And I when you're saying about get all coherent when it's a group of people that what is that technique, body technique that they put your foot is not a cranial but anyway, the practitioner in the client and begin to kind of beat together actually for the technique to work. On properly. So that is seen. And I remember in the 70s, all the exercises of meditators and the how they can affect in a community remember, back in the studies there so it's almost like that is coming in a circle but with more data because it's more measurable.

Yeah, yeah, that's because we get more of the people that are hardcore, materialist and scientists and they go oh, wow, there's data that says it's happening. I guess it's really happening, you know? But yeah, yeah, you know, it's, it's, it's real. It's just, you know, you got to deal with these materialists and slowly but surely they're coming around. Thanks, Mara. Thank you are slowly

but surely they're dying off right. Remember what length that how to how to science progress. Funeral by funeral

or some trail guides? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. That player Oh, wow. All right, now we're going off the deep end, Beatrice. You There you go. Go ahead.

Thanks. Thank you for that talk about HRV it's very helpful. On my Apple watch, I have an app called Auto sleep. And every morning it gives me a rating about my sleep as far as my how ready I am to meet the day based on heart rate variability and my pulse rate during the night. And that's my first question is, is there any validity to that? I mean, is this how to meet the the next day,

and what does that feel like when it says you're ready to meet today? Are you ready to meet today or, you know, these devices are only as good as their relative to ourselves. So they're all a little different. You know, I've got all my device. I've got my Apple Watch, I've got here. I've got all these devices, and they all give me something a little different. Okay. But in general they will all show sort of improvement when things are going well and not so good when things aren't going well, just using different numbers in different variables. But I always tell people, no matter what you're using, check how you are feeling first. And what would be a great measure is don't even look at it during the day at all. Get up. Notice how you feeling go about your day. And at the end of the day, go, that was a good day, you know, and then look at your data. And then look at your data. And you'll find there'll be some you know, concurrence with it, but it may not be as exact, you know, I mean, there are times when I'm like, oh god. I don't know if I'm gonna make it through the day and it's like, Hey, you're good to go. You know, go do double laps today. So yeah, they're only as good as they relate to you. Okay, thanks

And my second question is about breath work and breathing exercises. I mean, I also have apps on my phone that will give me any pattern I want to inhale and hold, exhale, hold any any. There's something called coherent breathing, which I think is equal inhale and exhale. And then this Andrew Huberman is promoting the physiological side, which is to in in breaths and one, one powerful exhale, and claiming that it helps the Para parasympathetic nervous system and they were actually using some of these techniques to cure or to help heal from long COVID supposedly retraining the autonomic nervous system is going to help. So what do you think should I practice some of these breathing exercises? Which ones?

Well, you know, it's a good question. They use a lot of these different breathing techniques for different purposes. So some people use them to get to sleep. You know, Andrew Weil has his I think 6846 to eight or, you know, and then there's the 666 and the 444. There was a shamanic 1777. You know, because it's a good number, I don't know. But there are some physiologic impacts of breathing in at different rates, but I always get a little antsy about these things when they say you should breathe at this rate for your best health when they don't know you from Adam. You know, or your age or your physical capabilities, your athleticism, you know, so for instance, you know, athletes who all have pretty low heart rates, okay, of like, you know, in the 40s, you know, should I go for a 40 heart rate, should I try to slow my heart rate to that level, you know, at 79? I don't think so. But, so, in that respect, you may have certain limits depending on your age and your abilities, your physical abilities, per se. On the other hand, you know, there is some strong data, at least in that younger array, age range, you know, from let's say, 20 to 35 or 40, or somewhere in that range where you can affect these physiologic changes and there is some good data to say that we can definitely affect our autonomic nervous system. We can consciously change our breathing rate, just like we were just doing, slowing our breathing rate, which we can do consciously and then slow all of our systems and we can get into a relaxation response state just by monitoring our breathing and slowing it down. You can try varying your breathing to some of these suggestions, and see how you feel. To me that is always the best measure of anything. That you see online. Number one, and number two, a lot of these things are lab studies, they're physiologic studies in controlled conditions. Okay, watching everything you eat, drink, and move and your metabolic rate and everything that goes in and comes out and then they make you change something in Oh, yeah, it does change this world. Yeah, but what's going to happen in real life, you know, when you're doing things very different than what was done in the lab. So just just a word of caution there. Try it out. See if you get the impact you get and see how you feel.

That's my best a couple of things to say about this. This is such a really rich question Beatrice said, I recommend if you haven't read it James nesters book breath is quite good. He covers a lot of pretty interesting terrain. But the topic is so fundamental right that when you get to the kind of spiritual business, even the root of the word spirit is derivative of a word that means breath. So in addition to what Dr. Ed was talking about the coherent breathing all the other stuff that he was talking about the wealth method, all that then then you have all the purification Breath, breath methods, you've got the combat guy, the Hindu tradition, you've got prana Yama, when we are together with Tenzin wall gal, Adonai and Virginia, three, four times a day we did his wonderful alternating breathing things. There's all kinds of expelling the stale air practices. This is a massively important topic. It's a big deal because there are definitely correlations between states of mind just purely physiologically not not even getting into the arena. What happens to your mind when you unwind unwind, right, expelling stale air? Some studies have shown that depressed people don't really breathe very deeply. They only inhabit certain aspects of their lungs. Were breathing at very low capacities with lung. So the really, really big topic and I think the bottom line is what doctor is talking about kind of the citizen science how's it working for you? But if you haven't read James Book, it's a really good one. There's a bunch of others out there. It's definitely worth exploring this arena, especially in the inner yogas this becomes really big. I mean, breathwork is it talks Asmara? I mean, when people talk about bastions of yoga, a lot of it is just breathing. Don't forget to breathe. Are you working with your breath, breath breath so it's a really big deal. Thank you both. Okay. Great. All right. Hey, Dr. Edie? Big thanks, Alyssa. Are there any other questions or comments? We good. Well, always a big big I was learning so much when when we come on for these events with Dr. It's such a delight. And since this is the last session of the year, before we pick up again in 2024, and a look at people going to medic is coming in right in time to say goodbye. That's great. I did Monica we're just about to sign off here. Perfect timing. It will be recorded. So yes, happy holidays to everybody. Whatever you plan on doing this holiday season best of luck. Be sure to breathe deeply and properly. Be sure to work with your heart rate variability on the spirit of getting a good night's rest so we can have good lives. But again, big thanks to everybody. That club members we have a lot going on this week. Thursday we got the book study group, I think Saturday right we got Marianne the dream sharing. So we got four events this week, which is kind of fun. So unless there's any final last comments for today? I don't think so. Stop is what I will be recorded for you. We talk mostly about heart rate variability and breathing. So big warm thanks, everybody. See you around the block so to speak, and take care of ourselves. Psych Lester Holt says on Channel whatever CHANNEL NINE NEWS. Take care of yourselves and each other. I like that everybody. Okay. Thank you. recording stopped