Heart Breath Mind: Conquer Stress, Build Resilience, and Perform at Your Peak

If you opt to utilize your HRV instrumentation, use your HRV sensor and the app on your phone and breathe at each of the rates on the previous page for 2 minutes while tracking your heart rate. (See page 224 for a tracking sheet.) Which of the rates felt the least effortful and produced the greatest heart rate oscillations on your equipment? Your R

A need for control. Excessive amounts of change (anything from moving several times to watching one’s parents get divorced) or repeated traumas can leave a physiological imprint resulting in a sense of a lack of control.

WEEK 1 ACTION PLAN Measure your HRV four times this week, right after waking up. Mark your results on the homework tracking sheet on page 224. Try breathing at the six recommended breathing rates, and determine the one that feels best to you. This is your resonance frequency. You’ll know you’ve found it when your mind clears, your heart feels calm,

Meg’s ghost wasn’t her ex or the breakup. Her ghost originated, as is the case with many of my clients, from a traumatic experience in her earlier years. Her sudden flood of emotions was a purging of old, stuck, physiological arousal. Week by week, as Meg’s autonomic nervous system strengthened, the childhood energy sought to release itself.

Scarcity. If a client grew up in fear of not having enough love, money, or food, he or she may internalize a sense of scarcity, rather than operate from an abundance mind-set that believes in opportunity.

Negative self-talk. A client who may be battling a demeaning inner monologue may have internalized the voice of a critical parent or other authority figure.

Once you’re ramped up, though, it’s overly difficult for your physiology to recover. You’re driving a car that has no trouble reaching a high speed but is incapable of slowing down. This is true for most of us.

High heart rate variability is associated with smooth, efficient prefrontal cortex activity and executive-function tasks including working memory and inhibitory control. This means that by increasing your heart rate variability, you improve your prefrontal lobe activity and with it your ability to self-regulate, inhibit negative thoughts, make obje

In fact, many of my clients create a schedule of specific times to insert Power 10s throughout their day, based on their body’s reactions to previous experiences. This is called Mapping Out Your Power 10s. It isn’t so much about preparing for stress as it is about moderating your stress in the moment or afterward,