How To Use Heart Rate Variability To Increase Mental Performance

Hey, I'm Ben Greenfield, and it's only in a triathlete's office, where you will find a stationary bike this close to the computer. But the reason that I'm talking to you right now is because in the most recent issue of Lava magazine, I talked about mental performance hacks. Things that you could do to make yourself think more clearly, think smarter, or even be more motivated before a training session or before a race. Now, what I didn't mention is that there is a special way that you can actually amplify your brain signals, or amplify specifically what I refer to as the alpha brain waves. Now, the way that you can do that is to take advantage of what's called the heart brain connection. And what I mean by that is that just like your brain runs on electrical activity and your muscles do as well, your whole body does. Well, your heart does too. Your heart is one of the most powerful centers of electrical activity in your entire body. It relies on electricity to generate the message between the nodes that cause your heart to beat. And if you can, if you can consciously control your heart, then what you can do is actually amplify the activity of the heart's electrical signals and thus amplify your alpha brain waves. Because what happens is you have a nerve in your body called your vagus nerve. It travels between your heart and your brain, and you literally can amplify signals in your brain by first focusing on your heart. You may have heard of heart rate variability testing or heart rate variability training, or another name for this is biofeedback. And this is one of the ways that you can actually achieve an amplified heart brain connection. Now this may sound kind of woo woo, but this is actually cutting edge science and it works. One of the devices that you can use for something like this is like a personal biofeedback device. This is a simple device that I use. There are more advanced devices that you could find like in a clinician's office, but this is easy for the home goes on your ear and this will literally take your heart rate just like any ear based heart rate monitor will.

Then this device is called an EM wave two.

And I'm not affiliated with the company, nor do I work for them, but once you turn this on, what it's going to do is tell you this will go up and down and you're supposed to breathe in correlation to the up and down movement of the blue light. I can hook this up to my computer as well and actually play programs on my computer called biofeedback programs. That teach me how to achieve a greater state of relaxation in my heart area and actually to improve my control over what's called my heart rate variability or the amount of time spent between my heartbeats. Now, once you're able to consciously control your heart rate variability, you are literally in a state where you're amplifying your heart brain signals. Now, one example way of how to do this is, and again, I realize this may sound woo woo, but it actually works. You focus your breathing in and out of your heart area. You're trying to get into what's called a state of coherence, or what athletes might call the zone. You focus on your breathing going in and out of the center or the area of your chest where your heart is located. And as you do that, you begin to think about something that you love, something that generates a great deal of care or appreciation in your thought processes. Something you care for or appreciate for quite a bit. This can be a spouse, this can be children, it can be a pet, it can be a natural setting that you relax and you find enjoyment in. And as you think about that, you continue to direct your breath in and out of your heart area. And if I were connected to my biofeedback device as I was doing this or paying attention to my heart rate variability, what you'll find is that you're better able to control what your heart is doing. And as you get into that state of coherence consciously, you suddenly have the ability to be able to consciously amplify your brainwave signals and enhance your mental performance. So it's called heart rate variability training. It's called biofeedback. This is called an EM wave 2. There are other such devices out there, but I would highly recommend that you look into this. If you pay attention to the stuff that I put out@BenGreenfieldFitness.com I'll be talking more about this in the future because it is literally just now kind of becoming more commonplace for this to be known as a way to enhance sports performance. So I hope that was helpful for you. And if you have questions, you can leave them below the video and I'll try and respond to your comments. So this is Ben Greenfield signing out.