Heart-rate variability therapy for anxiety is a bit like the tail wagging the dog. But it’s surprisingly effective. Here’s how it works.

Heart-rate variability (HRV) means how much your heart beat speeds up and slows down. You may feel that it beats faster only when you run or when you’re scared, but actually, a much finer up-down rhythm occurs all the time.

It’s linked to your breathing. When you inhale, your heart-rate increases slightly. When you exhale, your heart-rate decreases slightly.

A calm person has high HRV.

His/her inhale produces an increase, and his/her exhale produces a decrease. This is why taking a deep breath can make you feel calm. After that long exhale, your heart-rate is down. It stays down till your next inhale.

You can even see this rhythmic sync on a computer screen. The heart-rate variability of a calm person makes a nice sine curve that follows the breathing curve. As the curve goes up for the lungs filling up, the heart-rate goes up. As the curve goes down for the lungs exhaling, the heart-rate goes down.

However, a person with anxiety has low HRV.

When an anxious person inhales, the heart-rate doesn’t follow. At the exhale, there’s no calming reaction. In fact, the heart-rate seems to go up and down on its own.

That’s why the person doesn’t feel calm. His/her body isn’t in sync. The normal relaxation that comes from exhaling isn’t there. More than anything, the heart-rate is running its own show and taking over.

To summarize:

• A high level of everyday HRV is linked to feeling calm, as well as to having good coping strategies, emotional flexibility, and adaptability.
• A low level of everyday HRV is linked to feeling stress and anxiety, as well as to having poor coping strategies, emotional fixation, and panic.
• Most people with anxiety disorders breathe too fast. So the first thing they need to learn is to breathe more slowly.
• Anxiety disorders put an enormous strain on the heart.

Two kinds of HRV therapy are available.

One is a handheld device that attaches to a finger or thumb. It measures the heart-rate in a sine curve and shows it on a tiny monitor. You slow your breathing to force the sine curve to sync with your breathing. One such product on the market is the StressEraser, but there are others as well.

The other kind of HRV device includes a belt around the ribcage that monitors breathing, as well as the finger/thumb device to monitor the heart-rate. Both the breathing and HRV curves appear in the display. You slow your breathing until the two curves into sync. This kind of therapy is usually done in a neurofeedback practitioner’s office.

Of course, there’s one budget form of HRV that involves no technology.

It’s called meditation. Buddhists figured out a long time ago that the secret to happiness was slow, controlled breathing. Studies of the Buddhist-trained brain have shown great HRV and a resting activation of the brain centers associated with happiness.

How do you feel after doing HRV?

Calm.

With a little practice every day, you learn to feel this in-sync rhythm. After a while, staying in sync becomes natural. Stress and anxiety melt away.