Heart Rate Variability and Resonance: Understanding the Core Concepts

Heart Rate Variability Podcast with Stephanie White explains coherence and resonance frequency breathing for health optimization, offering professional coaching and 24-hour HRV monitoring.

### Heart Rate Variability: Understanding Coherence and Resonance Frequency Breathing
* 💓 Stephanie White, a wearable data-informed Health Optimizer, shares her personal health journey and how it led her to specialize in **heart rate variability (HRV) analysis**.
* 📈 In 2016, Stephanie discovered her chronic stress through a Garmin watch's HRV feature, prompting her to **delve into HRV research and training** with HeartMath and Firstbeat.
* 🧠 Coherence, as defined by HeartMath, involves synchronizing heart rate and respiration to create a **smooth sine wave pattern**, beneficial for **emotional regulation and cognitive acuity**.
* 🌀 Resonance frequency breathing, a deeper level of coherence, involves finding an individual's **optimal breathing rate for maximum physiological benefits**.
* 📊 Stephanie explains how **resonant breathing synchronizes three systems** (heart, respiration, and baroreflex) to **amplify the power of the HRV signal**.
* 🧘 While coherence can be achieved without technology, **resonance frequency breathing** often requires assisted pacing to maintain the **optimal breathing rate**.
* 🏥 Stephanie emphasizes the importance of working with a professional when starting resonance frequency breathing, especially for those with **relaxation anxiety or complex health conditions**.
* 🌐 Stephanie is expanding her practice to include health coaching and plans to use **24-hour HRV monitoring** to address chronic overbreathing, aiming to **revolutionize metabolic health management**.

Welcome to the Heart Rate Variability Podcast. Each week, we talk about heart rate variability and how it can be used to improve your overall health and wellness. Please consider the information in this podcast for your informational use and not medical advice. Please see your medical provider to apply any of the strategies outlined in this episode. Heart Rate Variability Podcast is a production of Optimal LLC and Optimal HRV. Check us out at optimalhr.com. Please enjoy the show. Welcome, friends, to the Heart Rate Variability Podcast. I am here today with someone I'm gonna use the word friend because we've had hours of conversation, maybe a sister from a different lifetime, you know, just somebody who you meet professionally and you just click, and I think for me it's like, Boy, this Stephanie White, she can teach me a lot. And so basically, since the first time Stephanie, you and I chatted, I think I brought up being on the podcast right away because I think the hard part was, you know, what are we going to start with our

conversations together. Uh, so I am excited to explore the difference between coherence and residence frequency breathing, and I'll be honest, I don't have a ton of expertise on the coherence side of things. So I am so excited to explore this topic because two words that can get thrown around a lot, and do we really know what either of them means. So Stephanie is the perfect person to help us explore this. So, Stephanie, before we start to nerd out together, just give an introduction of yourself to our listeners. Well, hello. I'm Stephanie White. This is a mouthful, but I am saying I'm a wearable data-informed Health Optimizer. I'll repeat that, a wearable data-informed Health Optimizer. We're wearing these devices, but do we know what they're telling us or how to use it or what to do differently as a result. That's my specialty. So that's what I do. I got here by accident. I have been blessed with multiple absolutely

Bonkers health conditions that are chronic. They've been with me all my life. Um, and yeah, they're gonna stay with me. Uh, but yeah, as a child, if you looked at me cross-eyed, I'd break out in hives. Um, so some form of this has been going on in my entire life, but it really, um, I should say this too. I've got big tea and little tea traumas in my background, as well as multiple generational traumas that I inherited from my grandparents. If you ever get be started on their story as children, both my grandmother and my grandfather both had absolutely crazy things happen in their childhood, stuff you can't dream up, you know, book truth is much Stranger Than Fiction. Um, but so I've got trauma all over the place in my background. I've got food sensitivities. I've got allergies. I've got all these crazy things, but it all culminated to where I nose-dived in 2016 with the breast cancer diagnosis, um, double

masectomy. Um, got lymphodema within three weeks. Had a history hysterctomy within six months. Was Hospital twice after that because my body just went nuts. Um, then I was diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome, pots. So at the lowest point, I was walking less than a thousand steps a day. I was pumping in a Pneumatic pump four and a half hours a day to get my lymph to go back where it belonged. Um, so that was on the lymph side, and I was hooked up to IV saline every night for two and a half years for my pots. So I call myself a professional patient as well, and I consider myself blessed to have gone through this experience because I never, never would have learned what I've learned if I hadn't been through it. And I am a master educator. I taught at virginity tech for over 20 years. My masters is in instructional design and Technology. I'm a person of faith. Can I talk about my faith on here or not? Oh sure, absolutely. I'm a person of Faith so

every day my prayer was I promise if you teach me what I need to know to manage these conditions, I will teach any and everybody I can what you show me. So please show me what I need to know um because what we're doing right now isn't working. We are losing the battle, and the doctors I work with have a two-year waiting list. So the people that need to see them can't get to them, yeah. And if you can't get to the doctor in two years, what do you do during those two years? So I'm trying to grow a army of health coaches to try to pick up the slot to give people some answers and some ideas of what to do and how to manage things because these conditions are manageable. They're not necessarily treatable, yeah. And so it becomes an educational process and not a treatment process, and it's horrible to wait two years to find out the doctor can't treat you. They can only educate you. That is really frustrating, that is super duper frustrating. Can't imagine, yeah, uh that.

is really frustrating. So I have learned so much. Well, I'd love to hear how and when in this journey, and I appreciate you sharing that with our listeners. Where did this little biometric called heart rate variability come in? Not only to your consciousness, but building it, going not just with that, but building expertise around. Well, it is a really crazy intertwined story. Um, at some point in 2016, I put on a Garmin watch for the first time. And so Garmin Incorporated Firstbeat analytics into their wearables that gives you, at the time, it was just stress and recovery. You know, orange and blue graph. Blue means you were in recovery or parasympathetic mode. Orange means you were stressed out or in sympathetic mode. Um, I put on one of those watches. My entire day, 24/7, was orange between the 75 to 100% mark. Wow, 24/7 for months. And I didn't know what that meant. So it's like, okay, so here we got Garmin telling me I'm stressed out.

see, at that point, it was like a frog. I had been in that situation for so long. Uh, my husband died in 2010. He was an alcoholic. Before he died, he tried to kill me. He had to be removed from the home. Yeah, it had been one thing after the other. I did the I was involved when Virginia Tech had the mass shooting. Um, I've buried two nephews. One was stillborn. Had to help my sister give birth to a stillborn baby. Uh, the other one was a medical error. Uh, he died before he was three months old because of a medical error. I have been through one thing after another in my life, so stress was just something I had 24/7 and just didn't realize the extent to which it was affecting my body. So yeah, I was I was the doctors call this persistent sympathetic activation. Your body gets stuck in that mode and doesn't know how to get out. So just would that be and it like fagal break like is it just like not kind of on that much it on

you get stuck. You get stuck and it's like your body forgets how to switch. Um, and so my pots was hyper andronic pots. The doctor told me once your body starts making cortisol, it doesn't know when to stop, and you have trouble clearing cortisol out of your body. So once it's made, you're keeping it around a lot longer than other people are. So you're just like triple whammied here. Yeah. Um, and so yeah, my body just kind of forgot how to do the basics and needed help to relearn how to reset itself. It, it couldn't. It was beyond the point of being able to figure it out by itself. Yeah. So I, I learned about Garmin. I learned about first beat. And then I learned about heart math. And so I started studying everything I could about heart math. And I did their certification program so I, I could really learn. And I started having conversations with Roland mccrady. And Roland was very instrumental in helping me get the chronic fatigue diagnosis with my primary care doctor.

met with me and my doctor for an hour by Zoom. The Zoom equivalent back in the day um, and so he was very instrumental in that um, and so I need to share one of the AHA moments with Roland because even at that point people keep saying they want to be more parasympathetic, they want to be more parasympathetic, they want to be more parasympathetic, but even at that point in my life when I was the worst and the Garmin was saying I'm stressed out all day, Roland said something really interesting to me. He said, What is your overnight heart rate? and I'm like, you know, 60 something. He's like, You have a parasympathetic nervous system that's working, yeah. and I'm like, How do you, how do you know that? He said, Because if I were to take your heart out of your body, denervate it, and put it back into your body, you would basically have a 100 beat per minute heart rate consistently. So if overnight you're able

to or at any time during the day, you're able to bring it down below a 100. Yeah, your parasympathetic nervous system is online. Yeah, now everything might not be working perfectly, but if you can get your heart rate below 100 beats per minute, you have a functioning parasympathetic nervous system. Because if we do denervate it, you're going to be at 100 beasts per minute. I thought that was really interesting. Yeah, um, so you know, that was that was interesting. So I learned about heart math. I learned about first beat. Um, at the time I was trying to keep my head in the game. The name GTS kept coming up on YouTube. So at the time I was listening to everything I could find from Dr. GTS about her friend of the show for sure, exactly. So that was instant reputation building when I started looking at your podcast. And I see K and I see Kazan. Um, because Kazan, I, I'm a PhD candidate in applied psychophysiology at CBR.

University and Dr. Kerson use Kazan's videos all the time for case studies and stuff in class. So, you know, I hadn't met Kazan at that point, but I felt like I knew her because I'd seen so many of her videos. Um, so yeah, that was going on. So, I became a firstbeat license provider to do 24-hour heart rate variability for folks, and I was trained by Tim WS, who's the Renovo advantage out of South Carolina. He was selling firstbeat devices to researchers for the VA hospital in Greenville. Yeah, so that Dr. Jack Ginsburg wrote the seminal article on HRV statistics with Fred Schaer. Yeah, and so when Tim stepped out and I stepped in to be the firstbeat distributor, now I'm the one selling devices to Jack Ginsburg. That's awesome. Um, and so Jack is a jewel of an individual. He's one of those people that grows other people. He gives knowledge away freely, so he's an amazing man to be around. All these

people whose careers he's grown have all accumulated in Richmond, Virginia, to create the Center for Autonomic Excellence. That's awesome. And they've hired his son, Ben. So now Richmond, where I am in Virginia, is the hotbed for autonomic excellence. Um, so it's funny how everything goes full circle and all these people come together. Um, that's been fun. That's been a lot of fun. What a journey. Yeah. So, so you mentioned HeartMath. And so my understanding of coherence, uh, because I'll share a little bit of my journey to put this in perspective for the readers, because I am a fan of HeartMath. Even though, you know, you can maybe choose in between optimal HRV and HeartMath, I've got so much respect for that company. I actually try to convince them to do HRV tracking, um, so because I needed that. That was like, you got the biofeedback. I just need the tracking. And I couldn't get any interest in that, um, which I was trying. I was like

I'll even pay you $5,000. Take your course if you'll track heart R variability for me. So, uh, you know, so I was originally my first HRV biofeedback experience may have been Wild Divine back in the day, which wasn't necessarily HRV. It was more. It was other biometrics, but I still I have a good place in my heart. Then it was like HeartMath, then it was frustration, and then a lead was in there, and I was just trying to get like I need just good solid tracking based on science. And then you know, once I created Optimal, I knew there was that whole other biofeedback because I created well. We had created a tracking mechanism. I always saw as an outcome measure for mental health and other providers to watch improvement over time, to get baselines, those pieces. And then that's where I got connected with Dr. Ena Huzan, and maybe not for the first time, but really started to pay attention to residence frequency breathing and starting to

realize that while it's kind of like coherence coherence kind of seems to live with heart math. I know it. You see it in other places where his resonance frequency breathing. It seems different but kind of the same and there's overlapping but there's different goals. So help me as somebody who knows both sides of this way better than I do. I'd love to hear kind of your definitions and you know kind of how you think about these two, uh, to I guess approaches would probably be the right term here, right? So this is fun. Um, can I let me tell you a quick story and then I'm going to answer that question, but I need to tell you a quick story first because this is GNA sound like it's not related at all, but I promise I'm gonna bring it full circle around. I gotta tell you a story. I am a country music fan, and so country music fans know Johnny Cash, and they know June Carter Cash. So June Carter Cash's mom is Mother Maybel. Mother Maybell's dad is

AP I know the entire state of Virginia because in my role at Virginia Tech, I had to supervise internships for agricultural students, and they were all over the state. Yeah, and I own property in Tazewell County, which is Extreme Southwest Virginia, close to where all this happened. Um, AP Carter walked all over Southwest Virginia trying to find music that they could record, and so they were one of the earliest country music families. Somebody, some people call them the first family of country music. And so about the time they were, you know, really taking off, the US came through and broke up all the radio stations and gave everybody their own little territory. And you had to use a little bit of antenna, and you could only broadcast within your little bitty territory with a little bitty antenna. And all those local radio stations were having such a hard time surviving financially because they were made so small. They shut out country music, and Country Music wasn't allowed to broadcast on them. So the Carter family was like, what on Earth are we

gonna do so they moved from little bitty Southwest Virginia all the way to Texas sitting right on the Mexican border because there was this little bitty radio station on the other side of the Border in Mexico that was known as a border Blaster. There were no limits on what size antenna they could use so if they played at that Mexican radio station it covered 28 US states plus Canada and so they could put out the signal that could blast everybody and that's how country music became so popular and was so easy to pick up. They say Cowboys could pick it up with a tin can and barbwire fences. I mean it put out a signal that everybody could pick up on um so that's part of the story putting out a signal that everybody can pick up on and putting out a strong signal that's G to come back in but let me tell you about the dude that ran the radio station. He had been run out of Texas. He had a medical degree from what they called a degree Mill. It was a fake.

medical degree. He was running around performing surgeries on men, putting goat testicles in men to cure their impotence and so on. The Texas radio station, he was having these conversations about improving your sex life, and they said it was too risque, so they ran him out of Texas because of what he was saying on the radio. But he was doing surgeries on people, putting goat testicles in men. Later, he got the pants suit off of him, which should have happened a long time ago. But the reason why I bring up that part of the story, he was a snake oil salesperson, there wasn't any legitimacy to that. The reason I bring up that part of the story is people think HRV and resonant breathing is equivalent to snake oil salesman. They think it's woooo and it's not science-based and all this other stuff and it'll never work. And I say that because I've got doctors who know resonant breathing will help treat the conditions that they deal with, and they're prescribing it to their

patients and their patients aren't doing it because their patients don't believe in it, and until have their patients heard of res. I mean, I even until patients believe it, they're not gonna do it. So we've got to do a better job at explaining to patients why this is legitimate science and why it can really help them. So that's why I bring that story up fascinating. You said you're gonna put this on YouTube. Can I share my screen for those that are on YouTube? I've got to show you what I'm talking about. Absolutely. Let me make sure it's gonna come up okay. So I'm known for geeking out, and I know some people can't see this. Maybe we could get a screenshot for the show Notes too. Yeah. So I am showing a Kubo screen, and so what happened, it doesn't matter what platform I used. I could have used optimal HRV. I could have used anything, but as you're breathing and you're wearing some type of a sensor.

picks up your heart rate with every single beat. So let's say um my heart beats once and a th milliseconds again. It meets a. It beats a second time that a th000 millisecond is the equivalent of 1 second. So if the difference between those beats is 1,00 milliseconds, how many 1-second increments are in a minute? 60 divided by one. I'd have 60 beats per minute. Now on the other hand, if between those two heart beats there were 50 milliseconds, how many times or 500 milliseconds how many times can 500 milliseconds go into a full minute? The answer would be 120. So if that's what I was doing, my heart rate would be 120 beats per minute, yeah. So every single time your heart beats, I'm converting the interbeat interval to heart rates. This is showing how my heart rate changes with every single beat of my heart. If that be, if it continue to be like that for a full minute, this is what my heart rate would be with every bead of my.

heart and so as it's recording these differences in my heart beats, which is known as the interner beat interval, you're going to see this nice little up-down pattern start to emerge. When you get into what's known as respiratory sinus arrhythmia, as you breathe in and as you breathe out, your heart fluctuates and your heart rate increases, and then your heart rate decreases, and your heart rate increases, and then your heart rate decreases. And so when you're breathing at a very smooth consistent pattern, you get this really nice sine wave, which has all kinds of ramifications when you're talking about laws of physics. All kinds of great things happen when you have a consistent sine wave or pattern. And so what I want to show you is over here on the far left before I started breathing that nice little pattern, your heart rate tends to be erratic, there is no pattern. And so when I listen into that radio station that my body's putting out, because that pattern our body's

putting out electromagnetic waves that can be read from the heart as far as six feet away. Your brain can only put out information about eight inches away, but your heart, if you had a fancy dancy listening device, you got your own little radio station that with sophisticated equipment can be read six feet away. Um, and so the radio station that I'm putting out here, if you look down at the bottom at the FR at the power Spectrum, I, you and I were talking the other day, and I said your body's like a supercomputer. And let's pretend I'm gonna start this fancy campus for my business like um Apple computer would do or something. And so let's say I'm Apple computer, and I'm making this huge business campus. You know, I've got corporate headquarters in one building, I've got Finance in another building, I've got Accounting in another building, Human Resources in another building. I'm gonna put a server in all those buildings, but then I'm going to integrate them with the network or with

the cloud or whatever, and they're all going to be talking to each other, and so they're going to be sending people, they're G to be sending each other different pieces of information, because you don't know what to purchase if you don't know what your finances are, or who to hire if you don't know what your human resource, they've all got to communicate. So when that when everybody's doing their own thing in your body, you have all these radio signals coming from all the different body systems. Your heart's doing one thing, your brain's doing one thing, your gut's doing one thing, your blood pressure system's doing one thing. All these signals are going on in your body simultaneously. You have a way to hack your body and to tell all those systems to pay attention. We're going to sing the same song on the same channel right now corporate wise meeting, everybody attend. And when you do that through consistent paced breathing or coherent breathing, all of those signals go to nothing, and you get this one perfect.

Peak at the rate at which you're breathing. This is coherence. Coherence only requires synchronization of two systems to get these amazing impacts. And the two systems that you're synchronizing are your heart beating and your respiration. So, HeartMath learned this long time ago, and they've got, I don't even know how many studies, thousands of studies that they've done or participated in, of all the benefits you can get just by being coherent. That's all you got to do is synchronize your breath and your heart rate, you're coherent, and you get all these amazing benefits. And so, HeartMath's strength is usually an emotional regulation and intuition and cognitive acuity. And so, the psychologist and the psychiatrist and all the health profession, the behavioral health professionals, have been all over this with HeartMath because all you've got to do is synchronize two systems to get all of those benefits. And because you're putting out a signal, a radio station signal that other people can pick up on, six feet.

away if you come together as a group, and somebody I know wrote a book that was envisioning a future where institutions become HR Savvy. Have you heard of that guy? His name's Matt um suspect. He's kind of like that goat testicle salesman. Yeah, but you know these businesses, you know, are hiring heart math professionals to come in and teach them how to have a coherent Workforce because they treat each other nicer, yeah, because they're more easygoing, and they're more intuitive, and they come up with better results. There's all kinds of corporate amazing things that happen when you have a coherent Workforce that's nice to each other, um, and intuitive and emotionally regulated. It things just go much better. So when so when you hear, I I got to ask you this because one of the things uh as I continue to learn from heart math, they speak a lot about like maybe coherence with your pet or World coherence, oh yeah, is that because are coherent, yes, six foot away from somebody.

else who's coherent and like what what is like is that we're all breathing at the same rate. Because it seems like it's more than with them, it's transpersonal. And I don't know if I'm using that word right, but like that we could all get in coherence together. Yes, yes, almost at a spiritual level. But I'm not. It is kind of at a spiritual level. So, um, you know, I meet with a group of doctors and researchers every Friday. And some of these researchers have monster belts for horses and dogs. Um, so you can measure heart rate variability on horses and dogs and cows and pigs and anything you want to measure heart rate variability on. And so when you've got an animal and a human that are attached to each other when they enter the room and they have that emotional connection, they synchronize with each other. Same things with mothers and infants, yeah, they synchronize with each other. Um, and they've done it with horses, you know, if you're in a special

relationship with a horse that knows and trusts you, and you've got that bond with each other. So we have yet to fully understand all the nonverbal communications that are going on body to body, entity to entity. Trees have signals. So HeartMath has invested in all this technology to read the Earth signals. Yeah, they've got listening posts because these are radio stations, basically. They've got listening posts set up throughout the world to read the Earth signals and the tree signals and everything else that's going on to see if, you know, how coherent things are. Um, because different things can happen that throw things off. Uh, perfect example is you know the magnetic impact on airplanes. They have to have sophisticated equipment that can make minute changes to keep them going in the right direction as different things change Earthwise. They read those changes and make minute adjustments to keep them going in the right direction. If they didn't, wouldn't make it to their destination. Um, so we, you know, there's things going on that we don't totally

comprehend, but they're happening, and you have to adjust for them, um, and so we're, you know, we're only just beginning to scratch the surface of how that all works, but we know it's there, and it's kind of like, have you ever been sitting in a room, and maybe your back's towards the door, but you just feel something, and you turn around, and that person just entered the room? You didn't hear them, you didn't see them, but you knew they were there. You pick up on their energy, yeah, you pick up on their energy. You know, I've got clients that'll come to me, and I'll measure their, uh, HRV, and so for example, right here, my low frequency energy is 400, and I'm G to get to it in a minute, but over here, it's like 3176 doubled. I've got clients that go to Chinese medicine and energy practitioners, and their energy practitioners telling them, Your energy is this big, it's right here in your chest, and it's not going anywhere.

they come to me, and I measure it, and I'm like your Energy's this big. And they're like, I just heard that from somebody else. And I'm like, I can measure it. They're right, I don't know how they know it, but I can measure it scientifically. So cool, it is way cool, totally way cool. Uh, and by the way, as this energy diminishes, that lower energy is completely correlated with fatigue severity and chronic fatigue syndrome. So it's like your light is literally going out, yeah. And the weaker it gets, the worse you are, um. So not letting your light go out, and keeping an eye on your power, and growing your power, and expanding it over time is really important if you want to have optimal heal, yeah, and Longevity, which a lot of people seem to want to do these days. Kind of important, kind of important. So yeah, to be coherent, you only have to synchronize two systems. And all can you talk a little bit about when you say synchronize those two. So my experience.

with heart math is I got a Pacer. I'm breathing at that Pacer, and that creates that helps me get in coherence. If am I on the right track with that, how we sync that up, okay so [Music]. Um, people can be coherent across a wide range of Paces. So if you get someone breathing um 10 breaths a minute, 60 divided by 10 would be six. Um, Cycles. I get people do equal in and out. So if it's a second-second cycle and you divide it by two, that'd be 3 seconds in, 3 seconds out, yep. If you just slow your breathing down, typical breathing is 15 breaths per minute. So if you slow it down to like 10 breasts per minute, three in, three out, or then you can start to be coherent, and that gentle oscillation of breathing in and breathing out at the same pace is going to start the Rhythm that you're breathing and your heart picks up on, and you start to get.

coherent. Oh, and so as soon as you start that rolling pattern of equal inhale, equal out exhale, you're going to start establishing that sine wave pattern that your heart picks up on. And they become synchronized, and that's when you are coherent, and everything else, all the other radio signals calm down, and you just get that one beautiful peak. Gotcha. We're probably talking pretty. I, we're increasing low frequency for the HRV nerds out. Yeah, we're in the low frequency bandwidth at that point. You're always in the low frequency bandwidth. And for the geeks, I'm just going to look at down here. It's between 0.004 and 0.15 Hertz is the low frequency bandwidth. High frequency is 0.15 and above. And don't let it fool you, some of the people that I work with that have chronic health issues, they've got power above 0.4. So I'm advocating to start reporting very high frequency. Yeah, um, in some.

applications. They report ultra ultra low frequencies. I'm advocating we need to start reporting very high frequencies. Fascinating. So when I'm running calculations, I go all the way up to two two's. Overkill, um, but I am an advocate for starting to look at and understanding very high frequency, um, and so yeah, that's the low frequency range that we're talking about. So here's, here's what I want to show you. I this is a 16-minute recording. I was using a special software program that varies each breath minutely so the breaths get longer and longer and longer as I'm doing this entire recording. So in this first three minute bandwidth, am I coherent? Yes, I've got that single high peak. What's my power? 1,400 jump over three minutes. Am I still coherent? Yep, what's my power? 1,600. It's going up. Come look over here. The next three minute segment in a row, am I still coherent? Yep, what's my power? 1,700. Let's look at this three minute

Peak. Am I still coherent? Yep. What's my power? 3,176. Yeah, over here I was at 1,400. Over here I'm at 3,176. This is what I call a border Blaster. I'm the Mexican radio station with the huge antenna putting my signal out as far and wide as I possibly can. I've got maximum power. Gotcha. That's when you're resonant. Okay, so you're coherent throughout this, but res it gu. Okay, I'm coherent throughout it. So in some of the amazing training I've listened to from Ena Kazan, she'll say things like, you know, our goal is to get people familiar with the technique so we can wean them off of technology as quick as possible. The good news is you can be weaned off technology. You can be sitting in your car doing for memory counting 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, six. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, six. You're getting amazing benefits, but if you want the benefits that ACR from being

resonant, you're probably going to want to use technology just about all the time for your resonant practice. Yeah, and so my doctors are prescribing 20 minutes a day, at least once a day, of resonant breathing. Yeah, building your way up to two times a day, once in the morning, once in a night, a resonant breathing. And when you're resonant breathing, you're using technology-assisted pacing so that you're at your perfect rate for your body. Um, and so when you're doing that, I think you need technology to help you maintain that resonant pace and determine where your maximum power is because that you can't do that on your own. It's kind of hard. In our, you know, I a few episodes ago, now Josh Merchant came on. He did a really stud interesting study about residence versus box versus was it 478 breathing. And one of their findings was nobody's breathing at the rate they think they're breathing at. So exactly, I am one of those that like whether I'm I got a band on whether

I just need the pacer there because I know I'm one of those people. Like, I'll have a thought and I'll be delayed, so I can do it. I got my mantras, but how accurate they are is, I would say, very, very low. So yeah, bringing the story back around, this is not snake oil, this is science-based. Guess what's happening when you get that pop of power and you're resonant in need. You're synchronizing three. Yeah, so the law of physics, the more things you synchronize and get oscillating at the same time, the higher the amplitude of the power. Yeah, they if they multiply each other to the extent that if a military army approaches a river with a bridge and they're marching in cadence, they have to break cadence before they go over that bridge because marching in cadence an entire army over a bridge will break the bridge down. Bridges have collapsed because armies have marched across in cadence with each other and destroyed it. That's how powerful being in

resonance is fascinating. Totally fascinating. It's important heavy-duty stuff, yeah, that can make changes in your body and the universe around you if you want to do that too, yeah. Um, and so the power, the peak power, is when you get three systems. Um, and so the system that's setting the pace for your body is your Barrel reflex system, and it seems to have the most to do with your height. Some of us are a lot taller than others. I've seen your picture against everybody else at the bi conference, yeah. Uh, so your height is the biggest determining factor in your magical resonance frequency, but it can change with your health situation. Uh, it does, it can change with age, um, and it's different by sex. You know, men and women are completely different. They have found no differences by ethnicity so far. Um, so different things can change it. Um, some people will say once you determine your resonance frequency, it's a one and one. Um, I don't subscribe to that, and there's at least

one blood pressure study that shows you know they benefited from resetting every two weeks in a 10 we study um and so if you are not of Optimal Health and you start a new practice, I think you need to recalibrate at least once every one or two one to two weeks. You can't hurt anything by recalibrating, right? And while you're recalibrating, it counts as practice, yeah, exactly, um, so if you've got to practice for 20 minutes, why not use six 10 minutes of it to recalibrate? It counts as practice. Yeah, um, and so it doesn't hurt anything, so the message I'm trying to get out to folks, if you're going to spend 20 minutes doing coherent breathing, why not go the extra step and just go ahead and be resonant? It doesn't cost you any more time, yeah, and the results are going to magnify, you know, people come to me wanting the most results in the least amount of time, and if that's what you

want you need to be doing it at your resonance frequency. Um, that's how I can get you those results. Um, I can get you there one day if you're coherent, and I can get you a lot of amazing benefits if you're coherent. But if you want the most benefits, you might as well be resonant. Wow, that is the greatest explanation. Uh, I have ever. I haven't heard very good explanations on this, but now I believe. You explained it in a way that, you know, one included goat testicles, which I gotta give you somebody sticker for put goat testicles in their story. Yes, uh, I, I am that person, uh, but I think this is just fascinating because again, we throw these terms around and even residence frequency. I don't. I think a lot of folks who just said, okay, this is a better approach. Th this is the best approach we have with the tools we have don't necessarily go and say this is how these two things are interrelated because you

do see coherence roll around quite a bit in the literature, and I know there's some people who's published um who's like they're doing res but if don't mention coherence, you're not going to get published, which I think is interesting, uh politics and all this too, but it's just, it's it's interesting how you bring these two schools really together, um, and just differentiate, um, a small but important difference between those because I'm assuming all the benefits of coherence comes in, absolutely, absolutely, yeah, absolutely, do do you have, and I'm not asking you to speak for a heart math, but is there a reason like heart maath wouldn't go into the residence frequency side of what they do as as um, yeah, there is, yeah, there is, and so let me share a couple of things, some people get freaked out by [Music] numbers, and a lot of heart matat clientele is coming to it for the emotional regulation benefits, so if you are dealing with a patient or a client who's already got a

precarious mental health status. You don't want to stress them out with numbers, yeah, so you want to start out with the easiest thing possible that they can be the most successful with and accrue a reasonable amount of benefits. You want to meet people where they're at, yeah, and so when it comes to meeting people where they're at and getting them some bang for their Buck, that's the place to take them, yeah. Um, but when you're dealing with someone like me who's sicker and needs results, physiological results, or you're dealing with a CEO who's used to dealing with a lot of data anyway, because you can't manage what you can't measure, right? So if you're dealing with a CEO biohacker, you better believe they want to know how to get the biggest bang for their butt, and they don't care about the numbers. Numbers aren't going to mess with them one way or the other, right? So you kind of have to figure out where your client's at and what they can

handle and meet them where they're at. Um, and so that's why a lot of people are hiding the numbers in their apps because people just don't want to see them, you know. HeartMath in their new app hid the numbers, and all the old users freaked out and said, Hey, you need to make it a toggle, you know, for the people who can't handle the numbers, hide them, but for the people who want the numbers, we need to be able to get them. So they had to go back to accommodate their old users, but you absolutely need to meet people where they're at. Some people, the numbers make them nervous, yeah. Um, and there is such a thing as relaxation anxiety, and so the act of just changing your breathing is foreign to some people. And so, you know, it's one of those disclaimers, Don't try this at home by yourself. You really should be working with a professional or a coach that has some training in this area because some people have relaxation anxiety.

it's an awkward process, and they need someone to gently progress them to the point where they're residents. They just can't get there from where they are today. Yeah, and it's like training a dog, you know. You don't train a dog to do the final thing you want them to do. You get them one step closer, and you reward them every step they get closer to the goal until they get to the goal. But they don't get to the goal on day one. Yeah, um, and so that's, you know, that's why clients can benefit from a professional that knows a little bit about this to help them get them from point A to point B. Awesome, great point. Well, let's say they want to work with a professional, Stephanie White. Where might they find some information about you? Obviously, we'll put this on the show notes too, but just for somebody that might be listening and is ready to reach out. How would they get a I really appreciate you asking. Um, my website is Measurable Resilience.

comom, so you can check out the website there. Yeah, um, now I'm getting ready to do some really new things and offer some new classes and some new Zoom and coaching opportunities. I'm opening a physical office space in Richmond, Virginia, July 1. Congratulations! And I will also be doing Zoom classes starting, you know, early in July. I have uh multiple health conditions, and I have a new diagnosis of myasthenia gravis. I am physically only capable of working 15 hours a week, so I'm being teamed up with a full-time virtual assistant from the Philippines who's going to be helping me out. And I'm training health coaches to do the work I want to do but can't do, so I've got six coaches training under me right now. Um, and so I will be creating an army of health coaches that can help people learn how to do this. Um, so my email address is swh measurable resilience. comom anybody can email me because you won't find all the information on the website yet about.

what's coming um so it's probably easiest to email me if if you want more information. I do specialize in 24-hour heart rate variability, and just to do a little bit of a teaser of what I'd like for our next podcast to be about um I can measure when people are in a chronic state of over breathing for multiple hours a day with my 24-hour heart rate variability measures, and I think I can change the way medicine is practiced if we can get this tool used in mainstream uh medicine because we're losing the battle on metabolic Health. 92% of people in the US have one or more metabolic health risk factors, and I think I know why. Yeah um and I think it gets back to us not doing the you know I was telling you you know I'm starting I I run a foundational health coach certification program, and by Foundation I mean we're not getting the basics right. Yeah the things we do the most are our heartbeating how many times do we breathe a day how much fluid do we into

a day. How much food do we intake a day? You know, if we focus on the things we do the most or have the most impact on our body, and if we get those right, our health could really, really change. Um, so yeah, I'm raising, uh, you know, trying to put together an army of health coaches to do foundational health, and nobody else I know is talking about foundational health. All you need is a 24-hour heart rate variability monitor and a CGM, and you can make all kinds of changes in your health. I love it. So we'll put all those, uh, information and links in the show notes. Uh, Stephanie, uh, like I said, it's an honor to call you a friend and a colleague. You too as well in this work, and, uh, I look forward to that next, uh, chance where we can hit record. Sometimes we just hit record anyway on our conversations because I need to go back and listen to them. So my friend, appreciate you, uh, so much. I appreciate all our listeners as well. As always, you can find show notes at

optimal hb. comom, and uh, we'll put the information there. I'm gonna get screenshots from Stephanie about the charts, uh, that we use because it really helps you with this conversation. Stephanie, thank you so much, and I'm already looking forward to our next talk. Thank you, Matt. It's been fun. Thank you.

Stephanie White discusses the difference between Coherence and Resonance Frequency Breathing

Matthew Bennett

Exploring Coherence and Resonance Frequency Breathing with Stephanie White

Stephanie White is a wearable data-informed Health Optimizer with a personal history of chronic health conditions, trauma, and cancer.

She is on a mission to educate and support others in managing their health, especially those with conditions that are not easily treatable.

Stephanie's expertise in heart rate variability (HRV) began when she started using a Garmin watch with Firstbeat analytics, which showed her consistently in a stressed state, leading her to explore the significance of HRV in her own health journey.

A woman shares her story of enduring multiple traumatic experiences, including the death of her husband and two nephews.

She explains how her body became stuck in a constant state of stress, leading to health issues.

Through her journey, she discovers and becomes involved in various heart rate monitoring and stress management programs, finding a way to reset her body's stress response.

The Evolution of HRV Biofeedback and Resonant Breathing

There has been a progression in the speaker's experience with HRV biofeedback, from Wild Divine to HeartMath and frustration, leading to the creation of Optimal.

The speaker emphasizes the importance of legitimizing resonant breathing and HRV biofeedback as science-based approaches for treating conditions, highlighting the need to educate and convince patients of its efficacy.

The speaker shares a personal story about the impact of resonant breathing and HRV, emphasizing the need to explain its legitimacy to patients for better acceptance.

The difference in interbeat intervals determines heart rate, with shorter intervals resulting in a higher heart rate.

Synchronizing heart rate and respiration through coherent breathing can have a significant impact on emotional regulation and cognitive function.

HeartMath has conducted numerous studies on the benefits of coherence, leading to its application in professional settings to create a more coherent and productive workforce.

The Power of Coherence in Synchronization

Synchronization and emotional connection can occur between humans, animals, and even with nature, affecting nonverbal communication.

HeartMath has invested in technology to read and understand Earth signals and the impact of coherence.

By synchronizing breathing and heart rhythm, individuals can achieve coherence, which is linked to energy levels and overall well-being.

Advocating for Very High Frequency Reporting

The speaker advocates for reporting very high frequencies in calculations and understanding the power and coherence at these frequencies.

They emphasize the importance of technology-assisted pacing for resonant breathing and the significant impact of being in resonance on the body and the surrounding universe.

The speaker also discusses the determining factors of magical resonance frequency, including height, health, age, and sex, while challenging the idea of it being a fixed value.

The Importance of Recalibrating for Optimal Health

Recalibrating your practice, including resonance frequency, every one to two weeks can magnify the results of coherent breathing.

The relationship between coherence and resonance frequency is crucial for maximizing physiological benefits.

The approach to sharing numbers and resonance frequency varies based on individuals' mental health status and their need for physiological results.

Stephanie White's Unique Approach to Health Coaching

Stephanie White, a health coach, is limited to working 15 hours a week due to health conditions, but is training a team of six health coaches to work under her.

She emphasizes the importance of foundational health and uses 24-hour heart rate variability measures to assess chronic over-breathing.

White is also planning to offer new classes and Zoom coaching while opening a physical office in Richmond, Virginia.