Thank you Nishant, glad to hear you enjoyed the article.
And yes, my HRV during the program indeed was off from my ideal, but that was because I also faced a lot of external stressors during that time which pushed my HRV significantly lower. Since then I have been able to remove many of these stressors and my HRV has significantly improved again.
To answer your questions:
(a) I don’t expect your HRV or HR to necessarily reach similar levels from resonance breathing, or in fact any other intervention. HRV in particular is very variable between people, and absolute values are only meaningful to some extent. Someone very fit and healthy can have a naturally lower HRV than someone less fit and healthy. I think the research is still very much open on how much absolute HRV values actually matter. What’s much more important are relative changes in HRV. And yes, I would expect that, assuming all other factors (like stress levels, environment, etc) remain equal, you should see an increase in HRV as you continue practicing.
(b) Again, part of it might just be genetic. But I do try to live a fairly healthy lifestyle. That includes both eating healthy (without obsessing about it), as well as regular exercise, particularly high intensity interval training (specifically CrossFit) 3–4 times a week, and running on the other days. I also used to run ultra-marathons, and I heard from practitioners in the field that they are often seeing very high HRV values in ultra-endurance athletes. Although I’m not sure what’s cause and what’s effect, are people with high HRV naturally attracted to endurance sports, or do they develop a high HRV as a result of the endurance training. In addition to all that, I get at least 8 hours of sleep a night and avoid busyness.
All that being said, I’m certainly no saint either and have plenty of vices. I enjoy alcohol quite a bit, definitely more than an “optimal” lifestyle would imply. And there are also times where I do get busy and stressed out. But it’s all a matter of balance. The “perfect” lifestyle is useless if you can’t actually stick to it, or at enjoy yourself doing it.
Hope this helps!
Best,
Max
