Andrew Huberman· PhD
Exhales slow heart rate via respiratory sinus arrhythmia which involves parasympathetic activation (vagus).
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The evidence is convergent. Multiple independent sources reach the same conclusion, the underlying mechanism is well-characterized, and even the field's most cautious voices treat it as worth doing.
Exhales slow heart rate via respiratory sinus arrhythmia which involves parasympathetic activation (vagus).
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Tool: Long Exhales; Next-Day Excitement & Sleep (1:42:48)
If you want to improve HRV, you want to get better at autoregulation, and you want your HRV to improve in sleep as well, the deliberate exhales from time to time spread throughout the day, are still going to be great.
one of the best ways to improve your HRV, both in sleep and in wakeful states, which takes a very minimum of effort and is rarely, if ever, discussed, is simply throughout the day, I would say 10, 15, or maybe even 20 times per day, any time it occurs to you, to just deliberately extend your exhale, that is, to pump the brake on your heart rate through the vagus nerve pathway that I've been describing, just [exhales] exhale.
if you decide to slow your heart rate down, you can do it. And you do so by doing a deliberate exhale, and/or by increasing the intensity or the duration of your exhale.
If you want to slow your heart rate down, that is, if you want to increase parasympathetic nervous system activity, and you want to calm down fast, you can literally just... [exhales] Exhales slow your heart rate down, and exhales tilt that seesaw that is the autonomic nervous system more toward the parasympathetic side.
because it's under conscious control, and because it's subject to what we call plasticity, to strengthening and to weakening, that is, if you use it deliberately, it gets strengthened. If you don't use it deliberately, it gets weakened. Well, that's a great thing because it means that if you just simply remember to do some extended exhales throughout the day, you're going to strengthen this pathway such that it operates in the background through autoregulation without you ever having to think about it.
breath work long exhales slow your heart rate we know that the respiratory sinus rhythmia increases HRV we know that right
uh periodically throughout the day just do a deliberate to lungs empty exhale which which activates the veagal pathway to the cyanoatrial node slows your heart rate down there's evidence that will improve your HRV both in waking and sleep states yeah just try it out see what you think