Heart Rate Variability (HRV) is a Key Indicator of Cardiovascular Health

The State of our Hearts Tell
us Much About Ourselves

HRV is a key indicator of cardiovascular health, reflecting the heart’s ability to adapt to physiological demands. A lower HRV suggests poorer heart rate regulation and reduced resilience to both environmental (e.g., stress, fear) and physiological stressors (e.g., systemic inflammation, a hallmark of COVID-19).

The science of heart rate variability (HRV) allows us to explore the incredible and wonderful world of the heart. HRV is a physiological marker of how we experience and regulate our emotions. HRV is relatively easy to measure. Rather than calculating the number of beats per minute, we measure the time that elapses between one heartbeat and the next one.

HRV is the heart’s authentic voice, so HRV must lead the next revolution in cardiology. In the heart of every human being is a rhythm. Not just the beat of survival—but the song of how we live. Cardiology has treated the heart like a machine for too long—measuring its pressure, blockages, and ejection fraction. But the heart is not only a mechanical pump. It is a resonant field, a relational organ, and a spiritual barometer of human integrity.

HRV measures the variation in time between your heartbeats. But beneath that technical definition lies something profound: HRV is your body’s truth signal. It reflects your adaptability, emotional openness, and capacity to meet the moment without resistance.

• High HRV = flexibility, coherence, and aliveness.
• Low HRV = rigidity, contraction, dissonance.

HRV is the body’s way of showing us whether we are coherent with our being. It is not just about rest and recovery—it is about resonance and how honest we are willing to be. A flexible heart is a sincere heart. A high HRV often reflects a state of inner alignment, openness, vulnerability, and presence. So yes, the state of our hearts does tell us much about ourselves. And sometimes, it tells us everything.

A high HRV doesn’t just mean you’re relaxed. It means you’re real. It means your nervous system isn’t caught in a performance. It means you are, at this moment, undefended.

Ever wondered how stressed you are? Heart Rate Variability (HRV) is a practical way to quantify your stress and health objectively. While some amount of stress can be good, being in a constant, long-term state of stress can be very bad for our bodies and minds. HRV helps you objectively understand the state of your body and what factors trigger a stress response in you.

The Story of David and the Listening Heart

David was quiet but not the kind that didn’t speak—he just listened more than he talked. And not just with his ears. He listened with his heart. Before the world stirred, David clipped a small black sensor to his ear every morning. It was his ritual—tracking his HRV. Not because he was obsessed with numbers, but because it told him something more profound than metrics—the truth about his inner state.

Some mornings, his HRV was high—his heart moving like a jazz band: full of flexibility, rhythm, and presence. On those days, he felt spacious and alive, able to meet the world with an open chest and an unguarded soul.

Other mornings, it was low—tight, rigid, predictable. And sure enough, he’d find himself tense, irritable, or withdrawn. His body was giving him a whisper of something before his mind could catch up. It wasn’t just stress or sleep. It was everything: the argument he’d had with his daughter two days ago and hadn’t apologized for. The dream he kept postponing. The unspoken grief he wore like armor. His heart told the story before his mouth did.

One morning, after a sleepless night and an HRV score scraping the bottom, he didn’t meditate or exercise. He just picked up the phone and called his brother. The one he hadn’t spoken to in seven years. The one whose name made his chest tighten. They cried. They laughed. They didn’t fix everything, but they cracked the shell. The following day, his HRV was the highest it had ever been. David smiled. His heart had listened to the pain. And in return, it had softened.

Emotional Truth as Medicine

Here’s what science rarely says out loud: The truth heals. Not abstract truth, but felt truth. Truth that makes the chest ache and the tears come. The tears of the melting heart are healing. The Heart is the organ of truth. One cannot live a lie and be in the heart.

An apology raises HRV.
Forgiveness raises HRV.
Crying, real crying—not the performative kind—raises HRV.
So does awe.
So does wonder.
So does love, when it’s not confused with possession or fear of loss.

We’ve been trained to chase health as a physical outcome. But health begins in honesty. HRV measures the integrity of your nervous system. But underneath that, it measures the alignment between your being and living.

HRV as the Soul’s Stethoscope

A high HRV doesn’t mean you’re an athlete. It means your system is available for love. Every sigh you release, every truth you speak, and every emotion you feel tune the heart’s rhythm back into the living orchestra of the parasympathetic nervous system.

HRV as the Core Metric of Natural Cardiology

Let this be said clearly:

Any cardiology that ignores HRV is incomplete.
Any medicine that ignores emotion, truth, and coherence is blind.
And any health system that doesn’t teach people to feel, breathe, and listen is not healing—it’s managing dysfunction.

HRV should be:

• A daily vital sign.
• A guide for emotional literacy.
• A tool for spiritual feedback.
• A foundation of proper prevention.

Not just for elite athletes or biohackers. For everyone who has a heart—and wants to hear it speak.

Dr. Bessel van der Kolk says, “The heart, gut and brain communicate intimately via the vagus nerve, the critical nerve involved in expressing and managing emotions in humans. We experience emotions in our bodies, not in our heads. Emotions are first a physical state and only secondarily interpreted as a perception in the brain. By learning literally how to control our heart, we learn how to gain mastery of our emotional brain and vice versa. We can change the state of our brains by what we do with our bodies. The way we move, the way we breathe, and the way we interact with other people physically. Important that we experience emotions in our body and not in our head.”

The American Institute of Stress has reported that up to 90% of doctor’s visits are stress-related. A patient’s HRV gives us a full readout regarding health, medical diagnosis, and treatment pathways that will bring a person back to harmony and health. The bottom line is that the heart knows what is happening in the body. HRV can provide information to users about situations where their stress or anxiety levels are higher than usual.

Heart rate variability, or heart rhythms, is the most dynamic and reflective indicator of one’s emotional states, current stress, and cognitive processes. An optimal, flexible level of HRV reflects healthy function; too little variation indicates chronic stress and pathology. The HRV of any individual is directly dependent on vagus nerve tone and function.

Health Professionals and Patients Can Tune Directly into the Heart

The first image above shows me on a highly stressed-out day. The photo shows very little HRV, meaning I was practically flatlining regarding HRV and stress. The flatter our heartbeats are, the more stressed we are and the closer we are to death.

The image directly above shows a vastly increased HRV, and it was wonderful, for a change, to see my heart changing up and down nicely as I did yogic breathing during the test. This showed me that it is possible to get a direct hold of how my heart is beating and a direct hold on the stress I am putting my body through.

Meditation, slow breathing techniques, and positive social relationships help the Vagus nerve. Deep and slow breathing stimulates the vagus nerve, especially yogic alternative nostril breathing, and I was doing three-part yogic breathing to increase my HRV.

Breathing in and out with resistance will also stimulate your Vagus nerve; the Frolov breathing retraining device is suitable for practicing that. Mild exercise stimulates gut flow. This is mediated by the vagus nerve, which means that exercise stimulates the vagus nerve. The heart is the organ that loves to exercise. Singing increases HRV, as does laughter.