Swan Tower

Fourth in a series of random posts on things that might be of use to others, with the usual disclaimers that nothing works for everybody.

A few months ago I got a smartwatch, and one of the things it measures is "stress." Mine, uh. Thinks I'm basically about to explode at all times?

And this isn't just "okay, yes, I'm under stress." So is my husband -- if anything, more stress than me -- and he has the same brand of smartwatch, but it thinks he's much more chill. So naturally, I wondered what the watch is using as the basis of its evaluation.

Turns out the answer is heart rate variability -- which, yes, does appear to be robustly correlated with matters like anxiety and PTSD, along with physical fitness; more fit = better HRV. I do get exercise, and I am not that badly off with anxiety and such, so why is my stress rating so high?

I think I found the answer when I went looking for what can improve HRV. (It doesn't just reflect your state of mind; there's evidence that influencing HRV directly can in turn affect how you feel.) One of the most promising answers, where "promising" translates to "something I can try myself at home," is diaphragmatic breathing, aka belly breathing. When we're stressed, we tend to tighten our abdomens and breathe more in the upper chest; when we're relaxed, we breath more from the stomach. Because our brains are gullible chemical sponges, it goes the other way, too: if you deliberately breathe from the diaphragm, you can reduce your feelings of stress, whereas if you breathe from your upper chest, you'll increase feelings of tension and anxiety.

That much, I already knew. I'd never made a concerted attempt to use that knowledge, though, so I downloaded an app that's designed for breathing exercises and set it to the timing mentioned in one HRV study, a ten-second in-out cycle, and tried doing that for five or ten minutes. Lo and behold, I can see the stress rating dropping in my smartwatch's data. Okay, so, yes, this can improve my HRV and thereby reduce the stress metric.

But here's the real kicker: doing that made me start to notice how I'm breathing throughout my day.

And the answer is, really, really astonishingly badly. It turns out that when I'm focused on something else, I tend to begin breathing very shallowly, and maybe even hold my breath? In small doses that's fine -- quite natural -- but if I'm doing that on a regular basis, uh, I think I may know why my smartwatch thinks I'm about to explode. So now my project is to check in with myself periodically and notice if I've fallen into that pattern. Over time, I think I can retrain myself to breathe better as a matter of habit. If I'm right, I'll probably see it reflected in my watch's data.

But I may -- should -- also see it reflected in my life. I don't think I'm super stressed on a psychological level . . . but that's the kind of thing you quite possibly don't notice until it's gone.

(originally posted at Swan Tower: https://is.gd/bomvYh)

Second in a series of random posts on things that might be of use to others, with the usual disclaimers that nothing works for everybody.

Autogenic training is a technique recommended to me by my trainer/PT-ish guy in the course of trying to fix my ankle problems. He'd given me some exercises that should have helped deal with a nerve issue; when they didn't, he advanced the theory that at least part of the problem is not mechanically neuromuscular but rather driven by stress, which is preventing my nervous system from downregulating like it should. (He was very concerned that I might read his words as "it's all in your head and therefore fake" -- I assured him I didn't take it that way. Our minds can absolutely affect our bodies, and that doesn't make the effects any less real.)

The basic idea of autogenic training goes like this:

1) Train yourself to induce certain physical markers of relaxation on command.
2) Brain says, "oh, if the body's relaxed, then I guess there's nothing for me to worry about."
3) Profit.

This page has the script I've been using. You repeat those phrases to yourself, out loud or in your head (or record and listen to them), and try to create the sensation being described. The heaviness is about getting the muscles to relax -- without the clench-and-release method that I've always found deeply counterproductive -- while the warmth is about increasing circulation, since in times of stress or anxiety the body will reduce blood flow to the extremities in order to save it for core functions. Then you move onto controlling the heartbeat, etc.

It takes some practice. At first you may not be very successful at creating the sensations described, and getting a long-term benefit requires more than just a few sessions. But I do find it has short-term benefits pretty much right away, i.e. when I'm done with a round of this, my body definitely feels more relaxed. And it's kinda neat, being able to just tell myself "my arm feels heavy" and boom, it's suddenly made of lead? I stupidly fell out of doing this while running the Kickstarter (i.e. right when I needed it the most), but I'm going to try to get back into it.

(originally posted at Swan Tower: https://is.gd/9lc8uo)