What's in the measurement screen?

The measurement screen shows the following:
  • A breathing pattern taking the whole screen. This is the part you should focus on, following the breathing pattern with deep breaths that will stimulate your parasympathetic system
  • A top panel used to make sure your beat to  beat heart rate data is measured correctly. Here you can see the camera view, which should show a red dot if you place your finger correctly on top of the  camera, and the PPG signal. The PPG signal  represents the heart beat, and should show a smooth waveform similar to the one below. You could consider this top panel only useful in terms of signal quality, and do not really need to focus on this while doing your sessions, provided a smooth signal is being shown. 
  • A central panel showing your instantaneous heart rate. This is the most interesting bit after the breathing pattern. Here you will see the heart rate increasing when you breathe in, and decreasing when you breathe out. After 30 seconds, we will also show a graph of your heart rate over time, which should look like a smooth waveform going up and down depending on your breathing. 
  • A bottom panel including time, instructions and buttons to stop or cancel your session. This should be pretty straightforward.
In the videos below, you can see the first few seconds of the measurement, when you should try to follow the breathing pattern, and just make sure the PPG data looks good, a nice and smooth waveform as shown in these videos. In the second video, you can also see that the heart rate graph shows up, with oscillations reflecting deep breathing, with heart rate increasing when breathing in, and decreasing when breathing out.

What should I focus on during the practice?

Our health and performance can be affected by how we are able to effectively cope with stressful situations and deal with anxiety, or in broader terms, our ability to emotionally self-regulate is key

The goal of HRV Biofeedback is to improve self-regulation, therefore impacting positively our health and performance

Practically speaking, HRV Biofeedback consists of providing an individual with real-time feedback on instantaneous heart rate and respiration changes while being instructed to breathe at low frequencies. This is what you see in the app, and thus the only thing to focus on is deep breathing

Pretty simple, right?