Use of Heart Rate Variability (HRV) Tracking and Training in Psychotherapy by Inna Khazan, PhD, BCB Clinical Psychologist Faculty, Harvard Medical School
HRV is a strong indicator of the flexibility and resilience of our nervous system. Tracking HRV helps in assessing progress in therapy as well as estimating the client’s overall health and well-being. Moreover, attending to real-time changes during a therapy session provides valuable insights into the client's in-the-moment response, allowing the therapist to focus discussion on experiences that would have otherwise gone unnoticed. Finally, training HRV through biofeedback improves self-regulation and alleviates symptoms of psychophysiological disorders, such as anxiety, depression, trauma, chronic pain, and GI distress, further increasing the efficacy of psychotherapy. In this webinar, we will discuss easy practical ways of integrating HRV into psychotherapy, including a discussion of metrics for HRV tracking and guidelines for integrating HRV training into psychotherapy.
