Daily Tip #9 - Find Your Heart

0:01 - Intro

Hello out there! Shane here again, from MATRIX. The last few days of these Daily Tips videos have been pretty active. So, I'm deciding to make this one be a little bit more mellow. Actually, a lot bit more mellow. You can see I pulled the chair out of the corner. I'm sitting down. If you're not already sitting down, I recommend you do the same thing for what we have planned for today.

0:22 – The Vagus Nerve

Now, today's exercise drill is very simple. The vagus nerve -- that we've been working on the last few days -- one of the major things that it does is innervate our heart. Both from a sensory aspect, as well as the motor aspect. It helps control the rhythm of it. What we're going to do today, is we're going to tap into the sensory side. We're just going to have a seat, and we're going to try and feel our heartbeat. It's that simple.

0:50 – How to do the Exercise, Part 1

I'm wearing a watch today. And we're going to go through this together. I do recommend when doing this drill to do it for a minute's time or more. But we're going to do two different 30-second bouts, just for the sake of the video. I'll be keeping the time for you. All we're going to be doing is sitting down. I would not lay down for this because as soon as you lay down, or even lay back in your chair -- try not to do that -- because as soon as you have that extra contact on your back, it makes it easier to feel your own heartbeat. We want to just be sitting up or standing up. Hands off at the sides. Nice and tall. I'm going to set a timer for 30 seconds. Once I have that ready to go and I say go, you're just going to close your eyes and do your best -- without holding your wrist without touching anything -- try to count the heartbeats that you can feel. Alright?! Once we've done 30 seconds, I'll check back in and I'll give you the second half of this so we can see how well you did. Are you ready? In 3 - 2 - 1 - start counting...

2:06 – Find Your Heartbeat, No Hands

Silence

2:38 – Write Down Your Number

And stop. Come on back. How many did you get? Go ahead and write that number down. Multiply it times 2. And that's going to be your heart rate. Your beats per minute. All right?

2:50 – How to do the Exercise, Part 2

Now what we're going to do, is we're going to actually take your own heartbeat so that you have two numbers to compare. And we're going to do that again for 30 seconds. The way I recommend taking your heartbeat is typically at the wrist. It's a little bit easier. You're going to take your hand, wrap it around into the palm side. So that your fingers are resting on the thumb side. On me -- I don't know if you will see it on the video -- there's a tendon that runs here. Typically, it's easy to find the pulse right on the other side of that. Take a moment, see if you can find the pulse on yourself. If you can't find it in your wrist, you might be able to go up to the throat -- where a lot of people take it as well. Or maybe even holding your hand over your heart will be enough for you to feel it. I'll give you a moment to try and find your own heartbeat. Okay, hopefully you've got it. I'm going to start the counter again. This time with the feedback of your fingers, count your heartbeat. In 3 - 2 - 1 - Go...

3:50 – Find Your Pulse

Silence

4:22 – Comparing the Two

Time's up! Take the number you've had there. Write it down as well and multiply it by 2 to get your beats per minute when you actually had your pulse to count. Now, when comparing these two numbers, hopefully they're the same number. But chances are they're a little bit different. Ideally -- if you're really good at this -- you're going to be within 10% of your actual heartbeat, either plus or minus. Suppose your heart rate is 60 beats per minute when you're feeling it. When you were just sensing your heart rate, if you got anywhere between 54 and 66, that's really, really good. If you're outside of that realm, then maybe you want to do a little bit more practice.

5:07 - Recap

Again, just recapping, the reason we might want to do this is because it's really getting you in touch with yourself, literally. Some people might consider it a meditation. It's a little bit more active than some meditations you might have heard of. And also, it’s a little bit more challenging to feel the heartbeat. In addition, the part of the brain that we're stimulating is the insula. When we're paying attention to what's going on inside of us, all that sensory feedback is coming through the vagus nerve. Which again innervates, our gut in our viscera. And it's very, very important in immune function. Which is something that we need these days. So give this one a try. It's something that I do every single day, actually. Just sitting down, practicing trying to feel my own heartbeat. It's incredibly relaxing. It's incredibly powerful for a number of different reasons.

5:57 - Farewell

That's it! If you have questions, join me on the Q&A later today, or put some comments down underneath of this post. And let's check back in tomorrow, same time 11am for Daily Tip Number 10.