Heart Math Variability, By Casey Murphy, Therapy Resource
I was at our Legend Greenville facility to assist with Mock survey, and I ended up (organically and unplanned) doing an impromptu in-service with the therapy team on HeartMath. I demoed the Bluetooth device on one of the therapists who told me she was “stressed,” and we saw amazing results just with a three- to five-minute session (in front of a bunch of therapists!). She felt more relaxed afterward and was smiling a lot more for the duration of the day.
The team was so impressed, they wanted to try it on one of their patients. I sat with a speech therapy student with a patient who had dementia (and a pacemaker). I was able to sit and talk to her, taking her through the breathing exercises and talking about her family for a total of 6.5 minutes. She was only in high coherence for 12% of the time, but was in medium coherence for a whopping 41% of the time. We ended things with her smiling and thanking me for taking the time to talk to her about her family. The supervising SLP told me that she normally is not able to hold her attention; in fact, they had a goal for holding attention span for five minutes. She also told me she is usually very anxious.
Later that afternoon, I walked back into the gym and noticed the patient on the bike working with a PT, smiling and waving at me as I walked by. The PTA (who I demoed the unit on) pulled me into the charting office elated! She informed me that the patient hasn’t been able to ride the bike previously because she would scream out in pain. The staff couldn’t believe she was participating and enjoying working with everyone! The team was convinced it was the HRV session. Who knows, maybe we got lucky, but it was really cool to see that therapist and patient benefit from just one short session each!
So, needless to say, the Greenville therapy team is very interested in learning more. I loaned them my device so they can practice on their patients and themselves.