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How Biofeedback Breathing Improves Staff Wellness

Try to imagine the last time you had a stressful moment at work. Maybe you spilled your coffee leaving for work, realized you missed an important deadline, or tripped over your words in a presentation. How did your body feel at that moment? Did you feel your heart skip a beat or speed up? Did your breathing accelerate?

Now think about the rest of the day after that moment. Were you able to calm down and reset your mind and body in the hours following the stressor? Or did that rushing, anxious feeling stick around awhile?

Although we often think of work-related stress as a mental health matter, it can take a huge toll on our physical health too. Even if a stressor is only present for a few seconds or minutes of a workday, the physical effects of stress—like increased heart rate, ​​erratic heart signals, dysregulated breathing and a host of other chemical reactions—can stick with us much longer, making it difficult to regulate our emotions and potentially leading to larger health risks. In the short term, this can lead to more mistakes on the job. Over time, larger health risks such as metabolic disorders and other stress related diseases could also occur.

But there are ways to keep work-related stress from taking over our mental and physical health. The practice of emotional regulation can help us learn to calm our nervous system, think clearly, and operate with compassion even in stressful moments. One technique to help foster emotional regulation is biofeedback breathing, which includes breathing exercises to help sync our body and mind in stressful times.

You may be wondering what biofeedback breathing is and how it can help you and your coworkers handle stress. That’s why we sat down with Andrea Trank, who works as a clinical coach, certified yoga teacher, and a trainer for HeartMath, a scientific organization with over 30 years and 400 studies in the field of psychology emotional regulation. Andrea told us more about the benefits of biofeedback breathing in our work lives and beyond. Read on to learn more about this revolutionary, stress-reducing technique.

How biofeedback breathing works

Andrea defines biofeedback as the process of using a device to understand what is happening inside our bodies. You might visit the doctor and use an electrocardiogram (EKG) device to show your heart’s electrical signals and understand your heart rate; this is an example of how we obtain biofeedback.

However, when learning to practice emotional regulation, Andrea explained that you will need to understand your heart rate variability. When you go through your workday, your heart rate will speed up and slow down depending on your needs. If your body is more stressed, the rate would increase, and if your body is relaxed, the heart rate would slow. If we looked at your heart rate on an EKG device when your heart rate changed, most people would show chaotic highs and lows. This is because most of us struggle to smoothly adjust from stressful situations; the more chaotic the EKG appears, the less emotionally regulated you are. In contrast, if you are good at regulating emotions, your EKG device would show your heart rate variability as smooth waves. This means your heart rate would gradually rise and fall throughout the day in slow patterns that allow your body to adjust more smoothly. This wave pattern is an indication that you are in better control of your emotions, which can lead to better health. When we regularly practice emotional regulation and continually monitor our heart rate variability, we can achieve a state of coherence, where our heart, mind, and body are synchronized, allowing us to maintain composure and inner clarity, calm reactive emotions, and neutralize stress.

Biofeedback breathing can help us regulate our heart rate variability through the use of insightful tools and breathing exercises. To see your heart rate variability in real time, Andrea recommends HeartMath’s Inner Balance™ sensor and app. The Inner Balance sensor connects to your earlobe and then connects to your phone via Bluetooth. In the Inner Balance app, you can track your heart rate variability. By practicing biofeedback breathing exercises for just a few minutes each day, you can watch your heart rate variability improve and track your progress in the app.

The benefits of biofeedback breathing

With continued use, HeartMath’s research shows that there are both short-term and long-term benefits to using biofeedback breathing at work, home, and beyond:

  • In the classroom: Teaching biofeedback breathing exercises in schools can help kids learn to identify when their nervous system is activated and practice emotional regulation. This can be empowering, letting them know they’re in control of their responses. Studies show that in the long term, they may also achieve higher test scores, increased reaction time in athletics and more successful interactions with peers, parents and teachers.
  • In hospitals: Patients may experience reduced stress and improved healing from medical traumas. Biofeedback breathing can help those with chronic afflictions maintain calmness during a flare up, reduce blood pressure and help achieve better sleep to improve overall health.
  • In high-stakes workplaces: Teachers, law enforcement personnel, and medical professionals deal with many stressful and even dangerous situations on a daily basis. Biofeedback breathing helps build coherence so they can maintain resilience, calm and avoid carrying over daily stress into the rest of their lives.
  • In corporations: Biofeedback breathing can be very useful before a large meeting, as it helps the group reset any stress or emotions they may be feeling coming into the discussion. As a result, problems can be solved more quickly and coworkers can get along better as they make big decisions.

How biofeedback breathing improves staff wellness

When we carry work-related stress throughout our lives, it can pose harm to our mental and physical well-being. Your staff may experience compassion fatigue from giving so much of themselves to their work, or even face secondary trauma from situations they see in the field. Both of these situations can lead to burnout, which may cause some team members to leave their job. Implementing biofeedback breathing strategies can help improve staff wellness so your team members can thrive not only in their work, but in their personal lives too.

On the individual level, biofeedback breathing can build personal coherence. When an individual is in this state, they gain an awareness of their own triggers and learn to listen to their internal soundtracks, frequently helping themselves avoid depletion and achieve a feeling of renewal. They can regulate their own emotions even during stressful times.

On a group level, biofeedback breathing can build social coherence. In this state, a group can communicate better in meetings and keep their energy up as an organization. This can help teams work well under pressure, work through chaotic situations with ease and get along with each other.

When both your individual team members and the group as a whole can achieve coherence, they can set a path to achieving global coherence, or a state in which an entire community can communicate well, work together, and have empathy for one another. Your clients, customers, or community will feed off the energy your organization puts forth—when we operate from a place of compassion and calm, we can encourage others to do the same.

Biofeedback breathing resources

If you think your staff could benefit from trying biofeedback breathing, ROI offers a free implementation guide to get you started. Andrea’s website and YouTube channel can also provide insight into breathing exercises and other tools to aid in emotional regulation.

With the help of biofeedback breathing techniques, we can ensure that tiny moments don’t become big problems. Use these resources to help your staff build resilience, calm, and coherence today.

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