Do you know your resting heart rate AND what a healthy rate for you age is?

Your resting heart rate (RHR) is the lowest number of times your heart needs to beats every minute. According to the American Heart Association, a healthy RHR is between 60-100 beats per minute, though you may have a lower rate (down to 40 beats per minutes) if you are in excellent physical condition and/or engage in regular meditation.*

According to Harvard Health, meditation “offers significant heart benefits” and “helps reduce stress and anxiety, which can lower heart rate and blood pressure while reducing harmful hormones”.

Resting means that you’re not exercising, so the best time to measure your RHR is before you get out of bed in the morning.

While still lying in bed, set a timer for 10 seconds and use your pointer and index finger to count the number of times your pulse beats in either your neck or wrist. Then multiply that number by 6 to get your RHR.

Repeat the step above 3 times for reliability and you should get the same number or very close to it. You can further test the reliability of your numbers by repeating this process on 2 - 3 different mornings before you get out of bed.

Your RHR will not change significantly as you age but your pulse rate can change dramatically throughout your day. Our pulse is simply the number of times our heart beats per minute. RHR is our pulse while resting.

During the course of any given day, there are ups and downs, there is stress and a variety of other emotions. Every time we experience stress, we are releasing cortisol into our system (our “fight or flight” hormone) but we are not fighting or fleeing when this happens and our heart rate and anxiety levels increase.

Mindfulness, meditation, deep breathing … they can all be done simultaneously and can help you to reduce your stress, anxiety and levels of cortisol almost immediately. You don’t even need to have a formal mediation practice to benefit.

Action Step:

Set a timer for 60 seconds, sit upright in a comfortable chair, close your eyes and breath slowly and deeply while trying to focus on feelings of peace, calm, ease, or whatever word(s) best exemplify the emotion you are seeking (opposite of stress/anxiety).

If words don’t help you to feel calm, think about something that makes you happy (e.g. your favorite pet, etc) and then focus on the positive emotion that thought brought you.

You can use this practice anytime during your day to help get yourself back to the present moment. The more we can be present (mindfulness) the more enjoyable life is naturally.

*If your RHR is lower than 40 or higher than 100, please consult with your physician.