I love being able to see my body’s response immediately. If I’m reacting strongly to a situation, it’s amazing to be able to see how effective I can be at self-regulating with the help of my Lief. Since it’s real time, I can get that feedback immediately. I also like that since the Lief is pretty discrete, no one knows it’s happening if I’m doing a mini-Downtime practice in a meeting. I can try to adjust and change where my numbers are right then and there. In the last 2 months it’s made a huge difference. The approach of being more relaxed has made a huge difference. I understand what my body needs now.

I view the automatic Downtime as a voice for my body. It’s a voice for my nervous system to tell me to take a restorative moment for myself. Hand in hand with the Lief, I’ve been meditating every day for 20 min. It started after I joined the Lief program, so my Lief is encouraging me to do more to support my health. To me, mental health is training my mind so I don’t get lost in all the drama of my thoughts. So the fact that my Lief is reminding me to meditate throughout the day and helping me implement a meditation practice has been instrumental. 

In the past, I’ve been so mired in my own stress that I don’t have the presence of mind to recognize that I’m stressed. Since the Lief device tracks my HRV continuously and provides real time feedback, I’m able to step out of my stress spiral. My Lief reminds me to take some deep breaths to help me re-center and distance myself from whatever challenging emotions I’m experiencing. The Lief device helps me train my nervous system to be more balanced.

I view HRV tracking and training like training wheels — ultimately, the goal is to perceive your inner state. Lief helps you get there. Use your HRV as a feedback mechanism, so you can get concrete numbers about your internal state and then change it. Continuous real-time HRV tracking is powerful; it helps you connect real world circumstances that cause your HRV to change. You start to make correlations around eating sugary foods, for example, or getting into an argument, etc.