Biofeedback
Stop Guessing. Start Understanding.
Biofeedback simply means receiving information about how your body responds to daily life - helping you connect the dots between your actions and your outcomes.
Why Biofeedback Matters
Modern life trains us to override our body’s signals.
We push through fatigue, ignore hunger cues, dismiss stress - and then wonder why we feel depleted, wired, or dysregulated.
Biofeedback helps reverse this disconnection.
By making patterns visible, it allows you to notice how sleep, stress, food, movement, and recovery interact in your system - so choices can be informed by lived experience, rather than generic advice.
The goal isn’t perfection.
It’s understanding what actually supports stability and resilience for you.
What Biofeedback Can Include
Biofeedback tools may be incorporated selectively within coaching to support observation and learning.
These can include:
Heart rate variability (HRV) trends
Sleep and recovery patterns
Energy, focus, mood, and stress responses
Subjective pattern tracking
Short-term continuous glucose data, when appropriate
No single metric tells the full story.
Meaning emerges through context.
Heart Rate Variability (HRV)
Your heart rate naturally varies between beats - speeding slightly on the inhale and slowing on the exhale. This variation reflects your autonomic nervous system’s capacity to adapt, recover, and respond to changing demands.
Research shows HRV is associated with:
Stress resilience and recovery capacity
Sleep quality
Emotional regulation
Cognitive performance
Metabolic and cardiovascular health
Higher HRV patterns are generally associated with greater autonomic flexibility - the ability to activate when needed and return smoothly to rest. Lower patterns may suggest your system is spending more time in activation with less efficient recovery.
The goal isn’t a ‘good’ number.
It’s understanding your patterns and what influences them.
Why HRV Matters
HRV isn't just a stress metric. It's a master indicator of whole system health.
Stress Resilience & Recovery
Low HRV creates difficulty recovering from stress, feeling wired and tired simultaneously, chronic hypervigilance, and poor stress tolerance. Higher HRV patterns reflect faster recovery, adaptive stress responses, and greater capacity to truly rest.
Emotional Regulation
Lower HRV patterns are linked with anxiety, irritability, emotional volatility, and reduced emotional range. Higher HRV supports steadiness, impulse control, and capacity for connection.
Cognitive Performance
Low HRV correlates with brain fog, impaired concentration, and reduced executive function. Higher HRV supports mental clarity, cognitive flexibility, and decision-making under pressure.
Metabolic & Cardiovascular Health
Lower HRV is associated with insulin resistance, inflammation, and cardiovascular risk. Higher HRV reflects improved metabolic flexibility and cardiovascular resilience.
Sleep Quality
Low HRV often accompanies difficulty falling or staying asleep and non-restorative rest. Higher HRV supports deeper, more efficient sleep and refreshed waking.
Research consistently shows that persistently low HRV predicts adverse outcomes across multiple systems.
The goal isn't perfect HRV.
It's building autonomic flexibility - the capacity to respond appropriately to demands, and to recover smoothly.
How HRV is used in coaching
HRV tracking is used as an educational and reflective tool.
Together, we explore:
Baseline patterns and trends over time
How stress, sleep, and lifestyle choices correlate with changes
Regulation practices that may support flexibility
Sustainable behaviour changes that enhance recovery and capacity
Many people notice subjective shifts within weeks. Observable pattern changes typically emerge with consistent practice over time.
Want to Learn More?
Glucose Patterns
Continuous glucose monitors track glucose patterns over a short period, showing how food, stress, sleep, and movement influence your body’s responses.
Responses to identical foods vary significantly between individuals. Genetics, microbiome composition, meal timing, sleep quality, stress load, and metabolic history all shape how your body responds.
This variability is why generic advice often fails - and why observation can be valuable.
The goal isn’t perfection.
It’s reducing extremes: minimising the spikes and crashes that dysregulate the system.
Why Glucose Stability Matters
Glucose isn’t just about diabetes risk. It’s a master regulator affecting every system in your body.
Energy + Cognition
Glucose instability drives crashes, brain fog, and cravings. Stable glucose creates sustained energy, mental clarity, and focus.
Nervous System Regulation
High glucose variability elevates cortisol, reduces HRV, and heightens stress response. Stability supports vagal tone, resilience, and emotional readiness.
Long Term Health
Repeated spikes contribute to insulin resistance, inflammation, and metabolic dysfunction. Chronic variability increases cardiovascular risk and accelerates cognitive decline.
Mood + Emotional Regulation
Glucose swings create anxiety, irritability, and reactive emotional states. Stability supports mood steadiness and emotional capacity.
Research shows that even in metabolically healthy individuals, high glucose variability increases oxidative stress, inflammation, and long term disease risk.
The goal isn't perfection.
It's reducing the extremes that dysregulate your entire system.
How CGM is used in coaching (when appropriate)
Glucose tracking helps make invisible patterns visible.
In coaching, we explore what you’re noticing and discuss lifestyle factors influencing stability. I provide education about glucose metabolism and support translating observations into sustainable experiments and behaviour change.
No diagnosis, prescriptions, or medical treatment are provided.
Why Coaching Matters
Biofeedback shows you what's happening.
Coaching helps you understand what it might mean, and how to respond.
Without guidance, data often creates confusion, anxiety, or perfectionism.
Coaching provides:
Education about what signals may indicate - and what they don’t
Context from your lived experience and current stress load
Support translating insight into realistic experiments
Accountability and guidance as you refine practices and navigate obstacles
Biofeedback becomes most useful when paired with reflection, guidance, and behaviour change support.
The Systems View
Biofeedback signals reveal how your body responds to daily demands. HRV and sleep quality reflect your nervous system's state and capacity. Glucose patterns reflect metabolic processes that both influence and are influenced by your nervous system, stress load, and lifestyle choices.
That’s why this work focuses on:
Understanding how your system responds
Building regulation capacity and flexibility
Supporting recovery practices
Strengthening resilience over time
Working with your patterns, not against them
Creating sustainable behavioural change
A Note On Medical Care
Biofeedback-informed coaching is educational and designed to complement - not replace - medical diagnosis or treatment.
If biofeedback data raises potential medical concerns, clients are encouraged to consult their GP or other registered healthcare professional. I welcome collaboration with your existing healthcare team where helpful.
Ready to Understand Your Patterns?