Licensed psychotherapist · 10+ years · EMDR · Lifespan Integration · Certified HeartMath trainer · English, German, Hebrew · Online, worldwide
Licensed psychotherapist · 10+ years · EMDR · Lifespan Integration · Certified HeartMath trainer · English, German, Hebrew · Online, worldwide
How I work
HeartMath coherence training with a certified trainer, used as the foundation for deeper therapeutic work — not as a substitute for it.
Book a first session50 minutes, no commitment beyond it
Most HeartMath practitioners aren't psychotherapists. Most psychotherapists don't work with biofeedback. The combination is the point.
Most therapy asks you to notice your internal states and describe them. For a lot of people that works.
For others — particularly people who live in their heads, who are highly analytical, or who learned early to disconnect from what their body was doing — it doesn't. Asked what you're feeling, you produce an accurate theory rather than a sensation. You can describe your anxiety in the third person while your heart rate tells a different story.
HeartMath makes that story visible. Instead of asking you to introspect, it shows you your physiological state on a screen, in real time, while it's happening.
For sceptical, analytical people, this changes the conversation. You're not being asked to take anything on trust.
HeartMath is a form of heart-rate-variability biofeedback.
Heart-rate variability is the small variation in timing between consecutive heartbeats. It isn't your heart rate — it's the rhythm underneath it. That rhythm is governed largely by your autonomic nervous system, so it acts as a usable readout of your physiological state: whether you're mobilised for threat, shut down, or settled.
Coherence is the term for a particular pattern in that rhythm — smooth and wave-like rather than erratic — which is associated with a settled, engaged state. It can be trained deliberately, mainly through paced breathing combined with attentional and emotional focus.
In practice
If you already track HRV on a Whoop, Oura, Garmin or Apple Watch: this is a related measure used differently. Wearables show you overnight trends after the fact. HeartMath shows you what's happening now, and lets you change it while you watch.
We establish where your system sits at rest, and how it responds when we introduce something that matters — a difficult topic, a recent conflict, an upcoming decision. This is usually informative in itself. People often discover their system reacts strongly to material they'd describe as "fine".
You learn to identify your own states from the inside — activation, shutdown, settled engagement — and to catch the shift as it starts rather than an hour later. The screen trains the perception; eventually you don't need it.
You practise moving your state deliberately. First in session, then in ordinary conditions, then in the situations that actually matter: before a difficult meeting, during a conversation going badly, afterwards when you'd normally spend the evening re-running it.
Short daily practice between sessions, plus specific protocols for your particular triggers. This is where it becomes durable rather than interesting.
These are defined techniques with steps, not a general encouragement to breathe slowly. We work through the ones relevant to you.
De-stressing in real time — the foundation the others build on.
Shifting state in the moment, in under a minute, without anyone noticing.
Staying regulated during a conversation that's going badly.
Getting perspective on a specific problem you're stuck in.
Longer practice that resets your baseline rather than managing a moment.
Sustained ease under ongoing load, rather than recovery after the fact.
You won't need all of them. Most people end up relying on two or three, and the rest are there when a particular situation calls for them.
Usually within four to eight weeks of consistent practice.
Settling after stress or conflict rather than staying activated for hours.
Falling asleep more easily, particularly after demanding days.
Noticing activation soon enough to do something about it.
The tight chest, clenched jaw and shallow breathing stop outlasting the event.
More capacity to stay in a difficult conversation instead of escalating or going blank.
Which makes the deeper therapeutic work considerably more tolerable.
Individual results vary and I won't promise a specific outcome or an HRV number. What I can say is that this is the fastest-moving part of the work for most people, which matters if you've been discouraged by therapy that took a long time to show anything.
Regulation builds the capacity to settle. It doesn't process what keeps setting you off.
This section will tell you more about whether to trust me than anything else on the page.
Regulation builds capacity; it doesn't resolve what's generating the reaction. If an early experience is still signalling threat, coherence training helps you manage the response — it doesn't stop it being triggered. That's what the EMDR and Lifespan Integration work is for.
The evidence is decent and specific about where it's strongest. A 2020 systematic review in Applied Psychophysiology and Biofeedback pooled 58 randomised controlled trials and found a small-to-moderate effect — comparable to other treatments considered effective — with the largest results for anxiety, depression and anger. The same review found the weakest results for PTSD and sleep. That's worth saying out loud, because it's the reason this isn't where the work stops.
HRV is influenced by sleep, illness, alcohol, training load, age and genetics. Optimising the metric is not the same as recovering, and for people already inclined to self-monitor, chasing the number can become another form of the same vigilance we're trying to reduce.
Used alone, it's a management tool. Used as the first stage of a sequence, it's a foundation.
People who are highly analytical and want to see the mechanism rather than be reassured about it. People who struggle to identify what they're feeling, or who answer that question with a theory. People who already track HRV and recovery data and can't work out why the numbers won't move.
Also people with ADHD, where regulating arousal and recovering from overwhelm is often more central than attention itself — and people who have found previous therapy interesting but physically unchanging.
Who it suits less well
HeartMath training works fully online. I'm a certified HeartMath trainer, which means the training is structured rather than improvised, and you get the proper protocols rather than a general idea of paced breathing.
You'll need your own sensor — the Inner Balance Coherence Plus. It costs around €200, and I can supply it at a 20% discount as a certified trainer. It's yours to keep, and you'll go on using it long after we finish working together — which is the point. The aim is that you leave with a capacity you own, not a dependence on sessions.
| Regulation Baseline | 90 minutes — baseline measurement, response testing, a map of your triggers and current protective strategies, and a written summary with a personalised practice plan. Useful on its own, and the usual starting point for ongoing work. |
| Individual session | 50 minutes |
| Sensor | Bought once, yours to keep · 20% discount through me |
Prices for all of the above are on the fees page.
HeartMath is a heart-rate-variability biofeedback method that shows your physiological state in real time and trains you to shift it deliberately. It uses a sensor and a screen display, combined with paced breathing and attentional focus, to build what's called coherence — a settled, engaged autonomic state.
Heart-rate variability is the variation in timing between consecutive heartbeats. It reflects autonomic nervous-system activity, which makes it a useful readout of whether you're mobilised, shut down or settled. It is not the same as heart rate.
HRV biofeedback has been examined in two meta-analyses with reasonable results. A 2020 systematic review in Applied Psychophysiology and Biofeedback pooled 58 randomised controlled trials and found a small-to-moderate effect comparable to other effective treatments, strongest for anxiety, depression and anger. A meta-analysis in Scientific Reports found a medium effect on depressive symptoms across 14 trials. The same 2020 review found the weakest effects for PTSD and sleep — which is why I use it as the foundation of therapy rather than as the therapy itself.
Because it builds regulatory capacity rather than processing what's generating the activation. The 2020 review found PTSD among its weakest outcomes, and that finding is consistent with what regulation training does: it helps you settle, but it doesn't change what sets you off. Trauma processing methods like EMDR have the evidence there. Using either on its own leaves a predictable gap, which is why the sequence here runs regulation first, then processing.
Yes, I'm a certified HeartMath trainer, alongside being a psychotherapist licensed by the Austrian Ministry of Health. That combination is unusual — most HeartMath practitioners aren't psychotherapists, and most psychotherapists don't work with biofeedback.
An app gives you a paced breathing exercise. Biofeedback shows you what your physiology is doing while you do it, so you can tell what's working for you specifically rather than following a generic instruction. The larger difference is context: here it's the first stage of therapeutic work, not a stand-alone tool.
Related, but used differently. Wearables give you overnight trends retrospectively. HeartMath gives you live feedback you can act on, and trains the ability to change state deliberately. If your recovery scores have stayed stubbornly low despite good sleep, training and nutrition, that's often a sign the remaining load isn't physical.
It can help with parts of it — particularly emotional regulation, recovering from overwhelm and managing arousal, which are often more disruptive than attention itself. It is not a treatment for ADHD and not a substitute for assessment or medication where those are appropriate.
Yes — a sensor, which costs around €200. As a certified HeartMath trainer I can supply it at a 20% discount. It's yours permanently and you'll keep using it after we finish working together, which is deliberate: the goal is a capacity you own rather than something that only functions in sessions.
If you want to see what your own baseline looks like before committing to anything, the Regulation Baseline session is a self-contained place to begin. Otherwise, start with an ordinary first session.
Book a first session