Product Description

emWave PC is an easy-to-use software program and patented heart rhythm monitor designed to prevent, manage and reverse the negative effects of stress, anxiety, fatigue, depression and more. The system is an innovative approach to stress relief based on learning to change the heart rhythm pattern and create physiological coherence in the body. The analysis of Heart Rate Variability (HRV), or heart rhythms, is recognized as a powerful, non-invasive measure that reflects heart-brain interactions and autonomic nervous system dynamics, which are particularly sensitive to changes in the emotional state. emWave PC collects pulse data through a finger or ear sensor which plugs into your computer. The program translates the information from your heart rhythms into user friendly graphics displayed on your computer screen.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #31087 in Health and Beauty
• Brand: HeartMath
• Model: 6006
• Released on: 2009-06-16
• Dimensions: 2.00" h x 6.00" w x 9.00" l, 1.20 pounds

Features

• Multiple views to watch your heart rhythms change as you move into the ¿Zone¿ of high performance.
• Interactive games to build and sustain coherence.
• An Emotion Visualizer provides stunning colorful imagery as you increase coherence.
• Extensive library of information including a tutorial and quick start guide.
• Four challenge levels to help you raise your baseline coherence levels.

Amazon.com Product Description

The emWave PC Stress Relief System is a real-time heart rhythm monitor that revitalizes your body, mind, and emotions. View product demo (requires Flash).

The emWave PC Stress Relief System uses award winning technology based on 16 years of scientific research.

The included Coherence Coach is an interactive program using audio instruction, visual images, and a breathing pacer for learning and practicing the Quick Coherence technique and improving coherence scores.

See in real time how your thoughts and emotions affect your heart rhythms.

Includes three new colorful interactive games designed to help you transform stress into creative energy while building your coherence scores.

The Emotion Visualizer provides stunning colorful images that vary according to your emotional state and coherence level.

A comprehensive tutorial is included covering how to use emWave PC, getting started, and the science behind the system.

Revitalize your emotions, mind, spirit and body with emWave PC Stress Relief System (formerly Freeze-Framer). The emWave PC's software and accompanying USB sensor provide an entertaining and educational experience that reduces stress and increases performance.

This easy-to-use program is designed to prevent, manage and reverse the negative effects of stress, and to enable users to operate their mind-body-heart as a unified system, achieving new levels of health and well-being. emWave PC incorporates over 15 years of scientific research on the interactions taking place between the heart and brain. It was developed by Doc Childre and the team of scientists at the Institute of HeartMath. emWave PC monitors your heart rhythms, displays them in real-time and determines their level of coherence--a mental and emotional state people experience when they are in-sync physically, emotionally and mentally. emWave PC displays your level of heart rhythm coherence and you learn to increase it, reducing emotional stress and improving cognitive function.

How emWave PC Works
The emWave PC technology is an easy-to-use software program with a heart rhythm monitor. The system is an innovative approach to stress relief based on learning to change the heart rhythm pattern and create physiological coherence in the body.

With this program you can see how your thoughts and emotions affect your heart and nervous system through the user friendly graphics displayed on your computer screen. When stressed, your heart rhythms have an irregular, jagged incoherent pattern. When you shift to a more positive emotional state, the heart rhythm pattern changes to a smoother, wave-like coherent pattern. By seeing the visual change on the screen and associating it with a more peaceful, calm internal state, you learn to manage stress and maintain a state of physiological coherence and balance.

Ordered and harmonious heart rhythms are an indicator of your "coherence level". High coherence is a state associated with positive emotional attitudes which send signals to the brain that reduce stress, improve brain function, hormonal balance, immune response, coordination and reaction times. emWave PC determines the degree of coherence found in your heart rhythm patterns and displays changes in real-time.

View the emWave science presentation (requires Flash) to learn more.

What the emWave PC Includes

• Coherence Coach which uses audio instruction, visual imagery and an adjustable breathing pacer for learning and applying HeartMath's Quick Coherence technique.
• Three, colorful, interactive games designed to help you transform stress into creative energy.
• The Emotion Visualizer which provides stunning colorful imagery that changes as you increase your coherence level.
• Heart rhythm display, data storage for session review, four challenge levels, audio control, application specific instruction, interactive tutorial and more.

Testimonials
"For over 30 years I experienced several life threatening chronic illnesses--kidney disease, blood disease, heart disease, kidney transplant, 2 strokes and Stage 4 B-Cell Lymphoma. In the fall of 1997, I was led to The Institute of HeartMath. I discovered that all of my illnesses were due to stress and anxiety I had been experiencing in my life. Through learning and practicing HeartMath’s tools and technologies, I am able to prevent, manage and reverse the effects of stress, be more in-the-moment, and achieve excellent health, more energy, improved mental and emotional clarity, and improved performance and relationships. HeartMath’s tools and technologies literally saved my life."

--John Bishop

"After using my emWave PC for a week, I was given the daunting task of developing a decision tree for our hospital ethics committee. I avoided it as long as I could because it was so complicated. Then I decided to use my emwave PC and get myself in the green zone first. I was shocked at how quickly and clearly the decision tree ideas went onto the paper. I had it totally outlined in less than 30 minutes. The members of the committee said it contained everything they could imagine and was easy to follow."

--Claire Call MS BSN RN, Heart Failure Coordinator, Prairie Heart Institute at St. John's Hospital

"The significant enhancements available in the emWave PC Stress Relief System provide both practitioner and client with an amazingly powerful tool to facilitate healing to Wholeness."

--Jon McIntosh, Guidance for Healing

It's beautiful software and a really great system, all of it. As I wrote in a recent review, emWave PC 'is the gold standard of HRV biofeedback systems'"

--Marshall F. Gilula, M.D.

"Using HeartMath techniques and the [emWave PC] system are so effective because you can get immediate feedback on your internal state. Having real-time physiological feedback with the [emWave PC] takes the guesswork out of whether I’m in the right frame of mind and attitude and gives me something to hang onto--a concrete, internal reference point instead of just guessing or intuition."

--Marlo Stil, Professional Golfer

System Requirements
PentiumII compatible processor, Microsoft Windows ME-2000-XP-Vista, 800 x 600 16 bit color display or better, 64 MB DirectX 9 compatible video card, (recent ATI or Nvidia recommended), CD-Rom drive, one available USB port.

What's in the Box
emWave PC software CD, USB Pod, finger pulse sensor, 6-foot extension cable, and owner's manual.

Customer Reviews

Review by former physiology teaching fellow and psychology professional
This latest version of Freeze-Framer is an excellent tool for the home user to practice relaxation and learn to synchronize the two branches of the autonomic nervous system. In HearthMath terms this state is called high coherence and represents a heart rate variability pattern where the sympathetic (excitatory) and parasympathetic (calming) parts of the autonomic nervous system are in balance. In more simple terms, it represents a state of less chaos in the nervous system which simply means we are in an optimum state that favors good health.

With respect to the software itself, it has a nice user interface, is easy to use and you don't have to have a technical or medical background to get the full benefit from it. In fact, you don't have to understand the technology at enjoy the benefits! That's one of the things I most like.

This software is particularly good for people who are working with stress management, pranayama, meditation or other relaxation techniques and want to see the affects on their nervous system and heart. How it does this is by exploiting monitoring heart rate variability from moment-to-moment. By practicing meditation, various breathing techniques or relaxation exercises one can see the affects on the nervous system as manifested in changes in heart rate variability (HRV). This data is shown graphically along with other useful information such as the percentage of time spent in the session in high, medium and low coherence. There is also graphical and audio feedback to let you know whether you are in high, medium or low coherence in a given moment. You can also measure pulse waves and see your pulse rate at any given time.

This software also allows you to save past sessions, change many options and increase the thresholds for the various states of coherence. This allows you to keep things challenging as you get better at achieving a state of balance. There are also a variety of games available for you to practice your skills outside of the main program.

This package also comes with some useful tutorials and good online help. It is very simple to use and doesn't have a busy or complicated user interface or instructions. I do a fair amount of biofeedback work on some very expensive equipment and I find that this program has most of the things I need for heart rate variability measurements at a low price. This makes it ideal for home users or people contemplating more in-depth biofeedback work.

If you want to no more about the theory behind this product and how it could help you, you can look at HeartMath's website or do a search on the book "THE HEARTMATH SOLUTION" by Doc Childre and Howard Martin. You can also search on biofeedback, heart rate variability and respiratory sinus arrhythmia on the web. While I don't necessary agree with everything the HEARTHMATH SOLUTION says, I think it makes some excellent points that have been validated scientifically and that I've found to be true in my own experience and the experience of my clients.

I think one of the most powerful uses of this software is to see how different emotional states affect coherence such as anger, compassion, love, anxiety, etc. For most people, it's a very visceral experience to see how states of love and compassion correlate to maximum coherence. It is also an eye opener to see how anger and other negative emotions cause these physiological states to deteriorate.

I also teach various types of meditation including loving-kindness and forgiveness meditation. This software is an excellent accompaniment to this type of practice or pranayama work in yoga.

In summary, I think this is a great investment for busy people trying to find a simple stress management practice, yoga practioners and meditators. It will help you to develop higher awareness of your anxiety levels and other emotional states. It could also be used in combination with therapy for anger management and other issues in a very effective manner. The tutorial also gives you beginning instruction on how to increase your coherence on your own and points you to other more in-depth resources.

If you have depression or other serious difficulties in your life then I recommend checking in with a professional as to the suitability of this product. Some things just can't be treated on your solely on your own and I have found that deep relaxation practices without guidance when there are serious issues going on can evoke anxiety or strong emotions. For the average person, however, this shouldn't be an issue.

One best things I've purchased in my entire life
Over the past three months that I have applied the emWave Stress Relief System, it has proven to be one of the most effective approaches I've used enhance mental and physical performance in my professional life. As the Executive Vice-President of a high profile financial markets company, I have found that emWave has enabled me function "in the zone" throughout the day and maintain a high level of relaxed focus and drive amid mulitiple projects, meetings, phone calls, and unanticipated interuptions. Working with these tools has enabled me to accomplish more in a single day than I used accomplish over the course of 2 or 3 days. Yet, at the same time, it has trained me to operate with a positive demeanor and get things done while maintaining an "internal smile."

I've tried everything you can possibly imagine in order get to the level that emWave has elevated me to. The list includes all the usual positive thinking and motivatation books and programs out there, nutritional supplements, meditation, tai-chi, binaural brainwave programs, etc. Nothing has has provided as consistent and powerful a boost to my performance as emWave has.

I was skeptical at first. I tried it, opening the packaging very carefully so that I could return it all within 30 days. But within a few minutes of using emWave, I was convinced that it was well worth keeping.

And by the way, I've also tried another product out there called Stress Reliever. I returned it within 2 days because it's nowhere near as well-thought out and effective as emWave is.

In case you're wondering, I have no commerical ties at all with the emWave or Heartmath people. I just am someone whose life has been affected in a very positive and profound way by the research that this company has done and tools they've derived from that research.

Way over priced for what it is
I was looking into a home biofeedback device to help teach me to control stress reactions. I looked at this system, and the "Journey to the Wild Divine" system. I just couldn't take the New Age spin that came with "Journey." I don't want a computer program to help me to imagine being one with the universe; I want a computer program that says, "Your heartrate is too high. Lower it." When I saw the reviews about how badly written the "Journey" software was, I went with Heartmath in the hope of finding a more professional product, despite its high cost.

I was disappointed with what I got for the money. You get the USB finger sensor, and an installation disk for the software, and a quickstart guide. No further information is provided -- such as, what is heartrate variability? What is coherence? Why would you care? Is this the equivalent of "clearing Thetans" in Scientology, or is there some actual medical research behind this?

Turns out there is some real science that shows a correlation between HRV levels and stress and anxiety. But correlation is not causation. I am not yet convinced that if I learn how to control my coherence, I will be able to retrain my body not to stress. I haven't had the time to go hunt up the science and read it carefully. If you are thinking of spending the money on this system, I would suggest you do that homework first.

The software is . . . well, amateurish, to put it politely. It crashes and has other bugs, although it is usually simple enough to exit and restart the system. The graphics are incredibly crude, and the program does not manage multiple windows well.

The only reason this package does not receive one star is because there isn't a whole lot of choice on the market for what this package does. And it does what it claims to do -- monitor and report HRV and coherence. Whether that is anything you should want or care about is a separate question.