In 2024, I had COVID. Not long after, I started noticing something strange, a fluttering in my chest that would come and go without warning. My Apple Watch (and I have truly praised wearable technology ever since) picked up on it before I fully understood what I was feeling, and flagged multiple episodes of AFib, atrial fibrillation, an irregular heart rhythm. I went to a cardiologist, who had me wear a heart monitor for a month to track what was actually happening.
Around that same time, something inside me quietly insisted that meditation was also worth trying. I could not have explained the mechanism at the time, and I was not doing it to treat anything specific. It was less a decision made with logic and more a feeling I trusted enough to act on. So, I started meditating daily. I did not have a single episode of heart flutter for the entire month I wore that monitor, and I have not had one since.
I want to be careful with that story, because one person’s experience is not proof of anything on its own. I did not stop seeing my cardiologist. At a follow-up appointment, he told me this is often what he calls “an after-COVID fluke“. I did not treat meditation as a replacement for medical care, and I am not suggesting anyone else should either. I have not been able to stop thinking about it, though, especially once I started looking into the actual research on the mind and the heart connection.
What mind-body medicine means.
The core idea is simpler than it sounds: your mind and body are not two separate systems that occasionally influence each other. They are one integrated system, and what happens in your emotional and mental state shows up in your immune system, your cardiovascular system, and beyond. Additionally, this is an active, peer-reviewed area of research, and some of the findings genuinely surprised me.
The research that mirrors my own experience.
The closest match to what I went through comes from a 2013 study published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, one of the most respected cardiology journals in the world. Researchers took 49 patients with paroxysmal AFib, the same type of irregular heart rhythm I experienced, and tracked their arrhythmia episodes for three months while they went about life as usual. Then those same patients completed a structured three-month yoga program.
Their AFib episodes dropped from an average of 3.8 episodes to 2.1 episodes per patient, a reduction of about 45 percent. Anxiety and depression scores improved too, alongside overall quality of life. Importantly, this was studied as a complement to standard cardiac care, not a replacement for it, which is exactly how I approached my own situation as well.
Source: Lakkireddy, D., et al. (2013). Effect of yoga on arrhythmia burden, anxiety, depression, and quality of life in paroxysmal atrial fibrillation: The YOGA My Heart Study. Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
Belief changes biology too.
Two more studies stayed with me while I was researching this issue.
The first found that older adults with more positive beliefs about their own aging lived 7.5 years longer, on average, than those with more negative beliefs, even after accounting for age, gender, socioeconomic status, loneliness, and functional health. Seven and a half years is a striking number for something as intangible as belief.
Source: Levy, B.R., Slade, M.D., Kunkel, S.R., & Kasl, S.V. (2002). Longevity increased by positive self-perceptions of aging. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Full PDF: https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/psp-832261.pdf
The second, co-authored by Nobel Prize winning scientist Elizabeth Blackburn, found that chronic psychological stress is associated with shorter telomeres, the protective caps on our chromosomes linked to cellular aging. In other words, sustained stress does not just feel bad, it appears to leave a measurable mark at the cellular level.
Source: Epel, E.S., Blackburn, E.H., et al. (2004). Accelerated telomere shortening in response to life stress. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
A small thing to try this week.
This connects to something I wrote about recently, the idea of savoring and a mindful pause. Deliberately pausing to take in something good, a moment of sunlight, a small win, a quiet minute with your coffee, for even ten or twenty seconds appears to be one of the simplest ways to counter the effects of chronic stress on the body.
Try this before the next issue: once a day, when something good happens, however small, stop and stay with it for a slow count of ten. That pause is the whole practice.
An important note before you go further.
I am not a doctor, and nothing in this newsletter is medical advice or a diagnosis. My own experience with AFib is a personal story, not a treatment protocol, and I continued working with my cardiologist throughout. If you are dealing with a heart rhythm issue or any other diagnosed condition, please treat practices like meditation as a complement to your medical care, not a substitute for it, and always loop in your doctor before changing anything about your treatment plan.
What is coming next.
This is exactly the kind of work I want to bring into coaching sessions, not just talking about the mind-body connection in theory, but practicing it together. In our sessions, if you feel like this is something you want to work on, I can introduce you to stress management techniques, short breathing exercises, and mindfulness practices that can genuinely shift your stress levels and help ground you in moments of real pressure, the kind your nervous system feels long before your mind catches up.
Coaching opens again this September, and the interest form is open for anyone who wants to be first in line. If any part of this issue felt personal to you, that is usually a good sign it is worth exploring further.
Before you go.
I did not expect a heart monitor and a meditation habit to change how I think about health entirely, but here we are. The body is always talking. Some months, we finally get quiet enough to listen.
More soon, Oksi
Disclaimer: I am not a doctor, and nothing in this newsletter is medical advice or a diagnosis. This content is shared for educational purposes only, based on my own experience and ongoing training in functional medicine health coaching. Please consult your own healthcare provider before making changes to your care.