Written by Victoria Colombato, RTT-trained hypnotherapist and founder of Tabula Rasa Studios
We recorded two people through a Safety session, on two days, on two different devices. One of them runs distance and sleeps at 47 bpm. The other does not run and does not settle easily. Both ended up in the same place relative to their own bodies, and the second recording is the more useful of the two, so it is worth reading to the end.
One of our testers wears a heart-rate monitor continuously. On Sunday 31 August they used the Safety track from 08:15 to 09:15, sitting up, an hour after waking. Their watch logged 128 readings across that day, roughly one every ten minutes, and it did not know a session was happening.
Across the six readings inside the session their heart rate averaged 65.5 bpm. Later the same day, lying down after lunch, their body settled at 65.2 bpm. Sitting upright and awake with headphones on, this person's cardiovascular system was doing what it does when they lie down to rest.
One tester’s heart rate, Sunday 31 August 2026. The blue band and blue line are the Safety session, 08:15–09:15, sitting up. The grey bands are the three periods they spent lying down.
Consumer wrist sensor, one reading roughly every ten minutes. The sleeping range is this person’s own 06:00–07:00 readings; they are a distance runner, so their resting and sleeping rates run low. Session timing was reported by the tester, not logged automatically.
What exactly was measured?
One person, one day, one session, recorded by a consumer optical wrist sensor sampling about every ten minutes. We did not run this as a study. The tester already wore the device, told us afterwards what they had done and when, and sent the export.
| Time | Mean | Range | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Safety session, seated | 08:15–09:15 | 65.5 bpm | 62–70 |
| Post-lunch rest, lying down | 13:20–13:50 | 65.2 bpm | 62–70 |
| Reading in bed | 10:10–10:30 | 62.0 bpm | 57–69 |
| Nap | 11:10–11:40 | 59.5 bpm | 56–62 |
| Asleep, before waking | 06:00–07:00 | 52.1 bpm | 47–61 |
| Everything else awake | 07:30–16:00 | 94.5 bpm | 62–153 |
The last row is the comparison that matters. Strip out the session and the three periods this person spent lying down, and the rest of their waking day averaged 94.5 bpm across 35 readings. The session sat 29 beats below that.
Fifteen minutes before the audio started they were at 84. Fifteen minutes after it ended they were back at 86, and ten minutes after that, 90.
Is 65 bpm actually low?
For most people, no. For this person, it depends entirely on what you compare it to, which is why the table above compares them only against themselves.
This tester is a distance runner. Their heart rate that morning while asleep ran between 47 and 52, and their lowest reading of the day was 46. A trained endurance athlete carries a resting rate most people never see, so 65 bpm means nothing until you know it against their own baseline.
Against that baseline the honest reading is specific. The session did not take them to a sleeping heart rate: their sleeping range that morning was 47–52 and the session floor was 62, a clear ten beats above it. What the session did was put them in the band their body reaches when they deliberately lie down and stop.
We are pointing that out because the more dramatic version of this claim is the one you will see elsewhere in this category, and it is not what the data shows.
Couldn't that just be sitting still?
This is the real objection, and the day happens to answer it better than we could have designed.
Sitting quietly lowers heart rate. So does lying down, reading, and digesting lunch. If the session had been the only calm hour in the day, there would be nothing to say. Instead this person spent three other periods of that day deliberately resting, all of them lying down, which gives a within-person comparison on the same device, the same day, the same body:
- Reading in bed, 62.0
- Nap, 59.5
- Post-lunch rest, 65.2
- Safety session, seated upright, 65.5
Lying down beat sitting by between 0 and 6 bpm. Posture itself works in favour of lying down, because upright the heart has more work to do returning blood from the legs, so this comparison is set up against the session rather than for it. The session landed in the same band regardless.
What we cannot separate from the audio is expectation. Someone who sits down intending to relax will relax somewhat regardless of what is playing, and no single-person recording can tell you how much of the 29-beat gap belongs to the hypnotic content, how much to the sound design, and how much to the decision to sit still for an hour. Answering that needs a controlled study against a matched non-hypnotic audio, which we have not run.
How it works in someone who does not run, and does not settle easily
The first recording came from someone who runs distance and sleeps at 47 bpm. Bodies like that are not most bodies, and a number taken from one of them tells you very little about your own. So the second recording is deliberately the opposite: a person who does not run, and whose nervous system does not settle easily, on a different device, at a different hour of a different day. The watch bears that out before the session even starts. Across the whole day their average while sitting still was 66.5 bpm, which is higher than the runner's rate lying down after lunch. This is a body that idles warm.
It is not an independent recording: this person works on Tabula Rasa. They knew exactly what the session was and wanted it to work, which cuts both ways — expectation can settle a body, and wanting a result can just as easily keep it alert. Weigh it accordingly.
Their watch samples far more often than the tester's device, in bursts as tight as every five seconds. Where the first recording shows a session that was already low by the time of its first reading, this one shows the descent happening.
Blue: the Safety session. Grey: the two workouts that day, a pilates class in the morning and walking through the late afternoon, which account for the peaks. Dashed line: mean across the whole waking day. Dotted line: mean across every reading outside the session that the watch flagged as sitting still. No sleep data — the watch was off overnight.
Wednesday 3 September, Safety track at 10:50. At 10:50:51 the watch read 90 bpm; they had just sat down. At 10:56:53, six minutes later, it read 54. Between 10:57 and 11:43 it logged thirteen readings between 53 and 56 and flagged every one of them as sitting still. Eight of the ten lowest readings of the entire day fall inside that window.
Across the rest of the day the watch recorded 1,495 readings averaging 80 bpm, with two workouts in it, a pilates class in the morning and walking through the late afternoon, which account for the peaks in the chart. Comparing like with like, using only the readings where they were also sitting still, the average was 66.5. The session ran about twelve beats below their own sitting-still baseline and about twenty-five below their day.
Break the day into hours and look only at the sitting-still readings in each, and the session hour is the lowest of the twelve: 54.8 bpm, against a range of 62 to 71 for every other hour the watch recorded.
| First recording, 31 Aug | Second recording, 3 Sep | |
|---|---|---|
| The person | distance runner | does not run |
| Device | wrist sensor, about one reading per 10 min | Apple Watch, 1,495 readings that day |
| Session | 08:15–09:15, seated | 10:50–11:45, seated |
| Where it started | 84 bpm fifteen minutes before | 90 bpm at 10:50:51 |
| Floor it held | 62–70 across the hour | 53–56 across 46 minutes |
| Own waking-day mean | 84 | 80 |
| Own sitting-still mean, rest of day | 65 (lying down) | 66.5 |
| Back to normal after | about half an hour | about five minutes |
Two bodies about as unalike as two bodies get, and the same thing happened in both: a fall across the opening minutes, a floor that holds for as long as the session runs, and a return once it stops.
That is the part worth keeping. The useful number was never the bpm itself, it is the distance between where a person normally sits and where they ended up. The runner reached their own lying-down rate while sitting upright. The person who does not train dropped twelve beats below their own sitting-still average and stayed there for three quarters of an hour. Neither figure would mean anything measured against the other person's baseline, and neither would mean anything measured against yours. What both recordings describe is a body arriving somewhere quieter than its own ordinary, which is the only sense in which a number like this can travel between people.
One thing we looked for and did not find is worth reporting. If a session left the nervous system quieter for the rest of the day, the sitting-still readings after it should sit below the ones before it. They do not. Before the session the average was 65.9 and after it 66.6, which is the same number given how few readings that is. Whatever happened here lasted about as long as the audio did.
The limits of these measurements
Two people, two days, two devices, both sessions timed from memory rather than logged, and one of the two recorded by someone with an interest in the outcome. There is no control condition, no blinding, no randomisation, and no comparison against a matched non-hypnotic audio. Nothing here generalises to you.
It is worth publishing anyway, for one reason. The claim that a hypnotic audio session produces a physiological change and not only a pleasant feeling is testable, and this is the smallest honest test of it we could put in public. If you run it on yourself and your heart rate does nothing, that is also a result, and we would like to see it. If we run it properly later, this page will say what changed. Our evidence standards set out the rules we hold ourselves to before anything goes on this site.
What people say about the Safety track
Physiology is one kind of evidence and it is a narrow one. Here is what the people who use this session say. All three were written in Spanish and are translated here.
“I loved this audio. It helped me calm down and come back to my centre. For a moment all my thoughts went quiet and I was able to relax. By the end I felt like I had rested.” — verified purchaser
“The pace and tone of voice and the music helped me relax, and with the exercises I was able to find calm in my body.” — sent to us directly
“Since I started listening to this every night, it's been remarkable how I sleep. And not only that, I also feel much more settled every day.” — verified purchaser
These are individual experiences and we present them as that. They are not outcomes you should expect, and they are not a substitute for the measurement above.
Why the Safety session in particular
Because it is the one people ask for most, and our own intake data says why.
Across 67 intake profiles we coded into nine recurring patterns, the belief I am not safe appeared in six of the nine. It sits underneath anxiety and low mood, underneath broken sleep, underneath procrastination, underneath fear of being seen, underneath compulsive behaviour, underneath the relationship people have with food and their body. It is the most common thing arriving in the room, wearing a different name each time.
The Safety session is 15 minutes and works on that sentence directly. It is also the track we would point almost anyone at first, which is why it costs $8 rather than $62.
Try it
| Safety — pre-recorded session, 15 minutes | $8 |
| A session written for your pattern | $62 |
If you want to run the same check on yourself, note your heart rate for the ten minutes before you press play and the ten minutes after, on whatever device you already wear. We would like to see it.
Keep reading
Tabula Rasa supports emotional wellness and personal development. It is not a substitute for medical or psychological care. It does not diagnose or treat mental health conditions, and it is not designed for use in a crisis. For clinical concerns, please consult a licensed professional. Heart-rate data on this page comes from two people on two single days using consumer wearables, and is not clinical measurement. Your results depend on your engagement, consistency and intention.