What Two Years of Oura Data Revealed About My Nervous System — Before and After RASHA

550 nights. A pre-RASHA baseline. Twice-weekly sessions. And a physiological pattern I wasn't expecting to find.

For some time, I'd been noticing something.

On the mornings after facilitating our Monday and Thursday RASHA® sessions, I often seemed to wake feeling unusually recovered.

More energy.

More capacity.

A sense that my system had genuinely recharged.

My Oura Ring often appeared to agree.

Higher Readiness.

Lower overnight heart rate.

Better cardiovascular recovery.

Sometimes higher HRV.

Initially, that was interesting enough.

Then I went further back.

I pulled two years of historical Oura data—from 22 August 2024 to 22 August 2026—giving me 550 recorded nights, including approximately ten months of data before we began our regular twice-weekly RASHA sessions.

Suddenly, I wasn't simply looking at whether Tuesdays happened to be good days.

I could ask a much more interesting question:

Did my physiology actually behave differently before and after regular RASHA sessions began?

The answer appears to be yes.

And the pattern goes considerably deeper than I expected.

First, some important context

Our regular Sacred Humans RASHA sessions began on Monday 30 June 2025, with sessions every Monday and Thursday evening.

Although I facilitate the experience, I'm also deeply immersed in it.

For around 60 minutes I enter what I would describe as a profound meditative state—quiet, inward, still and deeply relaxed.

I then usually go almost directly to bed.

So rather than going from the stimulation of everyday life straight into sleep, I'm effectively spending an hour deeply down-regulating beforehand.

You might think of it as beginning the night's recovery before sleep itself begins.

There is also a gap in the Oura record because my ring battery eventually gave up completely. When I resumed tracking in February 2026, I replaced it with the same Oura model (have to love within-warranty clauses!).

But having a meaningful pre-RASHA baseline changes what I can ask of the data.

Before RASHA, Tuesday wasn't special

This may be the most important finding.

Because Monday RASHA occurs immediately before Tuesday morning, Tuesday had emerged as my strongest recovery day during the RASHA period.

But perhaps Tuesday had always been my best day?

The historical data says no.

Before regular RASHA sessions began, Tuesday was physiologically quite ordinary.

Compared with Thursday:

• Tuesday Readiness was actually around 0.5 points lower

• HRV was approximately 0.8 ms lower

• resting heart rate was slightly higher

• lowest heart rate was slightly higher

  
  

In other words:

There was no historical Tuesday recovery peak.

After the Monday RASHA sessions began, that pattern reversed.

Compared with Thursday mornings from the same weeks, Tuesday subsequently averaged approximately:

+5.4 Readiness points

+3.1 ms HRV

−2.15 bpm average resting heart rate

−2.24 bpm lowest resting heart rate

+18 points in Oura's Recovery Index

And Tuesday Readiness beat Thursday in around 79% of comparable weeks.

Average resting heart rate was lower on Tuesday in approximately 88% of weeks.

That consistency matters.

We aren't looking at a handful of spectacular nights skewing an average.

A new weekly rhythm appears to have emerged.

Thursday RASHA showed the same kind of rebound

The second weekly RASHA session occurs Thursday evening.

Before regular RASHA began, Friday wasn't a particularly strong recovery morning either.

Friday Readiness was fractionally below Thursday.

After RASHA began, Friday averaged around:

+4 Readiness points

−0.83 bpm average resting heart rate

−1.15 bpm lowest resting heart rate

+16.7 Recovery Index points

So we have two separate weekly exposures:

Monday session → Tuesday recovery

and

Thursday session → Friday recovery

producing similar directional patterns.

That duplication makes the observation much more interesting.

The strongest signal isn't simply HRV

HRV gets a lot of attention - and rightly so - but one of the most interesting things this analysis taught me is that HRV isn't necessarily the strongest immediate signal following a session.

The clearer pattern appears to be:

My cardiovascular system settles differently.

After RASHA nights, average resting heart rate tends to be lower.

My lowest heart rate tends to be lower.

Oura's Recovery Index improves substantially.

Readiness subsequently rises.

That raises a simple physiological possibility.

During the hour-long RASHA meditation, perhaps I'm already moving substantially out of ordinary daytime activation before I ever get into bed.

Instead of:

busy day → bed → gradually unwind → recovery

my evenings look more like:

busy day → 60 minutes deep meditation → substantial down-regulation → bed → recovery

Oura doesn't measure what happens during that hour in the same way it measures sleep.

But it may be detecting the physiological aftermath.

Then I discovered something bigger

The immediate Tuesday and Friday effects are interesting.

But when I looked at my overall HRV distribution before and after RASHA, something considerably larger appeared.

Before regular RASHA sessions began, approximately:

65% of recorded nights had HRV below 40 ms.

Only around:

35% were 40 ms or above.

During the RASHA period that relationship almost reversed.

Approximately:

61% of nights were now 40 ms or above.

The individual bands shifted like this:

HRV below 30 ms

Before RASHA: 18.8%

During RASHA: 4.8%

HRV 30–39 ms

Before: 46.0%

During: 33.9%

HRV 40–49 ms

Before: 28.2%

During: 45.7%

HRV 50+ ms

Before: 7.1%

During: 15.7%

My median HRV moved from approximately:

36 ms → 41.5 ms

But perhaps the most fascinating part wasn't the increase at the top.

It was what happened at the bottom.

My 10th-percentile HRV moved from roughly:

27 ms → 34 ms.

The physiological floor appears to have risen.

That matters because I can actually feel these HRV ranges

Long before analysing them statistically, I'd noticed something subjectively.

When my HRV is in the 30s, I generally feel lower in available energy.

When I'm in the 40s, there's a noticeable lift.

And when I hit 50 or above... watch out world.

The broader data supports that lived observation.

Across the two years, mornings within those HRV ranges also showed progressively better recovery physiology.

Average Readiness increased from around:

Score of 75 at HRV below 30

to

Score of 87 at HRV 50+.

Average resting heart rate fell from roughly:

61.6 bpm below HRV 30

to

54 bpm at HRV 50+.

Lowest heart rate similarly moved from around:

54.9 → 47.9 bpm.

These aren't universal HRV rules.

HRV is highly individual.

But they appear to represent meaningful physiological zones for me.

And that's perhaps one of the most useful ways to think about wearable data: not “Is my number good compared with everyone else?”

But:

“What does this number mean inside my own body?”

Is the broader improvement just Tuesday and Friday?

That was the obvious objection.

Perhaps regular RASHA wasn't changing my broader physiology at all.

Maybe two unusually good mornings each week were simply inflating the averages.

So I removed Tuesday and Friday - the mornings immediately following RASHA.

The broader shift remained.

Before RASHA, approximately 35.5% of the remaining nights had HRV 40+.

During the RASHA era:

60.1% did.

Then I removed Wednesday too, because Wednesday might contain a delayed effect from Monday.

That left Monday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday.

Before RASHA:

approximately 31.8% of those nights were 40+ HRV.

During the RASHA era:

approximately 55.8% were.

So whatever changed in my HRV distribution cannot be explained purely by two good post-session mornings each week.

Something broader appears to have changed.

The year-on-year comparison tells a similar story

Seasonality affects human physiology.

So I also compared roughly the same calendar periods:

February–June 2025

versus

February–June 2026.

Before RASHA, average HRV during that period was around:

38.4 ms.

The following year:

43.6 ms.

Median HRV moved:

38 → 43 ms.

Days at HRV 40+ increased from:

41.8% → 68.7%.

And HRV 50+ increased from:

6.2% → 22.4%.

Even after removing Tuesday and Friday, the 40+ shift remained almost identical.

Again, none of this establishes causation.

But the repeated direction of the findings is difficult to ignore.

And yet the Oura Ring is measuring only part of the story

This may ultimately be the most important point.

Because my biggest changes aren't numbers.

They're experiential.

Since beginning this work consistently, I feel:

more peaceful

less reactive

more positive about the present

more optimistic about the future

more loving

more joyful

more grateful

There feels like more space between something happening and my nervous system immediately reacting to it.

More capacity to observe.

More capacity to choose.

More ease.

More appreciation.

More presence.

None of those things appear as an Oura metric.

There is no:

Gratitude Score: 91

or

Reduced Irritation Index: Optimal.

Perhaps one day there will be.

Until then, the ring measures one layer of something considerably larger.

It sees changes in heart rhythm, cardiovascular settling, sleep and recovery.

It cannot measure the quality with which I inhabit my life.

Does this prove RASHA caused the change?

Not necessarily.

And that's important.

This is an observational experiment involving one human being living an actual life.

During these two years other things changed too.

Relationships.

Work.

Diet.

Exercise.

Personal growth.

Environment.

Season.

Stress.

Sleep.

And the RASHA experience itself contains several overlapping variables:

frequency technology

sound

deep meditation

focused attention

stillness

reduced sensory input

breathing changes

intention

ritual

and then immediate sleep.

I cannot yet isolate which component contributes what.

Nor do I feel the need to force the data into a conclusion it isn't capable of making.

What I can say is more interesting precisely because it is honest.

A recovery pattern that did not exist during the pre-RASHA period appeared after twice-weekly RASHA sessions began.

And beyond those immediate post-session effects, my overall HRV distribution has shifted considerably toward the physiological ranges in which I personally feel greater energy and capacity.

The very-low-HRV days have become much less common.

The 40s and 50s have become considerably more common.

And those changes remain visible even when the immediate post-RASHA mornings are removed.

That deserves further exploration.

Perhaps resilience isn't about reaching higher peaks

One idea from this analysis keeps returning to me.

Perhaps the most meaningful nervous-system change isn't how high we can climb.

Maybe it's how far we fall.

And how easily we return.

My highest HRV days aren't necessarily the most interesting finding.

The dramatic reduction in my lowest HRV days may matter more.

Because real resilience isn't walking through life permanently blissed-out and untouched by challenge.

Life will still happen.

Stress will still happen.

Relationships will still challenge us.

Things won't always go according to plan.

Perhaps greater regulation means being less easily thrown far from centre—and finding our way back more readily when we are.

That feels remarkably close to my lived experience.

Less reaction.

More space.

Greater positivity about what lies ahead.

More gratitude for what is here.

More love.

More joy.

And perhaps the numbers are simply one physiological echo of that deeper change.

Where we go next

This experiment isn't finished.

I'm going to continue collecting the data.

I'm also interested in beginning to track subjective states alongside Oura:

energy

peace

joy

mental clarity

emotional reactivity

gratitude

sense of connection

Because perhaps the truly interesting question isn't:

“Can RASHA improve HRV?”

Perhaps it is:

“What happens when we repeatedly give the human system an opportunity to enter profound states of stillness, coherence and regulation?”

What happens immediately?

What happens 24 hours later?

What happens after six months?

A year?

Does the nervous system become better at finding its way home?

It certainly feels like it. 

But after 550 recorded nights, something fascinating appears to be happening.

And I'll keep following the trail.

This article describes personal N=1 wearable observations and subjective experience. It is not a clinical trial and does not establish that RASHA causes specific physiological or medical outcomes. Wearable measurements and self-reported experiences should be interpreted in that context.