Your Drive Got You Here. Your Recovery Will Take You Further.
Evidence-Based Parasympathetic Training for High Performers
Most high performers are exceptionally good at activating. Pushing harder, going longer, finding another gear when it matters.
What they are rarely taught is the other half of the equation: how to systematically down-regulate a nervous system that has learned to stay on.
That is not a personal failing. The evidence-based methods for doing this effectively are not common knowledge. They come from clinical neuroscience, decades of biofeedback research, and traditions of practice that most people never encounter in a structured way.
Whether you are competing at a high level, operating in a high-stakes career, managing relentless daily demands, or simply finding it harder and harder to wind down at the end of the day, your nervous system has learned to stay on.
Over time that gap between activation and recovery costs you more than you realize.
A nervous system stuck in overdrive does not just feel bad. Over time the research links it to high blood pressure, increased cardiovascular risk, weakened immune function, disrupted sleep, chronic muscle tension, headaches, teeth grinding, memory and concentration problems, and a gradual erosion of the performance capacity you worked to build.
Most high performers recognize these symptoms. Many even know they are stress-related. What they rarely have access to is a structured, evidence-based practice for directly training the nervous system toward greater autonomic balance. Not just coping strategies for the moment, but techniques with a cumulative physiological effect that builds over time.
That is what this program provides.
Your autonomic nervous system operates in two modes. Sympathetic activation is your performance and threat response system. Parasympathetic activation governs recovery, restoration, tissue repair, anabolic processes, and emotional regulation, driven largely by the vagus nerve and measurable through Heart Rate Variability.
The Deep Nervous System Reset trains both sides of that equation. Each session is designed to do two specific things.
The first is to train your capacity to deactivate your sympathetic nervous system on demand. This is a learnable skill. Most people never develop it because they were never taught how.
The second is to activate your parasympathetic nervous system, shifting your body out of overdrive and into genuine recovery mode.
Research across athletes, executives, police officers, and military personnel consistently shows that people who train this capacity perform better under pressure, recover faster, sleep better, and sustain high output longer without burning out.
This program was built for people who operate under sustained pressure:
- Competitive and elite athletes managing performance stress and recovery.
- Executives and professionals in high-stakes roles.
- First responders and tactical professionals.
- Anyone experiencing chronic stress, nervous system overdrive, burnout, or stress-related sleep disruption who wants a clinician-led, science-based solution.
If you are already doing the work to perform at a high level, this is how you protect and sustain that capacity.
- After a single session most participants report feeling significantly calmer, clearer, and more physically at ease than when they arrived.
- With regular attendance, stress tolerance and emotional regulation under pressure improve.
- Recovery between high-demand periods accelerates.
- Sleep quality improves and switching off becomes easier.
- Physical tension accumulated under chronic stress releases.
- Heart Rate Variability, a key marker of autonomic health and stress resilience, measurably improves over time.
- Performance capacity sustains at a higher level without the cost of burnout.
Every 60-minute session is structured and sequenced to first train your capacity to down-regulate sympathetic activation, then progressively deepen your parasympathetic response. RSA breathing anchors every session. The remaining techniques rotate each week from the following evidence-based toolkit.
RSA Breathing and HRV Training
Paced breathing is one of the most researched interventions for directly increasing Heart Rate Variability (HRV) and vagal tone. Used by elite athletes, tactical professionals, and high-stakes performers worldwide as a manual override of the stress response. Every session begins here.
Structured Movement Drills
Low-complexity meditative movement drills that train autonomic flexibility, breathing efficiency, balance, and proprioception, validated by modern research. No prior experience needed. Accessible at any fitness level.
Autogenic Training
A structured self-regulation protocol with decades of clinical research behind it demonstrating measurable increases in parasympathetic activity and reductions in anxiety and sympathetic arousal. Through a brief sequence of targeted mental formulas, autogenic training produces reliable autonomic recalibration you can apply independently between sessions.
Attentional Focus Training and Present-Moment Anchoring
Techniques drawn from applied neuroscience and evidence-based psychological practice that train your ability to direct and stabilize attention under pressure. Reduces rumination, cognitive interference, and the mental noise that accumulates under chronic stress and sympathetic overdrive.
Progressive Muscle Relaxation
A clinically validated technique with strong evidence for reducing physiological tension and sympathetic arousal. Systematically releases the physical tension that accumulates in the body under chronic stress, tension that most high performers carry constantly without realizing it.
Guided Imagery and Performance Visualization
Evidence-based mental rehearsal techniques drawn from sport and performance psychology. Used to prime optimal performance states, accelerate recovery, and reduce anticipatory stress. Meta-analyses show measurable performance gains across athletic, academic, and professional populations.
Deep Guided Relaxation
Each session closes with a clinician-guided deep relaxation experience using hypnotherapeutic language and technique, clinically applied to accelerate parasympathetic activation, consolidate the session’s physiological gains, and produce a state of profound mental and physical restoration. Sessions include binaural beats audio optimized for the deep relaxation state. Headphones are recommended for the full experience.
This program is designed and led by Dr. Chris Friesen, Ph.D., C.Psych., a licensed Clinical Psychologist, Neuropsychologist, and Sport and Performance Psychologist with board certifications in biofeedback, neurofeedback, and HRV-biofeedback, and over 20 years of clinical experience working with competitive athletes, executives, and high achievers.
Dr. Friesen is also the author of the High Achievement Handbook series and brings a daily personal practice in the methods he teaches. Every technique in this program has a peer-reviewed evidence base. Every session is sequenced to produce a cumulative autonomic training effect across both sympathetic deactivation and parasympathetic activation.
Individual sessions with Dr. Friesen or a member of his team are available for those who want personalized support beyond the group program.
Sessions run 60 minutes.
The format is drop-in, so you can join any week with no ongoing commitment.
Sessions run live every Wednesday at 7:00 PM to 8:00 PM Eastern on Zoom.
The cost is $85 per session.
Book below and your Zoom link is delivered automatically on booking. All participants are muted throughout to protect the session experience. Use headphones or earbuds, particularly during the binaural beat portions.
Sessions are billed as a “Group Psychological Service” facilitated by Dr. Friesen (a registered psychologist in Ontario) and may be submitted to your insurance provider. Check your plan for coverage under psychological services.
Cancellation policy: Sessions are non-refundable. If you need to cancel please do so at least 24 hours before the session and a credit toward a future session will be provided.
Questions? CLICK HERE
Or contact us at [email protected]
