Before Salim Najjar became known as That HRV Guy, he was an engineer-turned-entrepreneur pushing his body to extremes — building companies, travelling the world, experimenting with every biohack, and constantly testing his physical limits. From the outside, it looked like peak performance. Inside, he was edging closer to burnout. Eventually, as he puts it, he “broke his body”.
That breaking point became the doorway into a completely different way of understanding health.
In this episode, Salim shares the story of how he rebuilt himself from the inside out by studying Heart Rate Variability — not just as a metric, but as a mirror reflecting how his nervous system was experiencing the world. He explains how HRV revealed the cost of years spent in survival mode, and how learning to regulate his internal state changed everything.
We talk about how stress isn't the enemy — it's the signal. And that the real work wasn’t adding more hacks, but learning how to feel again.
Salim explains how every emotion we experience is meant to be processed through the nervous system, and what happens when those emotions are suppressed, avoided or intellectualised instead of metabolised. He shares how unprocessed feelings show up as inflammation, exhaustion, reactivity, and the quiet sense that our body is bracing for impact — even when life is stable.
This conversation touches the core of what it means to be human:
why our bodies keep score,
why connection and co-regulation matter,
and why our biology still expects us to live the way our ancestors did — in tribes, outdoors, with long stretches of true rest and shared presence.
Salim breaks down how we can train the nervous system like a muscle, learning to move fluidly between sympathetic activation and parasympathetic recovery. When we build that flexibility, stress becomes something we can work with, not something we fear. It becomes a teacher, an ally, even a source of strength.
We explore how this adaptability can transform HRV, reduce inflammation, and restore the sense of calm that so many people today have lost.
It’s a conversation about reclaiming your internal landscape, listening to the wisdom of your body, and remembering the way humans were designed to live, feel, connect, and heal.
Salim's website: https://thathrvguy.com/
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