What is coherence?
Coherence describes a state of synchronized, ordered oscillation — as opposed to random, chaotic fluctuation. In physics, coherent waves align in phase; in physiology, the word usually means a measurable heart-rhythm pattern.
Levels of Coherence
- •Physical — laser light, superconducting states
- •Physiological — during slow breathing near a person's resonance rate (around 6 breaths per minute), heart rate rises and falls with each breath in a smooth, regular wave, and breathing, heart rate and blood pressure oscillations fall into step. This pattern can be measured from the heart rhythm; see How Breathing Changes HRV.
- •Psychological (an ONDA image) — the subjective sense of "density of presence," integrated awareness
What is not established
Popular material often goes further: that the heart and brain lock into phase, that cells align their electromagnetic fields, or that other people can sense your coherence through the heart's field. These are unestablished claims, not findings.
In ONDA Life
During practice with an Apple Watch, the ONDA app shows a live coherence score (it is not available with the phone camera). It is ONDA's own measure of how regular the breath-linked heart rhythm is — a feedback metric, not a clinical biomarker.
In ONDA's language, Part 5 works on "the density of presence" through "high coherence in the electromagnetic field of the cells" — an image for a calm, collected state, not a physical field that other people can detect.
Read more, with the evidence → Physiological coherence: what it is and what it isn't