What ONDA is built on — and what we’re building toward.
Most wellness apps blur two very different things: the science behind what they actually do, and the science they’d like to be associated with. We keep them separate. Below is both — the established evidence the app rests on today, cited in plain sight, and the research frontier we’re working to validate with partners. We’d rather under-claim than oversell.
The evidence behind what the app does today
Everything in the ONDA app right now rests on mechanisms with a real evidence base. We don’t claim more than this — and we show our sources.
Slow, paced breathing raises HRV.
Breathing near your resonance frequency (about six breaths a minute) increases heart-rate variability and engages the parasympathetic (“rest and digest”) branch. This is the core of every ONDA session. [R1] [R2]
HRV biofeedback trains autonomic balance.
Seeing your heart respond while you breathe — a closed feedback loop — is an established technique for improving vagal tone and stress resilience, not just measuring it. [R1] [R3]
Interoception can be trained.
Attending to internal bodily signals (the felt sense of breath and heartbeat) is a learnable skill linked to better emotional regulation. ONDA's live-feedback practice is interoceptive training. [R4]
Resting HRV is a meaningful trend, not a daily verdict.
Your multi-day resting-HRV trend is a more honest signal of recovery and adaptation than any single morning reading — which is why ONDA leads with the trend, not the number. [R2]
During practice, ONDA shows a live coherence score — a real-time signal of how smooth and rhythmic your heart rhythm is as you breathe. Your longer-term resting-HRV trend is read from your device via Apple Health. We’re precise about this on purpose: coherence is the in-the-moment guide; the resting-HRV trend is the outcome to watch over weeks.
Closed-loop, structured, and built on a method
Two things make ONDA different from a meditation library or a passive tracker.
A real feedback loop
You breathe, you watch your own heart rhythm respond in real time, and the practice adapts. Most apps score you after. ONDA shows you during — which is what makes a practice you can actually feel working, and stick with.
Structure, not a buffet
ONDA is a sequential path — each level builds on the last — rather than a shuffle of unrelated sessions. The structure is the point: it removes the “what do I do today?” decision and gives the practice a direction.
Who’s behind it
ONDA was built method-first, by a two-person founding team — the science held to account on one side, the engineering owned end-to-end on the other.
Valentin
- ▸Expertise in biometric feedback loops and neural-optimization mechanisms.
- ▸Oversees scientific methodology and study design.
- ▸Bridges fundamental research and digital-health application.
Yakiv
- ▸Lead developer responsible for ONDA's high-fidelity data pipeline.
- ▸1,871+ commits on the core codebase (iOS, Android, Supabase).
- ▸Building an open pipeline for academic data export.
The research frontier
Everything in this section describes directions we’re actively exploring and hypotheses we want to validate with scientific partners. It is not a description of outcomes the app delivers or biomarkers it measures today. We’re putting it here, openly, because we think the ambition is worth being honest about.
Longitudinal autonomic adaptation
Whether consistent biofeedback practice produces durable shifts in resting HRV and autonomic balance over months — and how to measure that honestly at the individual level.
Cortisol awakening response (CAR)
CAR as a stress-recovery marker, and whether daily practice correlates with healthier CAR patterns.
Vision — ONDA does not measure cortisol today.
Neuroplasticity correlates (BDNF)
The literature linking contemplative and aerobic practices to neuroplasticity markers such as BDNF, and whether structured breath practice contributes. Early, largely indirect evidence — background reading only.
Vision — not a measured app outcome.
Gamma-band coherence in advanced practitioners
EEG signatures described in long-term meditators, and what a consumer practice can and cannot say about them honestly.
Frontier / experiential — explicitly the “edge of the map,” consistent with the Level 8 copy.
Multi-biomarker, multi-device integration
Extending beyond HRV — combining signals from the wearables people already own into a fuller, still-honest picture of nervous-system state.
Each of these is a direction, not a deliverable. As evidence and our own data mature, anything that proves out moves up into the “what we build on” section above — with citations. Until then, it stays here, clearly marked as what it is.
How we decide what we’re allowed to say
A few commitments that govern this whole site:
▸ We measure what the device can measure — HRV from your wearable, via Apple Health — and we don’t dress surrogate signals up as clinical ones.
▸ The trend beats the number. We won’t gamify a single bad morning reading into anxiety.
▸ A claim earns its place by citation. If a mechanism is in the app, its evidence is on this page. If the evidence isn’t there yet, the claim lives in “where we’re going,” not in the product.
▸ We’d rather show real reviews than fake ones, and real evidence than borrowed authority.
Researchers and partners
We’re building ONDA with people who hold us to the evidence. If you work in autonomic physiology, contemplative neuroscience, digital biomarkers, or HRV research — or you run a study that needs a structured, instrumented breath-practice tool — we’d like to talk.
Get in touch →Sources
These are the mechanisms the app rests on today. The research-frontier directions above are described in hypothesis tense and, where the evidence is still early, left deliberately uncited rather than dressed in a citation.
- [R1] Lehrer PM & Gevirtz R. Resonance-frequency breathing and HRV biofeedback — how and why it works. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19246382/
- [R2] Thayer JF & Lane RD. Heart-rate variability and the neurovisceral integration model. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19463818/
- [R3] Porges SW. Polyvagal theory — neurophysiological foundations of vagal tone. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17049418/
- [R4] Craig AD. Interoception and the insular cortex — the felt sense of the physiological body. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12030437/
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