Some of the most useful journal entries happen right after something difficult — a tense conversation, a stressful afternoon, a moment that won't leave your head. Those are also the hardest entries to write honestly, because the nervous system is still running hot.
v1.1 ships StillHaven, a companion module built into MoodHaven Journal to help with that.
What it does
StillHaven plays alternating left-right audio tones — bilateral stimulation — at a gentle, adjustable pace. You rate how wound up you feel before and after (1–10), run a session of whatever length feels right, and then write. The session summary drops directly into the writing view as a starting point, with your activation delta, duration, and a blank note field to capture whatever shifted.
It's not a guided therapy session. It's a settling tool, the same way a few minutes of slow breathing or a short walk is a settling tool. The rhythm gives your nervous system something external to track while the intensity of whatever happened starts to metabolise.
Two protocols
The initial release ships with two protocols:
General Grounding — steady bilateral rhythm, 0.8 Hz default. Works for most situations: general stress, a day that felt too full, persistent low-level anxiety.
Fake Danger Reset — a slightly faster starting pace, used when the activation feels more like a false alarm than a genuine threat. The body treats anticipatory anxiety and traffic-noise stress the same way it treats real danger. A reset protocol acknowledges that the activation was real even if the danger wasn't.
More protocols are planned. The column is open-text in the database, so adding them later requires no schema migration.
Bio-adaptive pace
If you have an Oura Ring connected, StillHaven reads today's HRV and readiness score at check-in and adjusts the starting pace accordingly. High HRV and readiness means your system is already relatively settled — the session starts softer. Low scores mean you likely need more help, so the rhythm starts a bit faster to engage the settling response.
If you're on Android with a Wear OS watch, the watch can send live heart rate signals during the session. The engine smooths these with exponential averaging and adjusts speed in near real-time. This requires the watch companion app to be sending health_snapshot signals — the desktop half is ready, the watch-side Kotlin code is the next phase.
Neither data source is required. Without them, the session runs at the protocol default and does exactly what it always did.
Session history
Every session is logged — activation before and after, protocol used, duration, time of day. The Sessions view shows a 30-day trend chart, your average activation drop, and which protocol you reach for most. Over time, this becomes a picture of what actually works for you, not what's supposed to work.
Privacy
The same rules that apply to your journal apply to StillHaven. Session data stays on your device. The bilateral audio runs entirely client-side — there are no API calls, no external services, no telemetry. HRV data from Oura is cached locally and read only at session start; it is never written into journal content.
How to use it
StillHaven is off by default. Enable it in Settings → Health — there's a toggle with a brief consent notice about what it is and isn't. Once enabled, it appears in the sidebar alongside your other views.
Start with a short session, five minutes or so, and see how you feel before and after. If the activation drop is consistent, it's working. If not, try the other protocol or a different time of day.
It's a tool. Use it if it helps. Ignore it if it doesn't.
What's next
The immediate roadmap for StillHaven includes more protocols (sleep preparation, post-conflict reset) and deeper integration with the journal itself — linking the activation data to the entry mood score, so you can see over time whether lower pre-write activation correlates with different kinds of entries.
The full source is on GitHub. The FAQ has answers to common questions about how StillHaven works and when it's not appropriate.