Posted on 14 Apr, 2011 -
The brain inside your heart
How the mind and body are even more connected than we thought
Does such a thing as an ‘invisible’ mind even exist?
How a method for creating ‘Heart Coherence’ can calm down the heart, cure stress and anxiety and make your body feel happier… (Instructions below)
Dear Reader,
We often think of our emotions as being non-physical things - floating through us, perhaps, like ghosts.
Emotions, however, are very much grounded in the physical. Neurons in the brain create networks of thought. Hormones such as adrenaline or oxytocin create feelings of anxiety or blissful love (respectively).
We are also already aware ourselves that feelings are often actually felt in the body - whether it’s that physical lightness you get when you’re happy… that knotted up, faint or agitated feeling you get when you’re anxious… or that headache or gut pain you know is connected to some form of stress or strain.
Now here’s the new and amazing bit of news: scientists have recently discovered that both the heart and the digestive system have their own networks of neurons that act as small brains with their own form of perception and reaction. We also know that the heart creates its own hormones - including oxytocin…
When your heart is unhappy, your health is at risk
Everyone is familiar with the expression ‘she died of a broken heart’. And the heart does literally stop beating when a person gives up the will to live. We are also aware ourselves of how the heart is immediately affected by any levels of anxiety or stress - by beating faster, say, or making us break out in a sweat.
In a brilliant book called ‘Healing Without Freud or Prozac’, Dr David Servan-Schreiber says that
”The relationship between the emotional brain and the ‘small brain’ in the heart is one of the keys to emotional mastery. By learning how to control our heart, we learn how to gain mastery of our emotional brain, and vice versa.”
He also gives an excellent introduction to the Coherence Training Method which enables you to do just that: To connect with your heart, to learn how to control it, and to enjoy better physical and emotional health thanks to this new found calm or ‘coherence’.
How calming the chaos of the heart can cure both physical and emotional sickness and ‘burn out’
Extensive research into the rhythms of the heart have shown that when we are feeling emotions such as anxiety, stress, anger or sadness, a pattern of chaos is seen in our cardiac frequency. When we are experiencing positive emotions such as deep relaxed joy or strong, gentle love, a pattern of coherence (a regular pattern of mild alteration in heat beat rate) is seen.
Cardiac coherence, in itself, fills us with a feeling of contentment and well-being and has a very positive effect on other physical systems such as blood pressure and breathing.
By using a method which teaches how to create heart coherence at will, hundreds of research patients and now students of the method have already discovered how it can stop palpitations, dramatically reduce stress, anxiety, insomnia and anger. People suffering from ‘burn out’ or who feel ‘exhausted’ all the time also feel a huge improvement as a large amount of energy is wasted in chaotic heart functioning.
Astonishing results from heart coherence training
Heart coherence was first described in 1992 by physicist Dan Winter. More recently, the techniques and practical applications have been developed and made available to the public by a company called HeartMath which now also has a branch in the UK.
Thousands of people have now been trained in this method including executives from major corporations such as Shell, BP, Hewlett Packard, Uniliver and HSBC.
A month after training, massive improvements in health have been recorded in all the groups. The drop of blood pressure in one group, for example, was the same as could have been expected from a 20 lb weight loss.
Another study saw a doubling in levels of DHEA, the hormone called the ‘youth’ hormone and a drop in the stress hormone cortisol which is associated with higher blood pressure, skin ageing and loss of memory and concentration. Other improvements noted included an improvement in premenstrual symptoms in women and an overall strengthening of the immune system…
And the good news is that you can learn to practice the method at home!
Try it for yourself now!
Dr Servan-Schreiber recommends you try it for 15 minutes each night before bedtime. But you can do it at any time of the day. As often as you like. And in a lot of the studies, the subjects have been asked to do it for 30 minutes a day.
The important thing is that you set by some time to dedicate to this exercise - and to your amazing heart and brain - exclusively.
There are three stages:
Stage 1. All you need to do here is take two deep, slow breaths. Really concentrate on the breath, being aware of how slow and long the outward breath is in particular. Pause for a few seconds between each breath. “The point is to let your mind float with the out-breath right up to the point where it lightens up, becoming mellow and buoyant inside your chest.”
Stage 2. Carry on breathing slowly and deeply but effortlessly and focus your mind on your heart, imagining that you are breathing through your heart. You may wish to imagine the intake of each breath of oxygen as bringing nourishment to the body and the heart. Each out-breath gets rid of any waste or toxins. Make your heart feel that you are giving it your full love, attention and thanks.
”You might visualise your heart as a child in a bath of lukewarm water where it floats and frolics freely, at its own pace, without constraints or obligations. Like a beloved child at play, you ask her only to be herself. You watch her thriving in her natural element, as you continue to supply gentle love and enveloping air.”
Stage 3. “The third stage consists in becoming aware of the sensation of warmth or expansiveness that is developing in your chest, and in fostering and encouraging it with your thoughts and your breath.”
Depending on how much we have abandoned our heart and subjected it to emotional abuse in the past, it may take some time to bring the heart round to believing in your attention and opening up to and absorbing it. It will help if you think of positive scenes where you have felt happy and relaxed such as peaceful scenes in nature- or of people, places or animals that you love. The heart, apparently, responds particularly well to being bathed in feelings of love and gratitude and recognition.
For myself personally I found it useful to think of the general benevolence and beauty of the universe. Some people can produce the same effect through prayer or the use of repeated mantras.
What should you feel?
You will start feeling the effects of practising this method immediately. After a couple of weeks you will have ‘strengthened the muscles’ as it were and a more coherent state will set in more naturally and more often.
Whenever you feel angered or anxious you will be able to induce this state in order to clear your mind and communicate more effectively with your heart. Some people even find they actually start literally talking to their heart and asking it for its wisdom!
The UK branch of Heartmath
As I say, you should be able to achieve great things by practising the heart coherence method at home.
If, however you have trouble practicing this method yourself or wish to explore it more, there are programmes you can attend and also software you can buy that enable you to monitor and watch exactly what your heart rate is doing at any time.
The company that supply these tools is HeartMath UK. Their website is http://www.heartmath.co.uk
Best wishes for a happy heart!
