The Heart
The human heart as light of guiding wisdom and source of love
Mystics consider the heart as the center of the soul’s unity, love and compassion consciousness. It is our central inner fire, just as the sun represents the fire at the center of our solar system.
All organisms on this planet use vibration, a.k.a. energy, as the primary means of communication.
Quantum physics teaches us that everything in this universe is made out of immaterial energy, and everything radiates energy. It is a given fact of science that every atom and every molecule absorbs and radiates energy, including you.
Because all organisms are made out of atoms, molecules and cells, you and I and every living thing are radiating energy, vibes.
All organisms broadcast unique vibratory signatures. The heart is the receiving and responding organ that reads our energy fields.
The average human heart, a hollow muscle, beating at 72 beats per minute, will beat approximately 2.5 billion times during an average 66 year lifespan.
It pumps blood throughout the body, which is made up of about 50 trillion cells by repeated, rhythmic contractions. The heart orchestrates a harmony of rhythms which serve as barometers of the heart’s status and health.
The optimal state for your heart, mind and all processes in your body is marked by coherent, or smooth and balanced heart rhythms.
Awareness of your heart coherence is one of the smartest, healthiest, easiest and fastest ways to improve the quality of your cognitive, hormonal, digestive, respiratory and immune systems, and thereby the quality of your life.
Sound and music, amongst many other elements, contribute to establishing and cultivating your heart coherence.
The Heart Brain
Neurocardiologists have discovered that there is literally a brain in the heart – that the heart itself is a brain
They have found that an amazing 60 - 65 % of heart cells are neural cells like those in your brain. These cells are clustered in groups, or ganglia, just like the neural groupings of the brain, and the same neurotransmitters function in both places. These connections provide the pathway of nonstop, direct dialogue – or resonance – between our head and heart. In addition, the heart’s ganglia connect to many other tiny ganglia, or “nonlocalized brains”, scattered throughout the body. The “heartbrain” communicates within the body neurally, hormonally, and energetically.
The hearts’ electromagnetic field
Heart cells not only pulse, they radiate a strong electrical field or signal, a current that has an amplitude 40 – 60 times greater than brain waves.
Energy – information that vibrates – flows constantly between the heart and the brain, assisting with emotional processing, sensory experience, memory and derivation of meaning from events, and reasoning.
In addition, the heart is one of the body’s major endocrine glands, producing at least five major hormones, which impact the physiological functions of the brain and body.
The heart has long been known as the center of the body, as well as the home of the soul. Under the correct conditions, such as when a person consciously “centers” or focuses in the heart, the heart begins to run the brain.
Entrainment or the management of the body through the heart rather than brain leads to higher functioning mental and emotional states, as well as a healthier body.
The heart’s electromagnetic field (EMF), which is 5,000 times stronger than that of the brain, is strong enough to be measured as far as 15 feet around the body
We are constantly receiving information, sometimes called “background noise”, from outside of ourselves
Just consider the impact of sound, or words, we continuously receive. Highly synchronized cells, such as those compactly organized in the heart, are able to use background noise to increase the amplitude of an incoming signal – if they are interested in perceiving it.
Thus, the heart will “hear” what it is programmed to “hear”. If love resides in the heart, it will attune to love. If fear, greed, or envy resides within, the heart will access negativity.
Most people believe that the brain initiates the first response to incoming events and then orders our reactions
Analysis reveals, however, that incoming information first impacts the heart, and through the heart, the brain and the rest of the body. Imagine the implications of that and how the rhythm of the heart directly influences your life's flow…
Sound of the heart
Your beat
Heartbeats are like the contracting and expanding movements of the universe. Your heart is as essential to life as the sun to our solar system.
Among the first sounds you experienced in your mother’s womb were the internally resounding rhythms of her heart. Sounds that can also be interpreted as the steady beat of a drum or the rhythmic drone of gongs.
The heart’s physical centrality to your existence has its correspondence in the undeniable reality of emotions: variable heartbeat frequencies indicating different feelings of affection, desire and delight, as well as pounding out our rages, fears and vulnerabilities.
Your choice
The heart, like the sun, is the central source of life, the seat of power, courage and strength.
When caught up in inner turmoil and incoherence, become aware that you are controlled by ‘chaotic’ rhythms. Pause and shift your internal rhythm. Breathe and go to your heart. Find a rhythm to come back to balance.
It is a choice, because in just one minute, you can be back in a more coherent and calm state. With that you can consciously take a deeper look at the situation a bit more practically, without the emotional ups and downs.
Your solution
Consciously going to your heart will help you stop the energy drain and find a new rhythm that feels right to you.
It all begins with taking in fresh energy with several deep breaths, all the way down into your belly, releasing the old while anchoring yourself in the present moment.
Follow and amplify it with positive thoughts....and voila you instantly change your inner rhythm. The key is to practice this simple momentum changer often, very often, until it becomes second nature.
Choose from the following two sound samples, both very contrasting in nature
Sounds influence and contribute to your state of being. Observe your heart and body as you listen
Sound is one of many ways to attain a state of heart coherence. Do you experience dissonance..., or inner resonance and harmony?
Notice your heart, how do these samples make you feel...?
Easy ways to reach Heart Coherence
Coherence is an optimal state in which the heart, mind and emotions are aligned and in-sync. Physiologically, the immune, hormonal and nervous systems function in a state of energetic coordination.
Some of the emotions that create coherence are:
Appreciation & Gratitude
Ease
Empathy
Care
Compassion
Adventure
Tolerance & Patience
Enjoyment
For us, these result in a feeling of harmony and sense of resonance, of being tuned in with the universal energy field.
How you can build up your resilience
Your level of energy, or vibration and personal frequency, determines your resilience to deal with the broad variety of stressors in your life. Resilience is the capacity to prepare for, recover from and adapt in the face of stress, challenge or adversity. It is especially important for preventing stress buildup and wasted time and energy.
While there are many ways, probably different ones for each of us, to increase one’s resilience, here are the different dimensions of resilience that constitute the building blocks of coherence:
Physical
physical flexibility, endurance and strength
Mental
mental flexibility, attention span, optimistic worldview, incorporating multiple point of view
Emotional
emotional flexibility, positive feelings, self regulation, relationships, ease instead of resistance
Spiritual
spiritual flexibility, commitment to core values, tolerance of other’s values and beliefs, intuition
There are many ways
to discover, cultivate and incorporate helpful elements of them into your life, such as Yoga, Qi-gong, Tai-Chi, regular massage, walks in nature, healthy foods, reading, love, affirmations, visualizations etc. You hold the keys to discover what works best for you, experiment and have fun with it.
Meditation
or various forms of sound assisted meditation, is one of the many ways to raise your awareness in consciously recognizing that you even need to work on the above 4 aspects.
Meditation, and how to go best about it, is still an enigma for many. There are numerous forms of meditation, but at its basic fundamental level meditation is about becoming aware of your passing thoughts in a non-judgmental, mindful way.
Essentially all of life can be viewed as a meditation.
An easy way to practice meditation is to hold a vision or word in your minds eye, i.e. freedom, love, gratitude, compassion, patience etc. and to repeat it frequently and silently for 10 - 20 minutes, or less or more.
As you do it observe and become aware of your untamed mind…and remember to practice, practice, practice.
The heart chakra
The 7 main chakras are energy centers or energy points that run up and down the body, roughly alongside the spine.
The 3 lower chakras (the solar plexus, sacral, and root) represent the influence of our physical biology, specifically physiology, in shaping our life. The 3 upper chakras (the crown, third eye, and throat) represent the influences derived from our consciousness, our psychology.
The middle chakra is the heart chakra, which represents unconditional love for self and others.
“The heart of mankind, once expanded, becomes larger than all the heavens.”
When all 7 of the chakras are aligned, there are no energy blocks; energy flows freely through every one of these energy centers. The significance of the heart chakra in the middle is because when you align your physiology and your psychology, when you love yourself so others can love you and you can love others, your heart will expand and open to the people around you and to the world you live in.
Stress and Fear affect
your heart coherence
Stress on the other hand is the primary cause for illness and accounts for up to 90 percent of all doctor visits. Depleting emotions such as fear, frustration, impatience and anger prompt toxic feelings. They cause the release of stress hormones, often resulting in reduced muscle mass, brain cell death, impaired memory, accelerated aging, impaired mental function and diminished performance.
Remember the 50 trillion cells mentioned above?
Cells can only be in one mode or the other –
growth or protection
The logical extension of this is that by living in fear, you cause a state of general closure and non-growth, or blocked evolution, in your own system. By cultivating love, empathy, and compassion, you move toward transformation and transparency.
The Heart as a gateway to Truth
The heart shares with the rose and lotus flower the qualities of the hidden, enfolded center beneath the outer surface of things, the secret abode of consciousness.
As the seat of all emotions, “positive” or “negative”, the heart is the point of contact for linkings of love or hatred, compassion or envy, courage or fear, brightest joy or deepest sorrow.
Above all, watch your thinking and the resulting thoughts, especially now that you learned how the brain and heart are connected.
The subconscious mind is associated with the neural activity of approximately 90% of the brain and has a profoundly more powerful influence on our behavior than the conscious mind.
The conscious mind’s prefrontal cortex can process and manage the relatively measly 40 nerve impulses per second. In contrast, the subconscious mind’s platform can process 40 million nerve impulses per second. That makes the subconscious mind’s processor 1 million times more powerful than the conscious minds!
Feed yourself good and positive thoughts, often, your entire system will reap immediate benefits!
Live and enjoy the fact that you are the creator, not the victim of your life. You can have the kinds of relationships you want by using your brain and your heart as the tuning fork that resonates with what you want to create. Avoid thinking about what you don’t want to bring into your life. You are manifesting your life. You have the freedom to create what you want to create.
Choose wisely and choose often.
As you can surmise, we can assist you in that process
In Gratitude for the valuable resources making the research for this entry possible, The Institute of HeartMath and books of Dr. Bruce Lipton, Penney Pierce, Cyndi Dale and Shiva Rea. Be sure to look them up.