Your Heart is the Medicine

Do you find yourself exhausted or overwhelmed in a world gone suddenly upside down? Perhaps you wake up in the morning after what seems to you like a reasonable night’s sleep and still feel as though you are out of energy, out of balance and out of synch in your body and mind as well as with the people around you. You are certainly not alone.

How can we restore a sense of coherence or harmony inside us in spite of the increasing chaos around us? Many people have yoga and meditation practices and that half hour brings them back to center. But what to do when you are in the middle of an ongoing crisis or the traumas are piling up faster than they can be processed? Perhaps you only have five minutes to yourself before you have to go back in there and do what needs to be done in your work, with your children, your patients or clients. The answer to this question is nearer to you than you might imagine!

Heart Intelligence

Your heart is a source of intelligence. We know this from well documented recent scientific studies. Your heart is a processing center which sends signals to your brain and the rest of your body. It has a complex nervous system which is interestingly known as the heart brain. This system produces a powerful electromagnetic field that is imprinted by your emotions.

We all know that we associate elevated emotions with our hearts. Gratitude, compassion, appreciation and love are just some of these emotions. We also know that when we experience having an intuition, we think of it as something we just feel in our hearts to be true. Those feelings bypass the logical, linear mind, bringing us information that we may have missed if we only relied on rational thought.

An exciting discovery in neuroscience has been the evidence that the heart has its own independent nervous system. The heart sends signals to the brain that go to the amygdala, the emotional processing centre and to the thalamus, which synchronises our cortical and higher brain centers. Our brain function is thus dependent on this information for optimal functioning. In fact, our hearts direct our brains more than the other way around!

Radiant Hearts

The heart is an electric organ producing by far the strongest source of bioelectricity. This energy goes to every cell in your body and creates an electromagnetic field surrounding your body 360 degrees, extending beyond into space and measurable up to about 3 feet outside your body. This is one of the reasons that we van feel comforted or soothed in the presence of someone who has a ‘big heart’ or radiates a sense of harmony or coherence. Coherence is the alignment of our hearts, minds and emotions. In this state we are more stable or grounded and have greater access to intuition and improved decision making. How can we quickly bring our own hearts into this state of coherence?

The Heart Math Institute has developed such a technique called Quick Coherence®. This technique can bring you rapid and enormous benefits even if all you have is 3 minutes! Practicing several times a day will bring cascading benefits and you will find yourself facing the next task or challenge with an increased sense of strength and balance. A warmer heart and a cooler mind.

The Technique

Key Words: Focus, Breathe, Feel

*heart focused attention: shift your attention to the center of your chest. you can touch your heart with one finger or hand or wear a necklace that keeps your attention focused on your heart center.

*heart focused breathing: begin to breathe several times more slowly than your usual rhythm and imagine that the breath comes in and out through the centre of your heart

*heart focused feeling: continue the breathing and activate an elevated emotion such as:

gratitude

compassion

love

appreciation

care for someone or something

You may notice as you become accustomed to practicing this technique that it feels organic or intuitive to you as a heart owner. As though you have come home to yourself in a way that feels right or familiar. This is your heart’s wisdom calling you back to the medicine it has carried inside you all along.