Your Amazing Heart

I invite you to place a finger right below your ear, at the end of your jaw, and press in, where, if you pay attention, you will be able to feel the beat of your heart. This steady rhythm has been going on every single moment of your life since you were born! They say your heart beats around 100,000 times a day. Let that in. 100,000 times a day! This factors out to around 2 ½ billion beats during a 70-year lifespan. And the amazing thing – it never stops until it is time to leave your body.

Its beat is so strong it can send blood all throughout your body and bring it back, usually in a vertical climb, to your heart. It also works in tandem with your lungs, so much so that it could be said that they are fraternal twins. When your venous system brings the deoxygenated blood back to your heart, it sends it directly to your lungs to be re-oxygenated and then the lungs send it back to your heart so it can flood your body with this revitalized blood.

When was the last time you thanked this amazing friend embedded in your chest, which is essential to keeping you alive?  Take a moment as you feel its rhythmic beat and send waves of appreciation for how tirelessly it works for you, day in, day out.

Let us go little further into the astounding nature of your heart. It is not just a simple pump like we used to think it was. Science now recognizes it as a highly complex system with its own nervous system, which they call the heart brain. Your intelligent heart can learn, remember and make functional decisions independent of your brain!

One of the most amazing things we are now discovering about the heart’s brain is that with every beat your heart sends out electromagnetic pulses that act as carrier waves for information. In other words, when Chinese medicine calls the heart the Emperor of the body it is true. Waves of data go out with every beat of your heart, literally informing the activity of every single cell of your being, synchronizing the processes in your whole body.

It has also been discovered that when you are upset or just holding your breath, this creates an incoherent pattern in your heart rhythm, which changes the information that is sent out by the heart. What does that look like? Imagine watching a medical program on TV and somebody is hooked up to a heart monitor. If their body is in distress you will see that the heart rhythms are spiky and erratic on the monitor. But when somebody is calm and their breathing pattern is open, the spikes soften, looking more like waves. This is called heart coherence and the information that is sent out on every beat of your heart is much more healing than when your body, mind and heart are in distress.

There are two ways to bathe your whole body, including your brain, with the nourishing energy of a coherent heart. The first is recognize that when you are unsettled, there is a very good chance you are holding your breath. Because your heart is very attuned to the patterns of your breath, when you are holding your breath, the heart picks up this unease and sends this unsettledness out with every beat. 

You can have great influence on whether your heart is in coherence or not. When you notice you are unsettled, for at least a few breaths, breathe long, slow out-breaths, and then allow a deeper in breath. You can even say the wonderful sound of letting go on your out breath – ahhh. 

As you settle into this kind of breathing, invite yourself to rest in its rhythm. When I am upset, I immediately tune into my breath and just like a mother rocks a frightened child, I feel my whole being soothed by this rhythm. As my open breath sends calm to my heart, it begins to open whereas a minute or so before I had no access to its nourishing wisdom. And not only are things clearer when my breath has brought my heartbeat back into coherence but my whole being feels more grounded, open, calm and alive.

The other way to bring coherence into your heart and thus to your whole being is to allow yourself to generate feelings that are natural to an open heart like gratitude, kindness, compassion, thankfulness, care, appreciation, or love. This is not just thinking about these feelings. Truly feel them in your body. With every in breath, breathe them through your heart and on every out breath, send them cascading all throughout your body. And if you’re noticing something in particular that is upset – a thought, feeling, or sensation – you can send this kind of nourishment directly to it on your out breath. 

If it is hard to access a heart feeling, then think of somebody you truly care about. It could be somebody living and or dead and even a beloved pet. Then draw this feeling into your heart on the in breath and send it out to them on the out breath. And then be sure before you end, to send it to yourself to.

Both ways bring coherence back into your heart, which then sends waves of healing energy all over your body allowing you to access the field of wisdom and calm that is always with you. The other wonderful gift from heart coherence is that they now understand the electromagnetic field of your heart extends beyond your body. What this means is the more you are in coherence, wherever you go, you radiate the healing energy that this planet is so desperately in need of.