Heart coherence is a state in which, through slow rhythmic breathing and focusing on positive emotions such as love and gratitude, our heart rhythms change to a smooth, orderly sine-wave pattern. The heart’s rhythms generate a powerful electromagnetic signal which influences all the other systems in the body, including the brain, nervous system, digestive system, and immune system. It feels wonderful!
One metaphor often used to describe this entrainment is that of the old-time clock-maker’s shop: the grandfather clock with its big pendulum would entrain all the smaller clocks in the shop into its rhythm. The heart’s electromagnetic signal is 6,000 times more powerful than that of the brain! And this energetic field can influence the fields of others around us, whether human or animal.
HeartMath
I love this experiment, which says a lot about our subtle energetic connections:
Dr. Rollin McCraty, chief researcher at the Institute of HeartMath, monitored the heart rhythms of his son, Josh (age 15), and his dog, Mabel, using electrocardiogram devices. Mabel was placed in a room, then Josh entered and consciously directed feelings of love and care towards her without touching her.
Heart Coherence: When Josh focused on positive emotions, his heart rhythms became more coherent. Mabel’s heart rhythms also showed increased coherence shortly after Josh’s emotional shift, suggesting a form of emotional entrainment.
But when Josh left the room, Mabel’s heart rhythms became chaotic and incoherent, indicating signs of separation anxiety.
Energetic Communication: Dr. McCraty believes that this interaction reflects the energetic communication between beings. The heart’s electromagnetic field can influence others nearby, which may explain why emotionally connected individuals—whether human or animal—can affect each other’s states of being.
Heart Insights
“Every life has a problem. Every heart has an answer.” – Institute of HeartMath
Dr. Rita Marie Johnson, founder of “The Connection Practice,” had learned about heart coherence and began teaching it to teachers and students in the schools of Costa Rica. Here’s a wonderful story of the power of heart coherence to generate insights.
A little boy named Gabriel was always grumpy in the morning when his mother woke him up, and continued to be ill-tempered and aggressive throughout the school day. His teacher asked him to make a drawing of how he was feeling, and he drew a picture of himself beating up another kid. Then she asked him to recall an experience when he was happy and relaxed, and he drew a picture of himself at the beach playing while the sun shone and dolphins were swimming nearby.
The teacher guided him to focus on those positive emotions while pretending to breathe in and out through his heart, with his eyes closed. Then she suggested he ask his heart why he was so irritable at school. A minute later, his eyes flew open and he exclaimed, “My heart said I need more sleep!” Then the truth came out: Gabriel loved to read, and while his mother thought he was asleep, he was reading under the covers with a flashlight until late! He never wanted to get up in the morning.
After this realization, he agreed to stop the late-night reading, got more sleep, and his mood improved dramatically. He started getting along with the other children, and the fighting stopped.
This story shows the power of heart coherence to entrain the brain, and thus generate insights that can greatly improve our lives.
Heart insights shine a light
When I took Rita Marie’s class, I had a profound insight about a conflict I’d had with one of my brothers. I had been judgmental toward him because he and his wife had a big house that used a lot of electricity, a John Deere power-mower to care for his large property; he frequently drove long distances, and seemed quite unconcerned about the effect of his lifestyle on the planet’s health. He got angry at my criticisms and didn’t speak to me for over a year.
Rita Marie guided us through exploring our own feelings and needs and those of the other person involved in a conflict, and then entering coherence through heart-focused breathing and invoking a positive emotion (I remembered my cat cuddling up). The insight that came was that my brother loved the natural world as much as I did, although he showed it in a different way. His way was adopting injured and stray animals and helping them back to health. Immediately I felt much more warmly towards him. I reached out by phone and our relationship was much improved.
I went on to become certified to teach the Connection Practice.
A woman in one of my classes wanted to find out whether heart coherence could give her an insight into a troublesome recurring nightmare. In her dream, she was always chagrined to discover that somehow, she had never received the all-important “owner’s manual” for how to live. Her insight was rather simple: There IS no owner’s manual! We all just have to figure it out, and keep asking for guidance as needed. She reported that the recurring nightmare never returned!