Recent biomedical research has proven that the heart is far more than just a simple pump. In fact, it works as a highly complex, self-organized information-processing center that transmits messages to your mind and body. These messages can profoundly influence not only your physiological wellbeing, but also how you perceive things, how you feel, how you behave, and how you perform.
HeartMath Intervention (HMI) is about refocusing energy and attention on your heart in order to bridge the chasm between your mind and body, diffuse negative emotions, and regulate your physiologic and emotional response to stress.
Tapping into the intuitive intelligence of the heart has been shown to: enhance mental and physical wellbeing, improve emotional resiliency, accelerate performance, foster creativity, and stimulate mental clarity. Not only that, but HMI can be used to treat a range of emotional issues—such as anxiety, anger, and depression—as well as various stress-related physical ailments, such as chronic pain and high blood pressure.
The theory: HeartMath research indicates that emotions, even more so than thoughts, are what activate and drive our body’s physical response to stress. Negative emotions have been shown to disrupt optimal physiological and mental functions, while positive emotions leave us feeling reenergized as they optimize our body’s natural regenerative processes. This means the key to optimal health and wellbeing is interlinked with our ability to self-regulate those emotions.
How it works: HeartMath enables you to develop new, efficient heart-rhythm patterns using Heart Rate Variability (HRV) training. This training includes practical relaxation techniques and heart-based daily practices that facilitate and reinforce positive emotional shifts. HRV changes are monitored and provide feedback on how your practice is changing your body’s response to stress.
As you focus energy on your heart center, you shift away from knee-jerk negative responses to stress and into a place of love, compassion, and gratitude. Your new-found ability to self-regulate your emotions will leave you feeling empowered and ready to face the world.
The science: Studies have shown that there are significant, beneficial changes in the activity patterns of the autonomic nervous, immune and hormonal systems when we experience emotions such as appreciation, love, care, and compassion. These physiological changes help explain the connection between positive emotions and improved health, as well as increased longevity. HMI tools, techniques, and technologies have all been tested for effectiveness in laboratory studies—as well as intervention studies conducted in educational, organizational, and clinical settings.
Those who can benefit from using HeartMath:
Acute, Chronic, and Recurrent Pain
º Acute procedural pain
º Headaches, migraines
º Chronic pain and fatigue
Psychophysiological Conditions
º Post procedure pain, insomnia
º Irritable bowel syndrome
º Stress related body pain
º Cardiovascular rehab
º Tics/tourette’s syndrome
º Traumatic brain injury
º Phantom pain & amputation
Other Chronic Illness
º Arthritis, asthma, cancer
º Chronic pain and fatigue
º Environmental sensitivity
º Fibromyalgia
º Immune-system dysfunction
º Atopic dermatitis, hypertension
º Muscle spasticity
º Diabetes type I & type II
º Inflammatory bowel disease (crohn’s)
º Reflex sympathetic dystrophy
º Sickle-cell anemia
Learning and Performance Issues
º Performance and test anxiety, ADHD
The facts:
The heart generates the most powerful and most extensive rhythmic electromagnetic field produced in the body—by far. HeartMath researchers have discovered that, when they use electrodes on a person’s body to measure the electrical activity of the heart, the voltage is around 60 times greater in amplitude than the electrical activity produced by the brain.
The magnetic component of the heart’s field is approximately 5,000 times stronger than the magnetic field produced by the brain.
Research has shown that the human nervous system is tuned to the heart fields of others and is able to detect and decode this energetic information. When an individual is in a coherent state (thanks to HeartMath training), their sensitivity and awareness of this encoded information is increased.
Coherent energetic fields are interrelated and act to amplify and mutually reinforce each other.
The heart’s neural circuitry enables it to learn, remember and make functional decisions relative to the heart’s activity—all independent of the cranial brain.
The heart is a hormonal gland that manufactures and secretes numerous hormones and neurotransmitters, including atrial natriurectic factor (ANF), an amino acid polypeptide hormone. This hormone exerts its effects widely: on blood vessels, kidneys, adrenal glands, and a large number of regulatory regions in the brain.
The heart also secretes oxytocin, commonly referred to as the “love” hormone due to its role in social bonding. Remarkably, concentrations of oxytocin produced in the heart are as high as those found in the brain.
The heart communicates with the brain in four ways: a neurological communication through the nervous system (electrical); a biophysical communication – the pulse (pressure wave); a biochemical communication-the hormones (chemical); a energetic communication (electromagnetic).
