Excerpted from The Vitality Code.

If you have reached this page from The Vitality Code in the bonus section, you will find the Heart & Brain Coherence Meditation at the foot. If you came here via any other way, there is a meditation at the end! 

Tapping into Your Heart-Brain

“HeartMath found that five minutes of feeling love and care can strengthen your immune system for up to six hours, whereas five minutes of feeling angry can weaken and suppress the immune system for six hours. Love releases very powerful, beneficial chemicals into the body” — Marci Shimoff

The emotions of gratitude and appreciation quite literally change our biology. And the longer we are in this state, the greater the effect. Combine this with heart-focused breathing and have you have what I call a “supercharged” meditation.

It’s official: Your heart is more than a pump, considerably more. Solid science is showing us now that the heart is, in itself, a little brain. Decades of research have shown us that we can leverage it for deep intuition and healing — on demand. Time to take the woo woo out of spirituality. Here, we will cover:

• The discovery of the heart-brain
• The heart’s memory
• Communication between heart brain and head brain
• Creating a healing environment in the body on demand
• Tuning into intuition on demand

If you understand the science of epigenetics, you’ll relate to how our perception of our world around us influences our biology.  How we react to, and perceive events in our lives determines the health of our gut (where inflammation begins), our blood, our cells, all of our organs, and ultimately, our Vitality.

We have all heard sayings like “follow your heart,” “heart’s desire,” and questions such as, “What does your heart say?” Could there be more to these sayings? In 1991, a profound discovery in Montreal revealed brain-like cells in the heart, called ”sensory neurites.” Forty thousand of them, in fact. In other words, there is a brain in the heart. It is now referred to as “the little brain in the heart.” This discovery inspired a mountain of research led by the HeartMath Institute, which has studied the role of the heart in the body, the heart-brain connection, the heart-brain-gut connection, the magnetic field of the heart and the brain, how heart rate variability affects bodily functions like the immune system, the role of our emotions, and so much more.

Researchers there discovered that the “heart brain” acts independent of the head brain, but they communicate. The head brain is the programmed intellect — what we pick up from life experience, parents, education, peers, books, TV, the news, etc. The heart´s intelligence is independent. Intriguingly, the majority of communication travels from the heart brain to the head brain, not the other way around. This begs the question: Where does the heart get its intelligence from? This will be revealed in Chapter 12 of The Vitality Code, Going Quantum. The heart’s intelligence forms part of what we know of as our intuition (together with the gut brain), and the heart´s intelligence is unfiltered. This means it does not get processed via the head brain first. Isn’t that fascinating?

The heart brain contains memory. There are anecdotal stories about people who have undergone a heart transplant, received a heart from a deceased person, and formed new memories, habits and even addictions to foods they never used to like. There is one famous story of the murder of an 8-year-old girl. The person who received the heart of the murdered little girl had repeated nightmares of being murdered. Their nightmares became so vivid that the person, after seeing various professionals, went to the police where artists created impressions of the descriptions of the dreams. These artist impressions were put out into the public eye as a “Wanted” advertisement. The murderer stepped forward and handed himself in. Quite an extreme example, but mind blowing. The heart holds memory, and is, in and of itself, a brain.

Knowing about the heart’s intelligence, scientifically, helps to take the woo woo out of spirituality, and to find meaning to the sayings we hear around the heart as a guidance organ.

The more we tune into the heart, the more we can follow our heart, and the more we get to be guided by our heart. We get to also sense false information immediately — without having to do any form of research. It’s like your own internal “BS meter.” I also believe that the more we create coherence between the heart and the brain, the less we stress, and the more balanced and harmonious we are. Connect to your heart, feel the emotions of love, appreciation, gratitude, joy, and love, and feel not only your body improving, and KNOW that your immune system is upgrading.

HeartMath Science

I want to credit this whole section to Heartmath.com, where they have extensively researched communication between the heart and brain. HeartMath research has demonstrated that different patterns of heart activity (which accompany different emotional states) affect mental and emotional functions in unique ways. For example, when a person experiences stress and negative emotions, the Heart Rate Variability (HRV) is disordered and becomes erratic. This causes a pattern of neural signals from the heart to the brain to prevent higher mental/cognitive functions.

It therefore inhibits our ability to think clearly, concentrate, recall, learn, reason, and make sound decisions. (As such, it is usual to act on impulse when reacting under stress.) Also, during stressful or negative emotions, the effect of the heart´s signal on the brain causes an enhancement of the emotional experience of stress — to add insult to injury!

On the other hand, when a person is experiencing positive emotions, the HRV becomes more orderly, and this positively impacts brain function that enhances cognitive/mental performance and stimulates emotional stability and reinforces positive feelings, how we think, perceive, feel, and perform. This also positively impacts the entire body, improving immune markers and many biological functions.

Your Heart’s Irregular Rhythm

Scientists now know that the rhythm of a healthy heart is irregular, even when at rest, with the time interval between consecutive heartbeats changing constantly. This beat-to-beat variation is called Heart Rate Variability (HRV).

Source: https://www.heartmath.com/science/

“The normal variability in heart rate is due to the synergistic action of the two branches of the autonomic nervous system (ANS)—the part of the nervous system that regulates most of the body’s internal functions. The sympathetic nerves act to accelerate heart rate, while the parasympathetic (vagus) nerves slow it down. The sympathetic (stress or fight-or-flight response), and parasympathetic (relax, regenerate, repair) branches of the ANS are always interacting to maintain cardiovascular activity in its optimal range and to permit appropriate reactions to changing external and internal conditions.” (Heartmath.com) HRV therefore is a useful indicator as to the function and balance of the ANS.

Why Is HRV Important?

HRV is an important indicator of health and fitness. As a marker of resilience, physiologically, it suggests our ability to be able to adapt well to stress and external demands.

HRV is also a measure of aging, higher when we are young, and lessor as we age. Even though HRV declines with age, naturally, an abnormally low HRV for a certain age group is correlated with an increased risk of future health problems and premature death. Individuals with a wide range of diseases and disorders exhibit Low HRV.

“By reducing stress-induced wear and tear on the nervous system and facilitating the body’s natural regenerative processes, regular practice of HeartMath heart & brain coherence techniques can help restore low HRV to healthy values.”

Creating Heart & Brain Coherence is what I call a “supercharged” meditation. Sign up to my mailing list at VitalitySecret.com/book and you can receive my Heart & Brain Coherence meditation when it is ready.

Heart Rhythm Patterns and Emotions

“Many factors affect the activity of the ANS, and therefore influence HRV. These include our breathing patterns, physical exercise, and even our thoughts. Research at the HeartMath Institute has shown that one of the most powerful factors that affect our heart’s changing rhythm is our feelings and emotions.When our varying heart rate is plotted over time, the overall shape of the waveform produced is called the heart rhythm pattern. HeartMath research has found that the emotions we experience directly affect our heart rhythm pattern – and this, in turn, tells us much about how our body is functioning.

In general, emotional stress – including emotions such as anger, frustration, and anxiety — gives rise to heart rhythm patterns that appear irregular and erratic: The HRV waveform looks like a series of uneven, jagged peaks (an example is shown in the figure below). This is an incoherent heart rhythm pattern and indicates that the signals produced by the two branches of the ANS are out of sync with each other. This can be likened to driving a car with one foot on the gas pedal (the sympathetic nervous system) and the other on the brake (the parasympathetic nervous system) at the same time – this creates a jerky ride, burns more gas, and isn’t great for your car, either!”

Incoherent patterns associated with stressful emotions can cause our body to operate inefficiently, deplete our energy, and produce extra wear and tear on our whole system. This is especially true if stress and negative emotions are experienced for extended periods of time.

“In contrast, positive emotions send a very different signal throughout our body. When we experience uplifting emotions such as appreciation, joy, care, and love, our heart rhythm pattern becomes highly ordered, looking like a smooth, harmonious wave (an example is shown in the second figure below). This is called a coherent heart rhythm pattern. This indicates that the two branches of the autonomic nervous system (ANS) are synchronized and the body’s systems operate with increased efficiency and harmony.”

When we feel good and experience positive emotions, we are actually helping our body’s systems to synchronize and function more optimally. It’s no wonder positive emotions feel so good! Can you see how this ties in with The Honeymoon Effect, as illustrated by Dr. Bruce Lipton?