Heart Math

In this week’s episode of Your Best Life, Karl interviews Howard Martin, who is the Executive Vice President of HeartMath LLC. Howard is an internationally sought-after speaker and shares the HeartMath approach to advancing human performance, which is a teaching method based on compelling scientific research that links heart function to overall health, emotional wellbeing, and intelligence. Howard is the co-author of The HeartMath Solution and The HeartMath Method audio series. During this episode, you’ll learn what HeartMath is and how you can use it in your everyday life.

Main Questions Asked:

• What is HeartMath, and should we be teaching it in elementary and secondary schools?
• Explain what coherence is.
• How does heart rate variability fit in with wanting to get into a cadence that is consistent?
• Is biofeedback part of HeartMath?
• Talk about measuring heart rate changes.

Key Lessons Learned:

What is HeartMath?

• HeartMath is a new view of physiology and psychology.
• This is a system of methods, techniques, and technology underpinned with scientific research.
• People use their ‘heart’ to decide on problems when they can’t use a linear logical process. HeartMath helps people empower themselves in common language.
• The physical heart is an information processing part of the body that sends powerful commands to the brain and throughout the system.
• For many years, we believed the heart was parasympathetic with no active communication. We now know this is untrue.

Four Ways The Heart Communicates

1) Neurological

• The heart has a complex nervous system that is studied through neuroradiology.
• Next to the brain, the heart’s nervous system is the most complex.
• The heart sends more information to the brain than it receives from the brain.

2) Biophysical

• Brain function is influenced by how the heart beats.
• The pulse is a wave of energy created by the squeezing of the heart muscle known as the blood pressure wave.
• The blood pressure wave changes depending on how the heart is beating, and influences biological functioning.
• Electrical activity in our brain is synchronized to changes occurring in the blood pressure wave.

3) Who Knew?

• The heart produces oxytocin (the love hormone) and is produced in greater amounts when we are in loving states.
• In 1983, the heart was reclassified as not only being a cardiovascular organ but also a hormonal gland.

4) Energetic Communication

• We connect in unseen and dynamic ways, which taps into quantum physics.
• The heart is an electrical organ, with the electrical energy permeating every single cell in the body. This is strong enough to create an electromagnetic field.
• The electromagnetic field extends 3-4 feet into the space that surrounds each person 360 degrees.
• The energy in our individual 360-degree field changes constantly and is mediated by our emotional state.
• If we are feeling frustrated or angry, it produces an ‘incoherent’ specter in that field. If we are producing a feeling of love, then we broadcast a more ‘ordered’ field.

The Heart Receives Information

• We need to look at the heart as a sensory apparatus and not just a pump.
• The heart picks up information from a quantum field, which is interpreted into thoughts. The brain is not necessarily the source of this.
• We receive information through a variety of sensory apparatus.

What is HeartMath Useful For?

• When in touch with the heart’s intelligence, it gives us the ability to regulate our emotions, to be able to make choices instead of having an emotional reaction.
• HeartMath is used to turn emotion into something that is not reactive and something to be fearful of.

Coherence

• This is the optimal state called psychophysiological coherence, which is physical and psychological.
• Coherence is triggered naturally when we experience a positive emotion.
• This is measured by heart rate variability.

Heart Rate Variability

• We have the most range of variability when we are first born.
• This is measuring the beat-to-beat timing changes in heart rate.
• We want a wide range of speeds in which the heart can operate.
• Heart rate variability is an excellent measure of aging in addition to cardiovascular health and the heart-brain-body communication.
• Biofeedback: a definitive discipline that measures brainwave activity, which means you get feedback from your biology.
• The rhythmic beating of the heart is always supposed to be changing, and what affects it most is movement.

The Inner Balance Trainer

• This is the HeartMath app available for iPhone, Android, and desktop.
• Attach to ear and do the exercises.
• It will show you your heart rate variability pattern and scores it for the level of coherence it is in.

Thank you for listening!

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Links to Resources Mentioned

HeartMath.com
HeartMath.org
The Inner Balance Trainer
EmWave Pro (Desktop)
E (Desktop emWave 2 (Android)

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