HEART & MIND CONNECTION
How The Heart-Brain Connection Works
Greg Braden explains heart-brain connection works:
• Every moment of every day, your a heart is having a conversation with your brain
• Around the heart is a field of energy 3-5 feet in diameter.
• Every moment of every day your heart is sending signals to your brain instructing it to send what kind of energy to different parts of your body.
• Science has now revealed that atoms are concentrated fields of energy
• If you change the field of energy in which the atom lives, you change the structure of the atom. You can change the field electrically or magnetically.
• Our hearts are the strongest bio-electrical and magnetic field generators in our body. Our hearts generate stronger electrical fields than out brain.
• Our hearts are 5000 times stronger magnetically than our brain
• The EKG of our heart is 100 times stronger than the EEG, the electrical information of our brains.
• So, it is electrical signals or frequencies generated internally that influence the the Brain on how much and where to send energy to different parts of the body.
• Our heart literally has its own brain. It is called ‘Neural Intelligence’
• New meaning to the role of the heart as it directly affects Human Performance
• When the signals being sent to the brain are at optimum frequency, that’s when one reaches an optimum state of coherence throughout the body.
The Importance of Resilience by HeartMath Institute
This short video explains a practical resilience model, how it relates to coherence and the how much energy we have each day to do what’s really important in our lives.
What is HRV – Heart Rate Variability
HRV is an accurate, non-invasive measure of the Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) – which responds to everything: how you exercise, recover, eat, sleep and perceive stress. Unlike basic heart rate (HR) that counts the number of heartbeats per minute, HRV looks much closer at the exact changes in time between successive heartbeats (also called inter-beat intervals, RR intervals, NN intervals, etc).
Real World Application of HRV
HRV is being used to:
- Improve resilience and adaptability
- Reduce stress
- Optimize training and recovery
- Personalize nutrition and sleep
- Improve mental health – mood, depression, anxiety
- Improve mental performance and cognition
- Identify risk of disease, morbidity and mortality
- Measure systemic inflammation
- Track progress and guide treatment plans
- Re-balance the nervous system with live biofeedback
- Objectively understand motivation and willpower
- Provide early warning signs for changes in health and over training
Mysteries of the Heart
The Spiritual Heart — is in a way a little like a smart phone, invisibly connecting us to a large network of information. It is through an unseen energy that the heart emits that humans are profoundly connected to all living things. The energy of the heart literally links us to each other. Every person’s heart contributes to a ‘collective field environment.’ This short video explains the importance of this connection and how we each add to this collective energy field. The energetic field of the heart even connects us with the earth itself.
GREGG BRADEN: “Our ElectroMagnetic HEART Affects Reality”
An amazing account by Gregg Braden of how science has learned about the power of the heart to influence the environment. The power of the heart’s electro-magnetic field and the ability to “mirror” the internal emotion out into our world is discussed in detail.
The Heart’s Intuitive Intelligence: A path to personal, social and global coherence
The Spiritual Heart — is in a way a little like a smart phone, invisibly connecting us to a large network of information. It is through an unseen energy that the heart emits that humans are profoundly connected to all living things. The energy of the heart literally links us to each other. Every person’s heart contributes to a ‘collective field environment.’ This short video explains the importance of this connection and how we each add to this collective energy field. The energetic field of the heart even connects us with the earth itself.
Your Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) in a Nutshell
The ANS consists of two branches:
Your Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) controls the unconscious bodily processes and influences the functions of internal organs. Some internal processes regulated by the ANS:
- Heart rate
- Blood pressure
- Body temperature
- Electrolyte balance
- Digestion
- Respiratory rate
- Pupillary response
- Urination
- Sexual arousal
The Sympathetic Nervous System controls your body’s “fight or flight” reactions in response to internal or external stressors. It stimulates blood glucose (to fuel your muscles), pupil dilation (to see tigers better), slows digestion/peristalsis (to focus energy on the present danger), and increases heart rate (to ensure adequate blood circulation to run or fight). The SNS is ideally activated to overcome short term stress situations such as running from a tiger or fighting an intruder. But this same response also occurs when you exercise, perform challenging mental tasks, get into an argument.
The Parasympathetic Nervous System controls your body’s “rest and digest” responses and is associated with recovery. Parasympathetic activation conserves energy, constricts pupils, aids digestion, and slows heart rate. The PSNS is meant to help build for the long term and is needed to grow faster, stronger, and healthier.
The SNS and PSNS control the same organs with opposite effects. Both branches are always working and both are needed to maintain homeostasis (balance or equilibrium) in your body. With every single heartbeat, your nervous system is saying “slow down – speed up” based on feedback from all your senses, emotions, etc. A healthy nervous system has a balanced but strong push and pull between the Sympathetic and Parasympathetic branches. Heart Rate Variability is an accurate, non-invasive measure of the ANS and the balance between the SNS and PSNS branches.
Why Does This Matter?
The Sympathetic Nervous System’s physiological response to stress focuses on short term survival in lieu of long term health. This acute response can become chronic (constant, long term) in the presence of stress from modern daily life such as work, relationships, financial, environmental, dietary, physical, lifestyle choices, etc. Chronically accumulated stress from multiple sources can all contribute to drastically reduced health and performance over the long term.
A significant amount of research published over the past 50 years correlates Heart Rate Variability to:
- Disease risk and progression (diabetes, cardiovascular disease, respiratory diseases, gastrointestinal diseases, autoimmune conditions, etc.)
- Morbidity and mortality
- Biological aging and health
- Mental health, mood, depression, anxiety, PTSD
- Physical performance (HRV is heavily used in elite endurance and team sports to guide training and recovery)
- Injury prevention
- Guided rehabilitation
- Mental cognition
What Do HRV Scores Mean?
Higher resting-state HRV scores signify the ability of the body to activate the Parasympathetic “rest-and-digest” response. Higher heart rate variability is correlated with:
- Increased fitness level
- Better health
- Better resilience
- Youthfulness
- Willpower
- Calm, positive emotions
Lower resting-state HRV scores signify an activated Sympathetic “fight-or-flight” response or suppressed Parasympathetic activity. This can indicate the body’s inability to engage recovery mode or an exhaustion of recovery capacity. This can be a temporary response to a previous day’s hard workout or poor night of sleep. Or this can be a chronic response to stress that results in reduced health and increased risk of disease. Lower resting-state HRV is tied to:
- Reduced fitness level
- Poor health
- Increased disease risk and inflammation
- Increased biological age
- Negative emotions
- Increased anxiety and depression