Fwd: [Ruminations] The heart has a mind of its own

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>[Ruminations] The heart has a mind of its own

>

>Dear Friends of the Heart:

>

>I hope you will enjoy reading and discussing the following insightful article

>by Bennett Daviss regarding scientific discoveries made about the amazing,

>heretofore unknown

>powers of the heart entitled: "Mind of its own."

>

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>Researchers are finding that the poets might have been right: The human heart

>is the physical home of love and, perhaps, the repository of the soul itself.

>

>

>A Mind of its Own

>by Bennett Daviss

>

>Copyright 1999 by Bennett Daviss. Reprinted courtesy of Ambassador, the

>in-flight magazine of Trans World Airlines.

>

>This is the kind of place that does your heart good. Peace envelopes the

>isolated, sun-washed California valley nestled into the hills just south of

>Stanford University. Across a pond, horses browse in a meadow. Trails

>disappear into the surrounding forest and breezes murmur through the leaves.

>The loudest recurrent sound is birdsong.

>

>But here at the Institute of HeartMath, the heart fares well for other

>reasons. Within its unassuming cottages, resident and visiting scientists at

>this 8-year-old, privately funded research enclave are among the leaders of a

>revolution that is shaping a radically new understanding of the biology of

>love and other human feelings - and, perhaps, of the human spirit as well.

>

>Their discoveries, reported in prestigious publications such as the American

>Journal of Cardiology, show that the heart plays a larger and more

>independent role than previously thought in drafting our emotional

>blueprints. The heart's electrical signals not only shape the way the brain

>thinks about certain kinds of events, but the heart itself may be able to

>"remember" emotion-charged experiences.

>

>As a result, scientists say, using the physiology and imagery of the heart -

>not the mind or muscles, as do traditional psychotherapy, yoga or meditation

>- is proving to be a faster, more direct way to dismantle destructive

>emotional habits and free the human spirit that too often is imprisoned

>within them.

>

>Some researchers go farther, suggesting there's evidence that the spirit

>physically resides within the heart. In his 1998 book, "The Heart's Code,"

>consulting clinical psychologist Paul Pearsall makes a case that the heart is

>a vault of emotional memories and energy patterns that make us who we are as

>individuals.

>

>As partial evidence, he recounts stories of heart-transplant recipients who

>have inexplicably taken on the tastes, attitudes and even memories of their

>donors - people they knew nothing about. In one example, a man who received

>the heart of a woman hit by a train began having recurrent dreams in which he

>was driving a truck or train. In another, a woman whose donor had been shot

>in the back began complaining of "shooting pains" in her back after her

>operation.

>

>After interviewing dozens of transplant patients, nurses and doctors,

>Pearsall has come to believe that the heart may well be "the center of our

>cellular universe, holding together ... energy ... in the shape of a soul."

>

>Such ethereal conclusions are rooted in recent research. Rollin McCraty,

>HeartMath's chief scientist, isn't ready to make a scientific link between

>the heart and the holy. But, as he turns off a footpath and into a lab

>humming with computers and electronic measuring gear, he begins to lay out

>the physiological evidence that encourages Pearsall and others to connect the

>two. Settling into a chair, the slender, soft-spoken former computer

>entrepreneur says, "It was only in 1991 that the medical literature

>recognized that the heart has its own brain - a network of different kinds of

>neurons, identical to many of the kinds of neurons and neural networks that

>the brain in our head has."

>

>The brain in the heart and its cranial colleague are connected by the vagus

>nerve, a kind of trunk cable made up of thousands of neural filaments

>flashing messages continually between the two. "The current consensus among

>researchers is that the body's neural system is a distributed parallel

>processing operation with different levels of hierarchy and control," McCraty

>explains. "In other words, we don't just think in our heads. That's an

>antiquated concept."

>

>Nor do we remember only in our heads. Neuropsychologists now view memories as

>patterns of energy that groups of neurons can store. "We used to think that

>only the brain had the right kind of cells for that, but now we know the

>heart does, too," McCraty says.

>

>The heart also has a unique way of making its ideas and memories felt: it's

>the body's largest rhythmic generator, emitting an electromagnetic signal up

>to 50-60 times stronger than the ones buzzing around inside our skulls. That

>signal - combined with the pressure waves the heart sends throughout the

>circulatory system - can either harmonize or overpower and disrupt the more

>feeble working rhythms and electrical currents that mark and govern the brain

>and other organs.

>

>"Our changing heart rhythms affect our brain's ability to process

>information, including decision-making, problem-solving and creativity,"

>according to McCraty. "They also directly affect how we feel."

>

>The rhythm of that irresistible throb is the product of two forces. One is

>the package of signals the sympathetic nervous system sends to the heart. The

>SNS responds to perceptions of threats or stress by shooting adrenaline into

>the bloodstream and speeding heart and breathing rates. The other force is

>the group of signals the parasympathetic nervous system sends to the heart.

>The PNS counters the physiological symptoms of tension, releasing biochemical

>tranquilizers enabling us to relax. The heart itself plays a major role in

>that relaxation response by making "attrial natriuretic factor" or ANF, its

>own unique hormone known as the "balance hormone." ANF balances or moderates

>the body's physical response to stress, easing physical symptoms of panic as

>tides of tension rise. The more ANF we make, the more peaceful we feel.

>

>When the body and mind are relaxed, the heart beats in an easy, consistent or

>"coherent" rhythm. Over a prolonged period, those relaxed electromagnetic and

>pressure pulses "entrain" the weaker electromagnetic operating signals

>throughout the brain and body to throb in synchronization with the heart.

>This is "flow," a state of relaxed and energized concentration when you

>perform at your best. It's like what athletes call "the zone."

>

>Stress sends the sympathetic nervous system into overdrive and disrupts flow

>the way a boat's engine propeller churns the smooth surface of a lake. Under

>stress - even positive stress, such as the exhilaration of getting married or

>bringing your child home from the hospital nursery - the heart is more prone

>to beat in erratic rhythms. If the heart is beating to the rhythms of

>unmitigated stress, the overwhelming strength of its signals can evoke the

>same choppy, red-zone responses from every cranny of the body and its

>emotional circuitry. When that happens, McCraty explains, we become

>incoherent.

>

>It's not that we babble or wander into traffic. In this case, "incoherent"

>simply means that we're in bioelectrical chaos. The heart beats fitfully,

>making internal coherence or synchronization among the body's organs and

>systems impossible. Countless studies have linked prolonged incoherence to

>heart disease, impaired immunity, rapid aging, cancer, the destruction of

>brain cells and early death. According to the American Institute of Stress,

>unmanaged tension underlies up to 90% of all visits to physicians' offices;

>the same cause is estimated to rob the U.S. economy of $200 billion a year in

>productivity.

>

>Even worse, McCraty points out, humans can acclimatize themselves to

>unmanaged stress all too easily. When alarm signals from the heart are

>flashed to the head, they don't go straight to the parts of the brain that

>analyze or deliberate. First they arrive in the more primitive parts of the

>brain that organize subconscious impressions.

>

>One of those sections is the amygdala, a part of the brain that integrates

>physical and emotional responses to external threats and helps to govern fear

>and aggression. One of the amygdala's jobs is to recognize familiar incoming

>emotional data and establish habitual unconscious responses to it.

>

>"We literally develop emotional 'habit circuits' in the brain that define our

>customary emotional responses," McCraty says. "Some people are quick to anger

>or become frustrated; others worry about every little thing. The amygdala is

>where those emotional circuits are wired."

>

>If the heart sends the amygdala constant patterns of unremitting stress, the

>conscious parts of the brain come to accept stress as normal and ignore it -

>an unrecognized context, as invisible but ever-present as air. When that

>happens, we don't see the signs that tell us we're stressed until we're being

>wheeled into the cardiac ward. Meanwhile, those unrecognized, continually

>surging stress circuits sap and fog the other regions of the psyche where

>higher functions such as rational thought, creativity and empathy lie.

>

>But, scientists argue, the converse seems to be just as true: If the

>subconscious mind routinely receives coherent signals from the heart, the

>stress-repeating circuits begin to atrophy. In their place, new emotional

>habits grow: a sense of easy well-being, a newfound mental and emotional

>clarity, a feeling of connection to others. McCraty and two colleagues wrote

>in one study published in 1996 that "... as one develops the ability to

>maintain coherence through sustaining sincere, heart-focused states of

>appreciation or love, the brain's electrical activity is also brought into

>entrainment with heart rhythms. ... As people experience sincere positive

>feeling states, the changed information flow from the heart to the brain may

>act to modify cortical function."

>

>In other words, a peaceful heart helps you think not only more clearly but

>more creatively. "When you focus your heart on love and appreciation, you

>increase the likelihood that all kinds of cells within your body, including

>the brain, become synchronized around the heart's electrical signal," says

>Dr. Gary Schwartz, professor of psychology, medicine, neurology and

>psychiatry at the University of Arizona. "In that way, we gain power - not

>just physical power, but also emotional and potentially spiritual power."

>

>Motorola employees using HeartMath's heart-centered stress management

>techniques for six months reported greater contentment, fewer symptoms of

>job-related anxiety and burnout and easier communication with coworkers. In a

>six-week study, workers at Royal Dutch Shell used the methods to reduce rapid

>heart rates by 65%. More than 50% of those taking part noted less of a desire

>to quit their jobs. The employees reported half as many incidents causing

>them to feel anger, anxiety and petty annoyance while boosting their

>listening skills and doubling their personal creativity and productivity.

>

>Individuals say those patterns result from new feelings of peace, empathy and

>intuition that heart-centered techniques help them find within themselves.

>"When the techniques become inherent, the way you interact with people

>becomes very relaxed," says Oakland, Calif,, cardiologist Dr. Thomas Quinn.

>He has taught or recommended such techniques to his patients. One patient

>reported being able to curtail her intake of nitroglycerine after learning

>heart-centered ways of dealing with family-caused tension; other patients

>have been able to make similar reductions. Adds Quinn: "These techniques have

>produced a clearly observable benefit to their health."

>

>The heart's electromagnetic signal can be measured several feet away from the

>body, Schwartz notes. Remarkably, experiments at the University of Arizona's

>Human Energy Systems Laboratory, which Schwartz co-directs with Dr. Linda

>Russek, have demonstrated that one person's heart signal can entrain

>another's electrical brain patterns and alter the recipient's moods. Another

>person's moods and attitudes can entrain our own bioelectrical rhythms and

>make us tense or tranquil. The effect leads some researchers to speculate

>that taking an instant dislike to a person is the result of clashing heart

>rhythms, while love is literally a matter of two hearts beating in harmony.

>

>In addition, data from Harvard University's 42 year Mastery of Stress study

>shows that the five small waves that make up each person's electrical heart

>signal register a constellation of unique energy patterns - each person's

>heartbeat is as personal and

>

>distinctive as a fingerprint. Such discoveries lead scientists such as

>Schwartz and Pearsall to connect heart and soul. If each heart embodies a

>unique energy pattern; and if the heart is the physiological domain of love,

>tranquility and feelings of connection to others - emotions normally

>associated with spirituality - has science finally pinpointed the physical

>repository of each individual's spiritual essence, an anatomical gateway to

>the human soul?

>

>Pearsall thinks it might have. In his book, he cites "Jim" who suddenly

>became prone to bouts of depression after receiving a new heart. Jim didn't

>know that his donor had been a young woman whose family described her as

>being prone to depression. A 52-year-old man loved classical music but, after

>being given the heart of a teenage boy, suddenly found that he loved rock.

>These patients knew nothing of their donors.

>

>Some of these heart-sharing incidents Pearsall relates might be coincidences

>- surges of joy and energy that come from being granted a second chance at

>life. Others are harder to explain. A psychiatrist told Pearsall the story of

>a patient, an 8-year-old girl who was given the heart of a murdered child.

>After surgery, the girl began having nightmares. She described the

>circumstances of her donor's death and even the killer in such detail that

>the police were able to capture him, and a jury convicted him of the crime.

>

>After a young man awoke from the surgery that implanted a new heart in his

>chest, he told his mother that "everything is copacetic." She'd never heard

>her son use the word, but later learned that the donor and his wife used it

>to reassure each other after they had argued.

>

>"Heart transplantation is not simply a question of replacing an organ," wrote

>Dr. Benjamin Bunzel of Vienna's University Hospital in a 1992 study linking

>heart transplants to personality changes. "The heart is ... a source of love,

>emotions and focus of personality traits."

>

>Pearsall is willing to go even further. "This organ," he says, "may define

>the essential character of our whole existence. Science may be taking the

>first tentative steps to understanding ... the energy of the human spirit and

>the coded information that is the human soul."

>

>

>++++++++++ sidebar+++++++++

>Heart-centered anti-stress and anti-aging techniques are based on a simple

>principle: The heart is the body's larder of peace and compassion; you must

>simply learn how to open it.

>

>To soothe a case of jangled nerves, for example, concentrate attention on

>your heart. (Pretend you're breathing with your heart, not your lungs.) Then

>imagine something that evokes feelings of love or sincere appreciation. (Beer

>and chocolate don't qualify.) Recall a kindness from a passing stranger;

>think about your baby, your puppy, someone you love unconditionally. Then

>hold those memories in your heart for at least 10 seconds. The heart's rhythm

>quickly becomes coherent, sending your body electrochemical messages of

>tranquility - and calms your mind.

>

>When you're exhausted, worried and frustrated because you've taken on more

>than you can manage, recognize those feelings and try to concentrate them in

>your heart. Then "soak" your worries in the warm energy of your heart, like

>soaking dirty clothes in a washing machine to loosen the grime. While your

>emotional laundry is soaking, tap into your intuition by asking your heart

>the best way to take care of yourself while doing right by your obligations.

>

>With practice, images such as these, drawn from the Institute of HeartMath's

>proprietary techniques, constitute a "shortcut, like using a command key on a

>computer, according to institute founder Doc Lew Childre. "They quickly shift

>you back into a flow, regenerating your energy and intuitive intelligence."

>

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>

>You may also find the following related articles as interesting reading. Here

>are the links:

>

>Rediscover Love

>http://www.consciouschoice.com/issues/cc1202/index.html

>

>Hidden Power of Love

>http://www.heartmath.com/Library/Articles/Caduceus.html

>

>Sufi Stories

>http://www.consciouschoice.com/issues/cc085/sufistories.html

>

>May we increase in Love from the Heart,

>Ghazaleh

 

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Lots of Love,

CyberDervish

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