Heart consciousness is the term I use to describe a state of heart-based awareness in which we are open to receiving messages from our heart and making decisions based on its intelligence. When we’re heart conscious, we’re able to tap into our true passions and purpose and express our unique energy to others, spending more time being lead by our true interests and desires. When we listen to our heart, we’re more authentically connected to ourselves and more open and available to authentically connect with others. Our grounded presence can help create safety with others, as our nervous system sends soothing signals to those around us, helping them feel physically calm, too (we’ll talk more about this process of co-regulation in the next chapter). Ultimately, cultivating heart consciousness can help us better attune to our heart’s intuition to guide us toward more-aligned choices for ourselves and within our relationships, despite the unknown of our future.
AT THE HEART OF THE MATTER: HEART COHERENCE
Though many people aren’t familiar with the idea of heart coherence, the concept has been studied for decades and used in medicine to help people transform their physical and emotional well-being. Scientific research has shown that heart coherence can help prevent or treat a number of physical conditions, including heart disorders, diabetes, chronic fatigue, chronic pain, high blood pressure, autoimmune disorders, and fibromyalgia.31 According to studies, heart coherence can also help people better cope with or recover from anxiety, depression, PTSD, ADHD, drug and alcohol addiction, anger issues, and eating disorders, in addition to helping them boost their memory and cognitive performance.32
Heart coherence occurs when our brain, heart, and emotions are aligned and our heart and brain are able to work efficiently together in energetic coordination. Said more simply, it’s a state of physical and emotional connection with our heart that allows us to act according to its messages. It’s a state of synchronicity and balance between the communication among our body’s major physiological control centers, including our cardiovascular, nervous, hormonal, and immune systems. This internal choreography allows our autonomic nervous system to switch easily between the sympathetic and parasympathetic states, activating a stress response when necessary, then returning quickly to the peaceful calm of homeostasis. Heart coherence reduces our mental dialogue, enhancing our mental clarity and our ability to attune to our intuition.
Scientists measure heart coherence by evaluating the physical signals our heart sends our brain. With heart coherence, our heart sends our brain smooth S-shaped pressure waves, nerve impulses, hormones, neurotransmitters, and electromagnetic energy, all of which lower our perceived stress and increase our stress resiliency, or the amount of tension or unpleasant emotions we can tolerate. These harmonious signals can even lower the stress of those around us, giving meaning and possibility to the idea that we as individuals are capable of changing the world around us.
Our heart actually has its own “little brain,” as scientists call it, which includes around forty thousand neurons.33 Like our brain, our heart can store both short- and long-term memories, which explains why some heart transplant patients are able to recall memories of their donor’s lives and even take on their donor’s personality traits.34
Our heart is the most energetically powerful organ in our body, emitting an electrical energy field sixty times as strong as the one produced by our brain and an electromagnetic field that’s one hundred times as strong.35 The heart’s electromagnetic energy can be detected everywhere on our skin’s surface, up to five feet away from us, and by those physically near us, impacting their brain wave activity.36 Using electrical and electromagnetic fields in addition to hormones and other sensory signals, our heart constantly sends information to us and those around us while at the same time receiving, encoding, and learning information from our environment.37 In fact, it’s our heart, not our brain, that interprets the electromagnetic signals from others and the world around us, making it the seat of our intuition.
Perhaps you’ve noticed that some people have a certain energy about them. Maybe they exude a lightness, warmth, or joy, or they always seem sad, heavy, or gloomy, or they may be anxious, agitated, or on edge. What you’re sensing is their heart’s electromagnetic field, which we can energetically feel within several feet of another person. Similarly, when two people touch each other or sit or lie next to each other, their heartbeats can impact and shift each other’s brain waves. And even if we’re across the room in a conversation with another person, our heart rhythms influence them.38
Our heart is impacted by a sensory system that registers changes from moment to moment as our energy shifts in interaction with the things and people around us. When we’re heart coherent, our nervous system is open or receptive to the energetic state of those around us, helping us access a type of intuition known as energetic sensitivity.39 Energetic sensitivity allows us to detect the energy of those who are physically closest to us or with whom we feel the most emotionally familiar. You likely felt this intuition the last time you were able to sense when a loved one was upset or bothered by something without speaking with them directly. Or you were able to notice a lightness or charge when near someone who just experienced something joyful, before you knew anything about what had occurred.
Our heart senses another type of intuition, known as nonlocal intuition or intuition at a distance. This type of intuition can help us sense the state of people and events that are outside our immediate proximity or are even happening at the moment. Though these experiences can be easily dismissed as “woo-woo,” nonlocal intuition has solid scientific proof. Research shows that our hearts can actually predict events before they occur, with one study finding that people’s physical hearts react to upsetting pictures before they see the images with their eyes.40 These findings have been replicated cross-culturally using various stimuli.41
You may have experienced nonlocal intuition yourself if you have ever thought of someone and immediately received a text or call from that person, or if you ever knew what a loved one was thinking before they spoke out to you. Other examples include parents who have sensed that something’s happened to their children who were not in their physical proximity, as well as entrepreneurs who have sensed their way to making successful business decisions.42
In addition to nonlocal intuition, our heart has intuitive powers that scientists admit they can’t fully quantify. Despite this fact—or perhaps because of it—it’s becoming clear to researchers that our heart is “coupled to a field of information that is not bound by the classical limits of time and space” while also containing something otherworldly or a “deeper part of one’s self.”43
We can only access this informational field when we’re in a safe and socially connected state of ventral vagal parasympathetic activation, which we talked about in chapter 3. When we’re in this state, our body can quiet the static caused by our thoughts so that we can actually hear our heart’s intuitive pings. Think about the open, light, or airy way your heart or chest might feel when you’re relaxed, calm, and peaceful. Compare this with the closed, heavy, or constricted sensations you may notice when you’re feeling scared, stressed, or worried. This is your intuition talking to you.
When our heart and brain are energetically and emotionally aligned we’re better able to feel our heart’s sensations and can begin to understand its messages. If our heart feels centered, calm, and expansive when we’re considering an action within our relationships, it’s likely a safe or aligned choice for us in that moment. If our heart feels constricted, shut down, or fearful, on the other hand, our intended action may not be the safest or most aligned choice for us in that moment.
Over time, we can all come to recognize those tugs on the back of our mind, moments of deep knowing, gut feelings, unexpected inner voices, images or visions, or flutters in our heart. When we’re open to feeling our heart and receiving its messages, we may notice our awareness open in other ways, too. We may begin to notice those other moments of insight or clarity that occur when an idea or solution bursts into our consciousness, interrupting our mind’s repetitive thoughts. Or detect those gentle nudges urging us to move our beloved mug before it falls off the counter, to grab an umbrella in time for an unexpected rainstorm, or to take a different route home from work to find a kitten that needs to be rescued. All of those are examples of our intuition speaking to us.
Being connected to our heart and being in a state of coherence enables us to access our inherent creativity and more easily enter a “flow state,” becoming totally immersed in a project, hobby, conversation, or whatever’s happening in the moment.44 Those expansive moments of easeful attention and connection can help us identify and pursue our true passion and purpose.
The problem for most of us is that we spend very little, if any, time connected to our hearts and in a state of heart coherence. When we’re constantly overwhelmed by either our external environment because of chaotic or unsafe living conditions or by our internal environment because of worrying or upsetting thoughts or emotions, our body is overstimulated and overstressed, keeping us disconnected from our hearts and in an incoherent state. In those moments, our brain and heart will scramble the messages passing between them and from the world around us, and we won’t be able to access our intuition, assess situations clearly or accurately, or be open or curious about others. Our heart may be sending us messages, but we won’t be able to hear them because our brain will override its signals. When it is out of sync with our heart, our brain may see only conflict, finding and highlighting the separateness or differences in the people we love the most. Thankfully, though, there are ways we can clear the static that prevents us from embodying the eternal presence of love.
We can all begin to enjoy moments of heart coherence and tap into our intuition, helping us develop trust and security in the face of our inevitably uncertain future. Though remember, creating heart coherence isn’t going to end all our stress and anxiety; that isn’t humanly possible; stressful and upsetting situations are part of life. But cultivating heart coherence can enhance our ability to bring our nervous system back to safety after tense or uncomfortable experiences or emotions. Our increased stress resilience helps us to tolerate a wider range of situations without becoming overwhelmed with stress and stuck in a nervous system response as a result. If we can’t regulate or calm ourselves down when we’re stressed or upset, our brain will continue to send fear-based messages, and we won’t ever be able to feel safe enough in our body to connect with or listen to our heart.
HEALING YOUR RELATIONSHIPS WITH HEART COHERENCE
When our heart and brain work together harmoniously and efficiently, we can sense our environment more accurately and make decisions that allow us to maintain our connections to others. We can think more clearly and better deal with the emotional stress of life.
Though our nervous system is wired to respond to threats, our heart is able to create compassionate connections. Tolerating stress and emotional hardship without becoming dysregulated, overwhelmed, or shut down helps us respond to others in calmer and loving ways. We’ll still feel stressed or upset in our lives or relationships at times, of course, but we’ll also be able to stay open to and curious about another’s perspectives and experiences. We’ll be able to create space within our relationships to explore and connect to different and unique individuals. At the same time, we’ll be able to set and hold clear boundaries so that we don’t feel depleted or resentful of those differences, increasing our ability to show up as the loving, compassionate person we are capable of being.
Creating this life- and relationship-changing state of heart coherence starts with dedicating small moments during the day to focus on embodying what researchers call core heart feelings, or positive emotions like appreciation, gratitude, compassion, care, and love. Experiencing these positive emotions can harmonize our heart’s rhythms, shifting them from jagged or irregular patterns into smooth, “sinelike waves,” and can also reduce the activity of our sympathetic nervous system while increasing the activity of our parasympathetic.45
Practicing gratitude, in particular, can help us feel more grounded in the current moment rather than stuck reliving the difficulties of our past or worrying about our future. Gratitude grounds us in an awareness of what is present in the here-and-now, giving us the opportunity to accept our current reality and helping to shift us out of the state of energetic resistance in which many of us regularly find ourselves. To quickly experience the impact of gratitude for yourself, take a moment to notice how your body’s energy feels the next time you find yourself thinking that you “have to” or “should” do something, whether it’s calling back a loved one or brushing your teeth before bed. Then take a moment to shift your thoughts to ones that extend gratitude for the opportunity to complete whatever action it is you need to do. In other words, change your mental language from “I have to do X” or “I should do Y” to “I can choose to do X,” noticing how your body’s energy changes in response to this mental shift. It can be helpful to build on this practice by adding in another moment to consider your purpose or intention behind whatever your action or choice. Using the above examples, this can look like taking a moment to remind yourself, “I can choose to call back my loved one because it helps us feel connected to each other, and that’s important to me” or “I can choose to brush my teeth because my body’s wellness is important to me.”
Reconnecting with and activating your heart in these small ways every day, as I hope you’re beginning to see, is foundationally important to creating the space and opportunity you need to express yourself authentically and give others the space and opportunity to do the same. This authentic emotional expression is what creates the possibility for us to be truly known by and connected with others, enabling them to feel safe enough for them to be known by and connected with us. Truly knowing someone or attuning to them with both our heart and brain helps us feel from their emotional viewpoint; this is the basis of authentic, empathetic connection.
THE SECRETS HIDDEN IN YOUR HEARTBEAT
Our heartbeat is the rhythm of our life, a force that can be felt throughout our entire body and the first vital sign doctors check to discern the living from the dead. But our heartbeat isn’t only a marker of our physical existence; it’s our heart’s “intelligent language,” used to communicate our emotional experiences to our brain, our body, and the world around us. Every time our heart beats, it sends neural impulses that alter our brain’s electrical activity, especially in the areas related to emotions. Our heartbeat can even change the electrical activity in the brains of those around us, including animals as well as people.46
Our heart’s language is specific to each of us. Contrary to common belief, our heart doesn’t beat like a metronome, ticking away in a precise, equal rhythm. Instead, it beats at varying amplitudes and intervals from second to second, with shorter or longer intervals between beats. This is known as heart rate variability (HRV), a measurement of the moment-to-moment fluctuations in our heart rate that we can’t feel because they’re so minuscule. It is controlled by our autonomic nervous system, which also operates our sympathetic and parasympathetic branches and the fight, flight, freeze or shutdown, and fawn stress responses.
The more variation our heart has between beats, the higher our HRV. The less variation between beats, the lower our HRV. When we have high HRV, we’re better able to tolerate stress, because our heart can quickly recover or return to its regular rhythm after a stressful experience. When we have low HRV, on the other hand, we respond to stress less effectively as our heart struggles to recover, often remaining elevated long after the stressful experience ends.
You may have experienced the impact of your HRV the last time a car sped past you while you were walking down the street. If you have high HRV, your heart likely raced for a second, giving you the energy to jump out of the way if necessary. Soon after, though, it slowed, helping you settle back into feeling calm and safe again. If you have low HRV, your heart likely raced and stayed elevated, unable to calm and causing you to stay on edge for longer than necessary.
In general, having high HRV is associated with increased physical health, emotional well-being, behavioral resiliency, and emotional regulation. High HRV allows our nervous system to spend more time in a ventral vagal state, improving our heart coherence and our ability to be open to connecting and cooperating with those around us.
Low HRV reduces our ability to cope with stressful situations and upsetting emotions, no matter how much we’d like to deal with them calmly or effectively. We may feel chronically impatient, agitated, or on edge, experience waves of deep pain, and act irrationally by hurting ourselves or others or by turning to drugs, alcohol, food, sex, or other substances or dysfunctional behavioral habits in an attempt to self-soothe. In a constant state of survival, we become self-centered to our own being, unable to attune to another person or see or feel things from their perspective.
In our relationships, the difference between high and low HRV can mean reacting calmly and responsively when a loved one comes home agitated or fighting, or taking their upset personally, fully absorbing their transferred emotional state. With higher HRV, we’re better able to give them the space or time to self-regulate if needed or we can attune to and co-regulate with them. If we’re the one who comes home stressed, we can more quickly and effectively regulate ourselves by taking a few moments alone or by directly letting them know the support we want or need, whether its space, time, or an empathetic ear.
HRV SELF-ASSESSMENT
Take a look at the following questions and select the answers that most consistently resonate with your experiences.
Do you feel out of control, overwhelmed, or explosively reactive when you’re upset with others?
Never
Sometimes
Often
Do you feel unable to relax or feel at ease with others?
