It has been the debate of hundreds of years, it's has even been the purpose of many to take away the attention of the heart, certainly because there was something secret and miraculous that we needed to be able to get there to discover!
And now it seems to be the perfect moment to do it! As we are witnessing a wave of external changes that all them if you pay enough attention are designed so that you start looking inside instead of being distracted outside! Then you would understand that our hearts have the kindness, the empathy, the openness and expectation for you to start doing that!
There's no doubt that our brains are full with a bunch of sensory stimuli, a lot of information that is not updated of course (old patterns), a lot of information that is preventing us from growing (limiting beliefs) and for sure information that is just filling up space and many times causing disruption patterns that predispose you to feel in anxiety, desperation, sadness and depression because you're simply relying on all those neural systems that were designed to control certain part of the information!
Today, the science of the heart, lead by the HeartMath Institute and several research, is giving us the light that many of us were looking for! The wisdom of the present moment! The availability of having a neural system that is not polluted with what happened yesterday or a year ago, a system that doesn't have limiting beliefs, that is not equipped to compare anything, let alone to biased you into toxic cycles of rumination!
How does this "new" processing system is working? And How does it relate to the fact that you can have a much wiser response when you heart guide you?
Well, it turns out to be a very interesting way that our heart and the brain are being constantly in touch to process what happens within us!
The heart commands many of the body sensations that we're experiencing related to the capacity to also listen to the messages of our body, which is named as interoception, and is also a realm that is now being more research, with a huge amount of information that is also allowing us to know more about our inner tools and not just rely in the same simple diagram of perceiving something with the senses and immediately reacting without even having time to process what happens!
All of this complex web of connections that happens within us, can be better understand it with a simple analogy!
In a hypothetical but very real situation, imagine a person that is almost always living in the hamster wheel, working, achieving success (probably), having a good economic support and financial wellness, his relationships are doing fine although in particular his intimate relations are not the best, he has problems to pay attention to other things not related to the job or of course to mindless distractions, such as sports events, shallow tv entertainment and for sure the news!
Inside of this person there are a lot of messages, pain, regrets and resentment, because he was conditioned to believe that as a man he had to be the provider of everything material and that's it! Probably doing he has never really enjoyed, that he's good at but doesn't ignite passion within him, and that also as time goes by, he seems to be more bored of it!
He's not finding any meaning in what he's doing, but he certainly has the pressure to keep on going, earning accolades and material things!
The relationships with his children is practically nullified due to the short spans of time he has to relax! And if we add to the mix, that the time he has, he loves to spend it in front of the TV with friends watching sports or entertainment then you can certainly have now a very clear image!
Well, these kinds of people, that fit in the criteria of living to earn money, to be entertained and to spend the money filling their wives and children with material gifts but lack of attention has been the model of parenthood since a good while!
Under that kind of life! It's almost impossible to think that this person will be able to feel his body, to start paying attention to his reckless decisions in terms of eating patterns, emotional resilience and let alone time to reflect about his life!
I dare to say that more than 90% of this way of living just leads you to react and live your life sort of like a zombie! Not appreciating anything but the ego related awards that you can receive and the external attention that is just there due to a position of "false power"!
Under that idea, it is just a matter of time for the steam pot to explode, with all the emotions that he is saving up and trying to even numb with alcohol, TV, poor food choices and of course a good amount of medications that usually they have to take because there's a lot of physical pain and disruptions inside of these kinds of individuals!
Well, that model can certainly be adapted by many other people that probably are not successful, keep also living their lives mindlessly and jumping in the hamster wheel, they sometimes can have more time to spend with their families but they have a lot of pressure in terms of financial situations, so the model keeps being the same pretty much!
All of these descriptions of a way of living, is what the majority of the population is experiencing constantly , and under those terms and model is not a choice to learn how to pay attention to your body, not even talk about listening to your heart!
There are already endless number of layers such as an onion, that have to be peeled off one by one, and with the awareness that changing one small thing that these kinds of people do everyday is a huge step forward!
The way that the majority of people also think is through the known diagram of the brain, which can be summarized as perceiving something with any of your five senses, sending it to the structures of the orbitofrontal cortex, the amygdala and then to produce a response in the visceral motor area (brainstem and hypothalamus) which now is going to impact your heart but without the wisdom of perceiving first the things with your heart and then to the brain! Under this learned way of thinking the only thing that will happen is to raise the heartbeats and signals your body to think there's a possible threat!
Meaning that the kind of emotions that you will generate will be the ones that will shut down more parts of your internal processing systems, including many of your metabolic functions!
Which in turn will start to raise the levels of insulin in your body, sending mixed signals that you don't have enough sugar in your body, when in fact you might have plenty of it in your blood, also raising a hormone named leptin which will impede your satiety signals as well as the availability of what you have already ate to burn it out and produce more energy!
All of these internal phenomena will lead eventually, to gain weight, disrupt your hormones, trigger inflammatory processes and of course raise your stress levels!
Leading to eventually build up and produce a disease! As well as, creating those known toxic cycles, where as depicted in the analogy many people are engaged in and they find extremely difficult to get out from there!
As you can see, it is also part of how you can keep a society controlled and sick making them believe that the heart is just an organ that pumps blood but to giving them the real wisdom that some ancient indigenous cultures already knew and had power over it!
Therefore, if we are aiming to a new era where the heart is the leading director of the orchestra that is happening within you. If you really want to unlock the true power of your inner self, then it is time to listen more to your heart and allow it to connect with your brain through he amazing hardwire connections, known as the vagus nerve, as well as the amazing ability of it to release also neurotransmitters such as oxytocin, serotonin and dopamine!
The model of the heart relies on the true power of sensing what is going to happen as much as 6 seconds before your brain receives the stimulus, then with all that time frame, a wide range of sensations start acting on inside of you and leaving chemical and electrical signals to your brain which now has a more accurate way of perceiving the things because the disrupted process influenced by past stories, limiting beliefs and toxic programming will not have an effect on the mainstream signal that came directly from your heart!
That is the magical wisdom of our hearts that is also revealed since we are in the womb where the heart starts beating earlier than the brain has developed.
In fact, your the amazing coherent wave energy that is originated from your heart and that synchronizes with your mother's heart rhythm as well, is the one that starts helping your brain development!
Having said that, we are now certain to say that your heart knows better than your brain, although in reality, neither your heart nor your brain are internally competing to have the first place! Instead they're always cooperating with each other to bring to you a much wiser and better experience!
Furthermore, the heart with its infinite wisdom and magical array of neural systems that allow it to perceive the external signals before the brain is more connected to your higher self than the brain! As it also has been proven that it has 60 times more expansive power in the electrical waves transmission than the brain!
What does that mean in terms of helping you to regulate your emotions?
Well, if you learn to ease your heart, to synchronize your breathing, to have reflective moments, to pause when needed, and also sharpen your attention then you will be able to have a much broad range of appraisal for any kind of situations that you may live even if they are in the category of struggling situations!
If you let yourself be relaxed and regulated by simple techniques of mediation, yoga, a walk in nature, journaling or simply enjoying some silence in your life! Then you will experience and be able to concentrate more in a pleasant moment, a gratitude experience that will be able to generate a wide range of magical chemical and electrical signals that will generate a perfect wave of energy to synchronize first heart and brain, but also having a expansiveness protection to all of your organs!
And through the magical connection of the vagus nerve you will be able to release along the way more happiness and joy substances that will create a coherent metabolic state, that not only will aid you to fight any kind of external threat, but they will also give the power to regulate your hormones, to enhance your immune response, to fight the oxidative processes within you and to lower any kind of inflammatory situations inside of you!
Translated into very few words, your heart and brain coherence will make you younger, happier and stronger to have an incredible emotional resilience to be more prepared for any kind of "unknown" scenario that you might need to face!