CHAPTER 10 BREAKTHROUGH

HEART

POWERFUL OR PITIFUL

Your heart knows the way.
Run in that direction.

–RUMI

If connections with our brain can either drain our energy or renew it, so too do we have those same connections with our heart.

THE POWER OF THE HEART

The human heart, with some sixty thousand miles of veins, capillaries, and arteries, is an incredible energy source. In fact, the heart’s electrical field is about sixty times greater in amplitude than the electrical activity generated by the brain. We can feel that energy.¹

Think about a time when you walked into a neighbor’s house and you could feel the tension between the spouses or partners. Your heart sensed it. Not your brain. And that negative energy came from their hearts. We now know that the heart talks to the brain. In fact, emotional responses in the heart trigger reactions in the brain.

Dr. Mimi Guarneri, founder and medical director of the Scripps Center for Integrative Medicine, has been an attending physician in cardiovascular disease at Scripps Clinic since 1995. Her book The Heart Speaks details the research done by John and Beatrice Lacey in the 1960s and 1970s.² The Laceys discovered that the heart was an organ of great intelligence, with its own nervous system, decision-making powers, and connections to the brain. Then, in 1991, Dr. J. Andrew Armour introduced the concept of the “heart brain.” His pioneering work demonstrated that the elaborate circuitry of this “little brain” allows it to act independently of the cranial brain—to learn, remember, even to sense and feel. Apparently, the heart has not only its own language but also its own mind.

THE HEART REMEMBERS AND RESPONDS

Dr. Guarneri’s writing also reveals a startling fact. Heart transplant patients may suddenly display unique characteristics and memories that belonged to the heart donor. This fact left me speechless and, as a speaker, that says something! The implication is that we can literally talk to our heart and change emotions and responses from negative to positive, from anxious to calm.

CHANGING HEART ENERGY INTO EMOTIONAL SELF-MANAGEMENT

Thanks to the work started in 1991 by Doc Childre, founder of the HeartMath Institute, more than twenty-five years of scientific research shows that we can self-regulate the heart’s energy and use it to heal our bodies and our lives.³ The effectiveness of the HeartMath Solution^® and its Freeze-Frame^® technique in managing mental and emotional responses to events in our life that prompt burnout has been corroborated by more than three hundred peer-reviewed or independent studies. What a breakthrough to realize that by connecting with our positive heart energy, we are building resilience.

The science and the techniques are powerful. Negative emotions lead to a disorder in the autonomic nervous system and produce a chaotic heart rate variability (HRV) pattern that adversely impacts the entire body. The concept is that you freeze the negative emotion in your mind, much as you would freeze a movie frame. You then begin to take deep breaths, replacing the anger, rage, fear—whatever—with thoughts of love and appreciation. It is not voodoo. Positive feelings produce heart-rhythm coherence that can be seen on a scan. As Dr. Guarneri knows, HRV is as important as low cholesterol.

I suspect we’re not all that surprised by these findings. In 1943, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, the French author and pioneering aviator, explained it best in The Little Prince: “And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”⁴

YOUR HEART AND INTUITION

The heart serves as a source of intuition or internal knowing. How many times have you or I made some error in judgment, only to hear ourselves say later, “I felt it was wrong, but …” Our brain overrode our heart. This happens more than we’d like to admit, because it takes courage to listen to our heart. In fact, the word courage comes from the French word coeur, or heart. In short, our heart connection can be powerful or pitiful.

Think back to Lin, who said that she was like a frog in boiling water because she refused to admit the heat until it was almost too late. Here’s more of her story.

“I was pregnant with my first child, and the president of the company I worked for then (a pet food company) wanted to see me in his office. I remember thinking that he was going to count me out because I’m having a baby. Instead he basically said, ‘I want you to be the role model for all women to show that women can have it all.’ I thought it was real so I literally worked until the day I delivered with my big swollen ankles up on a box under my desk and beside my desk was the intern they hired to get up and walk for me because I couldn’t walk.”

Think of the courage it would have taken for Lin to say “no.” Better still, what if she had found the courage to negotiate what it would mean for her and the company to actually role-model how to successfully and thoughtfully handle pregnancy.

HEART ENERGY FEEDS OFF POSITIVE RELATIONSHIPS

Remember Phil Gerbyshak, the vice president of IT who lost his marriage because his energy was focused solely on his work and his Blackberry? Phil went on to spend nine years as a very successful sales trainer. But success doesn’t always equate to happiness and positive energy.

“I burned out having to do everything from target identification to invoicing, to relationship building with a client, to marketing myself. Yes, you can farm some of that out, but it’s hard to find someone who could capture my voice. That’s when loneliness set it. I was tired of being alone. Being a speaker is very lonely: you fly in, you fly out, and you don’t get to see results. You might be responsible for kicking off a transformation but you’re not responsible for following through. That was hard on me, because I love results. Being lonely is not the same as being alone. By being lonely, I had no one to bounce ideas off of, to share a meal, to create new programs. Being inside Vector Solutions, I get immediate feedback. I report to a chief sales officer and then I have three or four different business units. Every one of them has people who report to me—143 sales professionals.”

Now, the energy of his positive heart connection allows him to touch each one and help them be successful. “I have a lot more now to give than just being a sage on the stage.”

He concluded our conversation by noting that in this period of his life he is getting rid of “stuff.” “I’m wanting peace, wanting meditative time, finding my Zen, and thus moving to the ocean is important. I’ve lived in big cities since I was eighteen. The beach will help create that place.”

Phil determined what he needed Now. He listened to his heart. Phil is refueled and recharged. His energy is aligned so he can reclaim what matters.

Ahhhh, breakthrough.

WAYS TO INCREASE HEART ENERGY

The power of heart energy cannot be underestimated. If appreciation, love, contentment, and compassion are emotions that calm the heart, who or what draws these emotions to you?

Cuddling a child, hugging your spouse, grooming your pet, or walking into woods or along a river can all be energy-enhancing activities that refresh and recharge—even in short bursts. Remember, at the core of the heart is the word hear. Listen carefully. Listen to your heart. It does speak.