Heart Coherence

I had the opportunity recently to talk with Dr Rollin McCraty who is the Director of Research at the HeartMath Institute in California. They have been investigating the concept of heart rate variability and coherence for many years now. You may have seen Dr McCraty’s appearance in the movie I profiled in a previous post called The Living Matrix Movie. It is a wonderful exploration of energetics in healing, and I think well worth your time to watch it. You can check to see if there is a screening in your area by checking the Living Matrix website.

Our hearts beat with a pattern that most of us don’t recognize and really don’t think much about. Most of the time the pattern is somewhat chaotic and goes up and down in a random fashion. However, there is a pattern called physiologic coherence where the heart rate actually increases and decreases in an orderly, smooth way. On a computer screen it shows up as undulating waves going up and down, which is very different than most people’s baseline heart wave pattern. How is this important to you and your child?

It turns out that this state of coherence is strongly correlated with improvements in health status and one’s ability to deal with stress. It has been found that most people are not in coherence except in very specific circumstances or only after having been trained in certain techniques. The HeartMath Institute did a study several years ago which documented improvement in school age kids’ ability to handle anxiety prior to and during test taking in school. This is a remarkable finding which showed that kids could be taught a few simple self calming techniques and this actually translated into improved subjective feelings on the part of the students, as well as improved objective findings pertaining to their test scores compared to a control group. The full reference to this study called TENDS, which stands for Test Edge National Demonstration Study, is available on the HeartMath website.

I am very interested in exploring this concept of heart rate variability and coherence as a way to document what’s going on with kids in particular when we are using techniques like BodyTalk and other non-invasive, natural approaches to pediatric problems. The heart itself is much more than a muscular organ that pumps blood circulation throughout the body. It has amazing energetic qualities as well, in keeping with the multidimensional aspects of all of our body’s organs and systems. For example, in the Chinese medicine system, the heart energy is in charge of such things as sleep cycles, creativity, dreaming and speech patterns. I believe we must expand our understanding of what it means to have this remarkable body and system operating on different levels of experience and awareness.

Stay tuned for more information coming about the HeartMath Institute and their dedicated researchers. Their work is truly exciting and it is on the cutting edge of natural medicine and healing modalities available to us now and coming in the near future.

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