Why it’s not woo-woo, it’s scientifically vital to include your heart in your decisions.
Two of the busiest, most incredibly vivacious loved ones of mine have recently incurred momentary bouts of an a-rhythmic heart episode known as atrial fibrillation. In each instance, I watched while the monitor of their vital signs documented the disrupted pattern. And, in each instance, I witnessed their hearts cardio-vert themselves back to a healthy sinus state. Glimpsing these moments of the human body’s spectacular capability, reminded me of the magnitude of force that courses through our corporeality in every moment. So often, we defer our daily decisions—both great and small—to our brains; we drive our determination from our heads, when it is actually our hearts that have been overwhelmingly proven to be the most influential organ in our bodies.
According to many acclaimed research institutes, our hearts are, by far, the most powerful source of electromagnetic energy in our bodies. They measure sixty times greater in amplitude than the brain, and five thousand times more powerful—radiating an astounding eight feet out from our physical forms. Eight feet. During this bizarrely touchless time in our world, that is enough room to comfortably envelope someone in the circle of our palpable emotional energy while, at the same time, exercising the CDC’s recommended radius for social distancing, physically.
In other words, each one of us physiologically, biochemically and energetically influences those around us. Profoundly. Whether we are conscious of it or not, our brilliant, autonomic nervous systems affect and are affected by the other beings in our proximity.
The potential and practiced power that our hearts wield prove that they are the most multifaceted metropolis of information and communication available to us in this human experience. Whether we realize it or not, our nervous systems are emitting and receiving massive amounts of information in each moment. Our hearts instantaneously present this information as emotion in the body, while our brain takes longer to translate this communication into thoughts. Emotions are the language of the body, while thoughts are the language of the mind. Though different dialects, they are inextricable linked.
The intricately intelligent, meticulously designed, biologically brilliant heart always incorporates the bigger picture in its decisions. Its rhythm pulses in harmony with a force far beyond our singularity, while its beat bridges the gap between energy and matter—a physical manifestation of what feeling or emotion we are experiencing at the time. Our brains—bridled by the chronology of physical evolution—are designed to primarily, yet ingeniously, survive within this physical realm. We have within us, both, a portal to a planetary perspective, as well as the most relevant, tangible and somatic personal processing system. When we ignore our body’s response to things, when we try to dampen our feelings or disconnect from our most powerful organ, we make monumental decisions for the entire fleet of our lives based on the narrow periscope of what’s immediately in our present physical purview. There is so much more information available to us than that which we allow ourselves to see through the microscopic lens of logic.
Our hearts speak. As my loved ones dramatically found out, sometimes our hearts hiccup, or clear their throat, in order to catch our attention. In keeping with the truism, “where focus goes, energy flows,” perhaps the attention they gave their hearts—the loving acknowledgment for its astonishing power—is the very thing that shifted them back into radiant rhythm.
Why not take a moment right now to close your eyes and allow your brain to lend a moment of focused reverence to its counterpart, the most powerful organ in our human experience...?
