If you, or someone you love, are experiencing anxiety, stress, fear, or depression, you are not alone. As our global pandemic seems to have no end in sight with rules changing daily, it’s no wonder! Instead of turning to medications, first, consider this self-regulation practice.
Find a simple tool that you can use to calm anxiety and stress responses and create a more stress-resilient heart-brain connection. Let’s begin to understand the power of an in sync heart-brain connection by talking about something we can measure objectively.
Heart rate variability (HRV) is a term that describes the healthy beat to beat slowing down and speeding up in response to the stresses of the day and your breath on inhalation. When your heart and brain are working well together, your heart rate varies as it should, and you experience good health.
When your heart and brain are out of sync, your heart rate has less variability, and over time, it could lead to chronic health conditions. The good news is that when the heart and brain work together, we can create profound vitality and longevity.
The HeartMath Institute has studied this connection between heart and brain for over thirty years of published articles that discuss the importance of healthy heart rate variability. This data may provide scientific evidence for what we think of as our intuition and the ancient practices of mind-body medicine and meditation.
The HeartMath Institute works with schools for improved academic performance among students, corporations for creativity, improved work output, and working in hospitals and clinics for overall health benefits.
When your heart and brain are in harmony, it is referred to as coherence. This coherence improves your creativity, work productivity, and connection with your loved ones. This specific heart-rhythm pattern also gives you a feeling of well-being that creates a positive magnetic field that can influence the people around you.
[Also Read: How to lower your Heart Rate]
You can develop more coherence through meditation, abdominal breathing, and walking in nature. The HeartMath Institute has also created a biofeedback probe to use with a mobile app to sync up your breathing and heart rate, called Inner Balance, that works great with kids, teens, and adults.
You can start by taking slow, relaxed abdominal breaths and breathing into the space around your heart while evoking a loving or grateful feeling. This allows your heart and brain to shift into a state of coherence.
After practicing these techniques over time, you will be able to maintain calm and balance during chaos or stress around you as you regulate yourself emotionally and physiologically.
[Also Read: 6 Important Pillars of Brain Health]
We can all benefit from increased heart intelligence when we learn to more consistently to self-regulate our emotions from a more intuitive, intelligent, and balanced way,
The heart coherent state is directly associated with increased intuition, improved health, and cognitive function as we age. It’s something that takes practice, but a simple one that is easy, free, and available to everyone!
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