Introduction
According to the observation of Heartmath of Doc Childre and Deborah Rozman, Phd. in the book: “Transforming Stress” our technological world “speeds up our sense of time and results in mental overload, emotional reactivity and overproduction of stress hormones. This creates a deficit of coherence, harmony and fulfillment, because there is not enough heart brought in to balance the mind. “
The emotional virus
During breaks at work in our daily lives, the conversation often goes to emotional venting about “them”. This “them” usually refers to the company, the boss, the management, the ex husband or wife, the government. You feel victimized and feel having lack of control. “They” are stressing you and therefore you have the right to blame “them”. One person’s negativity inflames another’s and pretty soon, you have an emotional virus spreading to all.
An emotional virus gets transmitted from person to person, group to group, through words and energies. Judgments, blame, anger, negative humor or self pity act as carrier waves of the emotional virus.
If you are around this kind of negativity a lot, you can end up fuming, ready to incite a riot. But most likely, you end up miserable and weary. You have taken on the emotional states of those around you. Your heart and brain picked up the energy like a radio receiver. One person’s incoherent heart rhythm pattern, which reflects their negative emotion, gets broadcast like a radio wave through their electro magnetic field into the surrounding environment.
The body easily picks up on another’s feelings through a kind of emotional telepathy, whether or not the mind is conscious of it. Your body feels the incoherence and produces stress hormones in response.
Susceptibility
You are more susceptible to an emotional virus when you are feeling stressed or overwhelmed. At those times, it’s so easy to get sucked in others’ negative emotional reactivity that your heart rhythms stay disordered and your system stays in chaos, and it is easier for a virus of any type to get in. Many people find they get sick within a few days after a binge of anger or emotional upset. When you are emotionally run-down, it’s easier to catch colds or flu or develop problems in a weak or susceptible area. (Cohen, Tyrell and Smith 1991; Kiecolt-Glaser and al.1996).
By contrast when you are managing your emotions and your systems are functioning in greater coherence, your immune system is strengthened and more able to ward off infection and disease (Rein, Atkinson, and McCraty 1995, Mc Craty 1996). When you are in a heart coherent state, it helps protect you against other people’s incoherent energies. This doesn’t make you insensitive to others. Rather, increasing coherence gives you more compassion for their feelings and a more objective understanding of how to respond from an emotionally mature state of mind.
Stress is a system issue
People are so interconnected that stress has become a systems issue, personally and collectively, yet as a society, we are not dealing with it on a systems level. This is because emotions manage people more than people manage their emotions. Our interconnectedness means we can no longer just ignore other people’s stress and incoherent emotional energy. Nor can we attempt to control it by totalitarian rules. Emotions can be suppressed but they do not go away.
Therapists report that they are seeing increasing numbers of people with mild or low grade depression from ongoing stress. People are tired, worn out, and resigned to the idea that nothing will get better. All the negative information on TV, social media, and the dissatisfaction in their own lives makes them feel hopeless.
The lack of understanding how to address emotions is the primary cause of today’s stress epidemic. People generally believe that the mind is in control, but in fact it’s the emotions that shape thoughts, choices and behaviors. It’s emotions that perpetuate fear and doubt.
Now, just in time, scientific research has revealed that the heart can be engaged to manage emotions and provide the new perceptions needed to transform stress, both individually and globally.
Taking responsibility
It’s each person’s job to ward off the stress epidemic. It’s your job to do what you can to change the environment of stress. You can create a more coherent environment – changing what you can and cushioning what you can’t – through the power of your heart’s energetic expression.
It’s through the heart that people change. People intuitively know this, but haven’t quite discovered how to do it because they don’t understand how this really works. Perhaps, like most people, you still try to resolve stressful issues from your analytical mind. The mind tends to fight against stress or get resigned to it. This leads to emotional drain, because it cuts off a part of your heart in the process. As parts of the heart shut down, it changes the feelings you can experience and also narrows your perception in communications with others. Feelings become numb, dry, depressed. Perceptions become pessimistic, cynical. Eventually, they can cause anxiety disorders, depression, or a low grade unhappiness.
You say you are happy and life is okay, but something is missing in quality and fulfillment. That something is your heart. Since the heart is your source of vitality and insight, it’s important that you learn how to protect yourself from a stressful atmosphere without shutting off your heart sensitivities.
More coherent heart rhythms facilitate brain function, allowing you more access to your own higher intelligence, so that you can improve your focus, creativity, intuition and high level decision making.
Quick coherence techniques
1. Heart focus
Focus your attention in the area of your heart (it is the area close to the center of your chest, behind the breastbone). If your mind wanders, just keep shifting your attention back to the area of your heart.
2. Heart Breathing
As you focus on the area of your heart, imagine your breath is flowing in and out through that area. This helps your mind and energy to stay focused in the heart area and your respiration and heart rhythms to synchronize. Breathe slowly and gently in through your heart (to a count of 5 or 6) and slowly and easily out through your heart (to a count of 5 or 6) . Do this until your breathing feels smooth and balanced, not forced. Continue to breathe with ease until you find a natural inner rhythm that feels good to you.
3. Heart feeling
Continue to breathe through the area of your heart. As you do so, recall a positive feeling, a time when you felt good inside, and try to re-experience it. Allow yourself to feel this good feeling of appreciation or care. If you can’t find anything, it’s okay, just try to find a sincere attitude of appreciation or care. Once you have found a positive feeling or attitude, you can sustain it by continuing your Heart Focus, Heart Breathing and Heart Feeling.
Conclusion
The 3 steps together takes only one minute. One minute to transform your life in that moment, which can help make your next moments a whole lot better.
