RSS Feed
Management By Agreement
Meet the Most Powerful Stress Manager: Your Heart
July 2006
“Follow your heart.” “Put your heart into it.” “She plays with a lot of heart.” “Learn it by heart.” “In your heart you know.” Our language is filled with metaphors about the heart. In fact, virtually every culture of the world considers the heart to be central to human experience, health, intelligence and wisdom. Even our gestures indicate the importance we give to the heart. When asked to point to yourself, don’t you point to the center of your chest? While we’ve all heard (and speak) these metaphors, few of us really know how to live them or if we even should try. Working in business we’ve been discouraged to believe these metaphors; for fear the heart will somehow lead us to financial ruin or a career path to oblivion. So, common wisdom has become the lowest common denominator of perspectives: the heart is a good pump, but don’t give it credit for much more than that.
Over the past 20 years, however, scientists have discovered new information about the heart showing it’s far more complex than we’d ever imagined. There is now abundant scientific evidence that, in addition to pumping blood, the heart directs and aligns many systems in the body so that they can function in harmony with one another. And although the heart is in constant communication with the brain, we now know that it makes many of its own decisions due to complex processing “hardware” built in to the heart itself.
Last month we showed you how the brain signals your body to get ready to handle danger (albeit stress) via the nervous and hormonal systems. We also said that in order to effectively manage stress, you need to change the emotional component of your reactions to stress.
But there’s more. The rest of the body sends signals back to the brain moment-by-moment. Amazingly, there are more signals going to the brain than the reverse. And, because the heart is the most dominant in sending information to the brain, it’s key to reducing stress, boosting health and improving performance in all aspects of your life. Here’s how.
The heart communicates to the brain four different ways: neurologically (the nervous system), biochemically (hormones and neurochemicals produced within the heart), mechanically (the pulse which is a wave flowing through our bloodstream) and electromagnetically (electrical signals generated when the heart contracts). To understand the heart’s role in reducing your stress, we’re going to focus on the neurological communication between the heart and brain.
Let’s start with a few surprising facts: even when you’re at rest, the heart’s rate is constantly changing. When the doctor checks your pulse (also called “resting heart rate”), the findings show only an average because your heart is actually speeding up and slowing down all the time. It’s your autonomic nervous system (ANS) which regulates the heart’s rate. The heart’s ability to speed up and slow down efficiently keeps you flexible and healthy. If your heart weren’t able to speed up, you wouldn’t be able to climb stairs. If it weren’t able to slow down, you wouldn’t be able to sleep. When we lose the inherent flexibility of the heart, it’s usually a sign we’ve been under high stress, and that we’re also at higher risk for cardiovascular and other potentially serious health problems.
The beat to beat change in your heart’s rate is called heart rate variability (HRV).Cardiologists now recognize HRV as an indicator of overall health and endurance because it is a window into nervous system function. And nervous system imbalances are linked to many conditions, including diabetes, chronic fatigue, high blood pressure, migraine headaches, Alzheimer’s, HIV and many more.
Interestingly, researchers have learned that emotions have a profound impact on your HRV. When you’re stressed, the heart rhythm pattern looks like this:
Scientists call this chaotic pattern an incoherent rhythm. This rhythm indicates that the two branches of the nervous system -- sympathetic and parasympathetic -- are out of sync. Your system doesn’t know whether to speed up or slow down. And, just as driving your car with one foot on the brake and the other on the gas pedal is not good for your car’s engine and wastes fuel, a chronically chaotic heart rhythm is not good for you. You age prematurely.
When you feel positive emotions, on the other hand, this creates a smooth or coherentheartrhythm that looks like this:
A coherent pattern means the two branches of the nervous system are in sync, allowing the heart to speed up and slow down in a smooth, efficient pattern. Even without a degree in cardiology, it should be easy to figure out which pattern or emotion is better for you over the long haul.
What’s more interesting is heart rhythm patterns have a profound impact on brain function and can even be measured in that most important of brain regions -- the cortex -- where decision-making, communication skill, self-reflection and strategic and innovative thinking all reside.
Incoherent heart rhythm = cortical inhibition
Coherent heart rhythm = cortical facilitation
In simple language, coherent heart rhythms facilitate brain function, allowing you to access and use that part of your brain you were hired to use. Cortical facilitation – the enhancement of functions within your cortex -- is important for tasks that require focus, mental clarity, creativity, and high-level decision-making. It also augments tasks that require coordination and speed—in sports, for example. Cortical inhibition, on the other hand, diminishes all those same capacities which helps explain why smart people often say and do stupid things under stress.
Creating an effective stress reduction approach to create and sustain coherent physiology requires a whole systems approach: mind-body-heart-emotion.
The steps to Quick Coherence®
Try this simple technique for about 30 seconds:
Focus your attention on the area around your heart. Slowly and gently, breathe in through your heart, and then breathe out through you solar plexus. (The solar plexus is between your sternum and naval.)
You may notice a relaxing effect as your breathing slows down. You may also notice a slower heart rate. Some people experience this as a calm feeling; others find it energizing. The change occurs because breathing modulates the nervous system. By making a slight adjustment in how you breathe, you can start to bring order to the nervous system which in turn sends a more coherent heart rhythm signal back to the brain. The heart and nervous system are now working more efficiently together. This is one reason breathing techniques are effective in reducing stress. Just remembering to breathe deeply when you’re stress will reduce your stress. By paying attention to your heart and your breathing, you start to disengage from the mental and emotional response to the stress. But you don’t want to stop there.
We’ve been telling you throughout the series that emotions play a big role in stress reduction and performance improvement, and last month we described how emotions impact your hormonal system. This, and the fact that emotions also dramatically impact heart rhythms, is the reasons behind the next step to Quick Coherence®:
Make a sincere effort to activate a positive feeling.
While any positive, heartfelt emotion will work, the easiest one for most people to use is appreciation. Feeling appreciation for a person, place or quality in your life is all it takes to make the emotional—and hormonal--shift. It’s important to not just visualize appreciation; but to feel it. Anything you sincerely appreciate will work: a favorite pet, a wonderful vacation experience, those you love, or a recent accomplishment are a few examples that work for most people. Even remembering the last time you enjoyed your favorite dessert will shift your emotional state! It’s the shift in feelings that sustains nervous system order.
When you put the two steps together you change how two key systems are responding to stressful situations: nervous system and hormonal. The result is physiological coherence (nervous system, heart, hormonal, brain function) and psychological coherence (emotions, attitude and mood). The resulting coherent internal state supports high performance, good health and overall well-being. This is the whole system approach that is everything you want and need in stress relief.
Quick Coherence® steps again:
-
Shift your focus to the area around your heart. Breathe in through your heart and out through your solar plexus.
-
Make a sincere effort to activate a positive feeling.
Quick Coherence® in Action
Use these two steps any time to replace a stress-producing, emotionally draining reaction with a new response or action that is healthier and more energy efficient. With practice, you can learn to change your physiology in just seconds!
You don’t have to wait until you’re stressed to gain the benefits of coherence. You have to breathe any way! Why not make a slight adjustment and give your body an energy boost – on your next breath?
Practicing Quick Coherence® will anchor feelings of appreciation, buoyancy and emotional stability which can increase the probability of carrying such feelings into and throughout the day. This builds resilience, personal productivity and reduces the likelihood of becoming drained by life’s daily hassles and stressful events.
Applications
By using this quick and easy way to coherence first thing in the morning -- before negative thoughts, worries, anxieties or even ‘useful’ plans start to engage the mind -- you can set the emotional tone for the day.
Likewise, at the end of the day, a quick shift to coherence can help you unwind, rebalance and let go of worries, concerns and negative feelings that have accumulated throughout the day.
Focusing on feelings of appreciation before going to bed often leads to more peaceful and rejuvenating sleep and reduces the carry-over of negative thoughts and emotions into the following day. Creating this kind of internal environment prepares the physiological, mental, and emotional systems to more fully derive the regenerative benefits of sleep.
And by applying Quick Coherence® in the middle of a meeting (no will know you’re doing it!) you may just be the sharpest and most creative person in the room!
Kim Allen is the director of licensing and training at HeartMath® LLC, a global provider of performance solutions to corporations, government agencies, and health care systems.
Bruce Cryer is President and CEO of HeartMath® and co-author of From Chaos to Coherence: The Power to Change Performance, a book and multi-media CD-rom.