HANH TAT

The Institute of HeartMath has shown that bi-directional communication exists between the heart and the brain and that the heart itself has around 40,000 neurites (like neurons of the brain) and they affectionately call this the heart’s own little brain.

Scans show that the heart sends significantly more signals to the brain than vice versa and that by creating coherence between heart and brain (through heart-coherence meditation, which is much simpler than it sounds), the environment is created for easier access to flow states and other health benefits such as better mental and physical health through better emotional regulation and better sleep, leading to stress reduction and enhanced well-being.

This in turn helps to cultivate heart-based consciousness (living from the heart) which can increase emotional awareness and intuitive listening as well as unleash creativity.

I have experienced this for myself. As explained in a previous post, I was always a predominantly left-brained, logical person. Whilst I enjoyed writing, it didn’t light me up in the way that maths and science did, so for writing to become my passion was never something I’d envisioned for myself.

Yet as I started to practice heart-based consciousness as part of my spiritual practice, I discovered that writing provided an avenue through which to channel my emotions therapeutically, and it liberated a dormant part of my being, a latent creativity within that I never knew existed.

As my heart alchemised my emotional energies (after all, emotions are simply energy in motion) and sent the messages up to my brain via the vagus nerve, my brain translated them into word forms that would not have flowed out of me had I tried to write them from my thinking mind alone.

Such is the joy I now feel from writing that I relish time standing at my laptop, ready to allow the ideas and words (that often appear as I’m stirring from my slumber) to cascade out and for a written piece to unfold and emerge.

One such piece is a poem I wrote called ‘Ode to Soul’, for anyone interested.