Jennifer Lovejoy, PhD, Vice President, Clinical Development & Support

I’ve been interested in the fascinating work of the Institute for HeartMath (IHM) ever since scientists there discovered the amazing physical and mental health benefits that occur when people focus on heart-centered breathing combined with feelings of love, appreciation, or gratitude.

In decades of subsequent research, IHM researchers have shown that regularly practicing HeartMath techniques results in:

• Weight loss
• Better quality of sleep
• Lower blood pressure
• Less stress and anxiety
• Better management of chronic pain
• Improvement with panic attacks and depression

How does it work?

The heart has the strongest electromagnetic field in the body, and when your heart is beating in what the IHM calls a coherent pattern, the energy generated by your heart affects your other internal organs, even your brain. So bringing your heart into “coherence” is sort of like bathing your whole body in positive, balancing energy.

You can learn to recognize and then to cultivate the feeling of coherence in your body - in fact, we offer our Weight Talk^® participants an audio lesson called "The Quick Coherence Technique," which teaches the basic prinicples of coherence. When I practice this technique regularly, I not only feel calmer, but my mood tends to lift and I feel more energized.

The technique is simple and only takes a few minutes:

Step 1: Heart Focus – bring your attention to your heart.

Step 2: Heart Breathing – breathe deeply and regularly; imagine your breath coming into and out of your heart.

Step 3: Heart Feeling – maintain your focus and breathing, and activate positive feelings such as love, appreciation, or gratitude.

Recently, IHM started a grand experiment called the “Global Coherence Initiative”, which brings together people from all over the world to practice heart coherence at synchronized times. The researchers believe that if millions of people regularly cultivate love, appreciation, and gratitude, and live their lives with a “heart focus,” it just might change the world. I particularly like a quote from Confucius on their website:

"To put the world in order, we must first put the nation in order; to put the nation in order, we must put the family in order; to put the family in order, we must cultivate our personal life; and to cultivate our personal life, we must first set our hearts right."

What can you do this month to set your heart right?

For me, I plan to keep practicing the Quick Coherence technique, remembering that every time I do, I’m contributing a little bit to changing the world, one heart at a time!