Thinking is important, of course. We have to think to function in life. But if we let our thinking run wild – if our minds rule our lives – confusion about the best decisions to make in our business and personal lives, depleted energy, dissatisfaction, low and negative thoughts, frustration and stress will be also rampant.

What many of us do not know is that we have another mind within us, another brain if you will. And the other brain is the heart. I know it sounds like a contradiction. If I have heart problems, I don't go to a neurologist, I visit a cardiologist. The heart does the pumping; the brain does the thinking.

More and more scientific studies have discovered that the heart has its own form of intelligence, which provides a clearer picture of the world around us – and the world within us.

Did you know that your heart actually has its own independent nervous system? The heart contains 40,000 neurons, or brain-like cells that include sensory neurites, which help receive and transmit information. Turns out there's a whole heart language that helps guide your brain and the rhythms in your body, and your heart sends more messages to your brain than the other way around! Your heart also creates an electromagnetic field that is a hundred times greater than the field your brain creates. So what does this all mean?

This means that your heart is not just a muscle that pumps blood through your body or a metaphor for sentimental love. It is a center of deep intelligence. Your heart is also a kind of brain. Accessing this intelligence is a way to massively enhance your intuition, so vital to making decisions that truly move your business forward to new levels of success beyond the classic pros and cons lists—if that's making the ultimate hiring decision. of a key executive or how to allocate your annual budget.

It's also another type of intelligence that allows you to bypass the stress response, as opposed to trying to minimize it. AFTER getting stressed in the first place.

The Power of Heart Coherence

Imagine the difference of swimming across a lake in a smooth stream, versus hitting rocks along the way, stopping to wipe your goggles, and getting a painful cramp in one of your calves.

The first type of swimming is what coherence is, which is the synchronization of systems within your body. You become like a well-tuned machine, where everything works at its best. Coherence must begin with your heart, as it is the strongest biological oscillator or pacemaker in the body.

When you activate the power of your heart, it creates a more harmonious communication between the heart, brain and nervous system, and then facilitates better communication with the rest of the body. With your brain and heart in sync, your overall health and bodily efficiency improve significantly.

Coherence is an essential part of accessing your heart's intelligence and can be measured physically, as shown by the smooth, rhythmic patterns in your heartbeat variability. When you feel coherent, you feel calm, clear, focused, intuitive, energetic and in sync with yourself and the world around you.

You can see in the graphs below how when you are in the incoherent emotion of anger, your heart rhythms (HRV pattern) are chaotic and erratic. This chaos is then unfortunately carried through all the systems of our body.

On the other hand, when you are in coherent and calm emotions like appreciation and care, your heart rhythms are calm and regular. And this is also echoed through the body in a smooth and regular flow.

When you are also more coherent, you become more resilient to stress reactions. Not only does this allow you to stay more focused and clear, so you increase your emotional intelligence and make better decisions, you also protect your body and your health.

The stress response activates a whole cascade of hormones in your body, including cortisol, which is known as the stress hormone. In turn, the hormone DHEA can reduce cortisol and help prevent depression, anxiety and cardiovascular disease; it has also been shown to help increase energy and vitality.

Research shows that in just one month of practicing the heart coherence tools – the details of which are described in my new book The Hidden Power of Hearts and presented below—subjects increased an average of 100 percent in their DHEA levels and decreased an average of 23 percent in their cortisol levels. This research is exciting because it shows that we can learn to empower ourselves to create hormonal balance within – without external aids such as drugs!

Higher intuition

Research reveals that when the heart and brain are in sync and coherence increases, a much deeper intelligence is achieved and we can then operate at our highest levels of performance. Most of the authors and entrepreneurs I've interviewed for my Feel Good podcast have mentioned how important intuition was to their success—even in the most tech-heavy businesses. This deeper intelligence is the intelligence of the heart. And intuition is an essential part of heart intelligence.

Higher coherence leads to a calmer, more regulated state throughout your heart rhythms and other systems, which allows you to listen to your intuition. The more coherent you are, the more your intuition can speak to you. Intuition can arise as feelings, messages and guidance from within.

Sometimes, feelings or intuitive messages can seem illogical or “wrong” to the linear mind. This is why it is so important to work on being more and more calm in your life. Stillness, like clear water, allows you to listen effectively instead of getting garbled messages and getting confused. Stillness prevents you from being deceived by limited ego thoughts, chaotic emotions, and old, rigid ideas that can lead you down the wrong path and limit your success.

Heart Coherence Tools

Increasing your heart's coherence is simpler and more attainable than you think.

The team at my company, Solluna, conducted a study on the HeartAlign 8-Minute Meditation with the HeartMath Institute research team, with 30 participants practicing the meditation for four weeks, four to five times a week. There was an average increase of 29 percent in coherence levels. In other words, the participants had reprogrammed their nervous system to a more optimal functional state in just one month.

One of the key parts of the practice is to simply begin to shift your attention to your heart. Research published in the American Journal of Cardiology and other journals found that this alone begins to improve communication between your heart and brain, helps bring your nervous system back into balance, increases cardiovascular efficiency, and brings more coherence to your emotions and mind. .

Another key part of meditation is doing heart-focused breathing. As you focus on your heart, take a few deep breaths in and out. There is a certain rhythm to this breathing practice, detailed in The Hidden Power of the Five Heartsthat has been shown to help increase heart coherence and move you into a more coherent state. However, by simply taking a natural pattern of a few slow, deep breaths in and out, focusing on your heart, you will begin to increase your coherence.

Try these preliminary steps, which will take less than a minute, before making a decision about which direction to go, which next best step, or any decision to tap into your deeper intelligence and wisdom. to guide you to the best choice. It's also a great idea to stop and move into your heart, away from the flood of thoughts and reactions, and take a few deep breaths as you begin to feel yourself going into a stress response. Over time you will find that your intuition will begin to grow, which will be invaluable in the success of your business and personal life.

This essay was adapted from The Hidden Power of the Five Hearts by Kimberly Snyder (September, 2024, Hay House).