Deborah Rozman Ph.D.: The Heart’s Intelligence & Coherence (HeartMath)

07/23/19 • 45 min

Deborah Rozman, Ph.D., is the President and CEO of HeartMath, the leading research body in the field of heart mind connection.

Founded in 1991 by Doc Childre, HeartMath has spent nearly 30 years researching and developing a system of effective, scientifically based tools and technologies to bridge the intuitive connection between heart and mind and deepen our connection with the hearts of others.

Most of us have been taught in school that the heart is constantly responding to “orders” sent by the brain in the form of neural signals. However, it is not as commonly known that the heart actually sends more signals to the brain than the brain sends to the heart.

Moreover, these heart signals have a significant effect on brain function – influencing emotional processing as well as higher cognitive faculties such as attention, perception, memory, and problem-solving. In other words, not only does the heart respond to the brain, but the brain continuously responds to the heart.

HeartMath research has demonstrated that different patterns of heart activity (which accompany different emotional states) have distinct effects on cognitive and emotional function. During stress and negative emotions, when the heart rhythm pattern is erratic and disordered, the corresponding pattern of neural signals traveling from the heart to the brain inhibits higher cognitive functions. This limits our ability to think clearly, remember, learn, reason, and make effective decisions.

In contrast, the more ordered and stable pattern of the heart’s input to the brain during positive emotional states has the opposite effect – it facilitates cognitive function and reinforces positive feelings and emotional stability. This means that learning to generate increased heart rhythm coherence, by sustaining positive emotions, not only benefits the entire body, but also profoundly affects how we perceive, think, feel, and perform.

In this discussion we talk about heart rate coherence, heart rate variability (HRV), and simple tools and techniques you can do find get into touch with your heart.

Debbie Rozman leads a free monthly heart meditation called The Add Heart Call. Learn more about it at HeartMath.com/AddHeartCalls.

Deborah Rozman, Ph.D., is the President and CEO of HeartMath, the leading research body in the field of heart mind connection.

In this discussion we talk about heart rate coherence, heart rate variability (HRV), and simple tools and techniques you can do find get into touch with your heart.

Debbie Rozman leads a free monthly heart meditation called The Add Heart Call. Learn more about it at HeartMath.com/AddHeartCalls.

Previous Episode

Mirabai Starr: The Wisdom Of Feminine Mysticism

Mirabai Starr is a Professor of Philosophy and World Religions at the University of New Mexico-Taos and a best-selling spiritual author known particularly for contemporary translations of sacred literature.

As a teenager, she lived at the Lama Foundation, an intentional spiritual community in New Mexico, USA. It was at Lama that Mirabai encountered many of the leading teachers and timeless wisdom of diverse spiritual paths: Hindu; Buddhist; Sufi; Jewish; Christian, and Native American and was especially influenced by Ram Dass, Reb Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, and the teachings of Murshid Samuel Lewis.

Mirabai lives in the mountains of Northern New Mexico with her husband, Jeff Little. Between them, Mirabai and Jeff have four grown daughters and many grandchildren. Mirabai’s youngest daughter, Jenny, was killed in a car accident in 2001 at the age of fourteen. On that same day, Mirabai’s first book, a translation of Dark Night of the Soul, was released. She considers this experience, and the connection between profound loss and longing for God to be the ground of her own spiritual life. Now a certified bereavement counselor, Mirabai helps other mourners harness the transformational power of loss.

Her latest book, Wild Mercy, explores the wisdom of well-known and less-known feminine mystics from the past millennia, exploring what wisdom they have for us today in this time of spiritual and ecological upheaval.

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Dr. Clare Johnson: Lucid Dreaming For Beginners

Clare R. Johnson, PhD, is the leading expert on lucid dreaming. She has a PhD from the University of Leeds on using lucid dreams as a creative tool (the first doctoral work in the world to explore this topic), is a lifelong lucid dreamer herself, and is President of the International Association for the Study of Dreams. Her books include Mindful Dreaming and Llewellyn’s Complete Book of Lucid Dreaming.

Lucid dreaming is knowing that you are dreaming while you are dreaming. Lucid dreams happen while the body is asleep but the dreamer becomes mentally alert enough to realise, ‘I’m dreaming this!’ This realisation enables the dreamer to guide the dream, go with the flow, or observe events with full conscious awareness.

Dreams can help you heal your fears, resolve emotional issues, and connect to your deepest spiritual truths, but only if you take the time to learn how to communicate with them effectively. Lucid dreaming is a powerful way of engaging mindfully with your dreams to solve problems, improve your relationships, and discover who you are at the most profound level.

In this discussion we talk about how to lucid dream, how to interpret what you see there, and what you need to do to realise some of the incredible insights that this technique can give.