Matters of the Heart
The Helical Heart, its Brain, and Other Stories
Prelude
The other day,
of , wrote a post where she talked about the work of HeartMath. This reminded me of some posts I had also written on the topic myself, and some research I had done on the heart more generally. So I thought, especially given we seem to be living in the age of a ghastly worldwide rise in heart health issues, and large excess deaths due mainly to heart attacks, it was worth gathering all the posts I had written on the topic here. Not least, to help understand what is going on in our own hearts.A Change of Heart
I have over the last few years, applied neuroplasticity to myself as a principle healing mechanism. I have worked on and changed my brain, through various somatic and neural exercises, light, sound, and talking therapies, etc. I have also worked a lot on my "second brain", the gut or enteric nervous system, which has nearly as many neurons as a domestic cat, and produces more of some neurotransmitters as the brain does. This work included seeking to improve the connection pathways with the brain, through diets to fix leaky gut, addressing candida, improving awareness, targeted breathing exercises, Vagus Nerve stimulation, abdominal breathing, Block Therapy etc.
But my intuition told me there was still some important part of my neural network system which I was not addressing, and which was still stuck or frozen in old patterns, a part still to be explored, to be worked on, to be “massaged” neuroplastically.
I became sure this was my heart, and all that comes and goes with it. Indeed, I had read before, and then promptly ignored, that the heart has yet another type of brain in our system, with a very large number of neurons, involving a myriad of neurotransmitters, and structures similar to which are found in the brain. Since many things synchronously pointed me to looking heart-wards, I began exploring this theme more. The motivating question was, can applied neuroplasticity result in a change of heart too? What I found was shocking.
The Helical Heart: It’s Not a Pump!
So what do we know about the heart? It just pumps blood around the body, right? Even this turns out to not be entirely correct. In his must see, short video, “Unwinding the Heart Center”, Integral Anatomist Gil Hedley, shows that if you dissect the heart in the right way, it unravels into a single band of muscle. Folding it back up again, it becomes clear that the heart band twists around and encircles itself to form a double helix. According to Hedley, the nature of the heart center is it is the place where the blood refreshes its movement, as well as its oxygen levels, and its purpose is to spin and wring out the blood, and introduce vortices into the flow.
The documentary, “The Helical Heart”, goes further in depth into these themes, and discusses how the heart only begins to act like a standard pump when something goes wrong with it, i.e. in heart conditions, in which the helical band of muscle starts to unravel on itself.
The Heart Contains a Brain
When searching for articles on the “heart brain”, I read a very interesting article in the Huffington Post "Let Your Heart Talk to Your Brain" by Deborah Rozman:
“What's really fascinating is that the heart contains a little brain in its own right. Yes, the human heart, in addition to its other functions, actually possesses a heart-brain composed of about 40,000 neurons that can sense, feel, learn and remember. The heart brain sends messages to the head brain about how the body feels and more. When I first heard about this scientific research, it intuitively made sense. I had felt for a long time that the heart has its own mysterious way of knowing.”
“Until the 1990s, scientists assumed and most of us were taught that it was only the brain that sent information and issued commands to the heart, but now we know that it works both ways. In fact, the heart's complex intrinsic nervous system, the heart brain, is an intricate network of several types of neurons, neurotransmitters, proteins and support cells, like those found in the brain proper. Research has shown that the heart communicates to the brain in several major ways and acts independently of the cranial brain.”
“One important way the heart can speak to and influence the brain is when the heart is coherent - generating a stable, sine-wavelike pattern in its rhythms. When the heart rhythm is coherent, the body, including the brain, begins to experience all sorts of benefits, among them greater mental clarity and intuitive ability, including better decision-making.”
Further, according to the HeartMath Institute:
"... the heart actually sends more signals to the brain than the brain sends to the heart… 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... the brain continuously responds to the heart... different patterns of heart activity have distinct effects on cognitive and emotional function.”
This is interesting, as it is reminiscent of how most of the signals (80%) on the gut-brain axis go from the gut to the brain, and hence how strongly the gut can significantly influence brain function.
“During stress and "negative" emotions, the heart rhythm pattern is erratic and disordered, [inhibiting] higher cognitive functions,... [limiting] ability to think clearly, remember, learn, reason, and make effective decisions (we often act impulsively and unwisely when we’re under stress). The heart’s input to the brain during stressful or negative emotions also has a profound effect on the brain’s emotional processes—actually serving to reinforce the emotional experience of stress.”
Heartfelt Coherence
According to HeartMath, when heart rate variability is plotted over time, the overall shape of the waveform pattern produced is called the “heart rhythm pattern”.
Heart Rhythm Patterns and Emotions
Many things can affect the heart rhythm pattern. The below quotes are again from HeartMath.
“These include breathing patterns, physical exercise, and thoughts... one of the most powerful factors that affect our heart’s changing rhythm is our feelings and emotions. The emotions we experience directly affect our heart rhythm pattern – and this, in turn, tells us much about how our body is functioning.”
HeartMath themselves have developed "simple" measuring technology by which anyone can measure their heart rate over time - and demonstrate the affect of thoughts/feelings on it for themselves. Thus these ideas are both measurable and quantifiable. However, my colleague, Samar Singh, has recently developed a simple, yet improved method for measuring such things:
“In general, emotional stress – including emotions such as anger, frustration, and anxiety—gives rise to heart rhythm patterns that appear irregular and erratic… looks like a series of uneven, jagged peaks - an incoherent heart rhythm pattern… the incoherent patterns of physiological activity associated with stressful emotions can cause our body to operate inefficiently, deplete our energy, and produce extra wear and tear on our whole system. This is especially true if stress and negative emotions are prolonged or experienced often.”
“However, when we experience uplifting emotions such as appreciation, joy, care, and love; our heart rhythm pattern becomes highly ordered, looking like a smooth, harmonious ["sine"] wave. This is called a coherent heart rhythm pattern… it’s no wonder that positive emotions feel so good – they actually help our body’s systems synchronize and work better.”
“Research has shown that generating sustained positive emotions facilitates a body-wide shift to a specific, scientifically measurable state. This state is termed psychophysiological coherence, because it is characterized by increased order and harmony in both our psychological (mental and emotional) and physiological (bodily) processes. Psychophysiological coherence is state of optimal function.”
I did try this technique using one of HeartMath’s monitoring tools. I found by trying this out straight after a Yoga Nidra meditation session that I could easily enter this state, and sustain it while concentrating on thinking about people I have positive emotions for, with hands over heart. By stop-starting this, I could evaluate that the device did indeed know when I was trying to activate heart coherence or not. Since the technology could indeed reliably respond, this proved to me there is something very real and important in these concepts.
Something else the folks at HeartMath wrote also reminded me of a discussion by Dr Stephen Porges, about two different Vagus Nerve mediated calm states:
totally relaxed, when the striated muscles of the face and torso are totally flaccid and offline, where only the smooth muscles of the organs are autonomically working and we are disengaged from active Social Engagement (typically lying down, prone);
an active, alert, but calm and Socially Engaged state (typically when upright, so that the striated muscles of the face and torso are active).
The second of these seems to be the state associated with coherence:
“Not only are there fundamental physiological differences between relaxation and coherence, but the psychological characteristics of these states are also quite different. Relaxation is a low-energy state in which the individual rests both the body and mind, typically disengaging from cognitive and emotional processes. In contrast, coherence generally involves the active engagement of positive emotions… coherence is experienced as a calm, balanced, yet energized and responsive state that is conducive to everyday functioning and interaction, including the performance of tasks requiring mental acuity, focus, problem-solving, and decision-making, as well as physical activity and coordination.”
More Connections of the Heart
The Heart Sac
The heart sits in a fibrous “sack” of connective tissue, called the pericardium. At the bottom it merges with the diaphragm, and hence connects heart function directly to breathing function. However, interestingly the pericardium connects directly with the sternum and the spine through strong ligaments. This connects the heart bidirectionally with posture, and hints that there may be some connectivity between heart health issues, and back and neck pain, etc.
The Heart-Face Connection
Dr Stephen Porges, in his seminal paper on Polyvagal Theory, made the connection that the same cluster of parasympathetic nerves, that he later termed the “Ventral Vagus Complex”, which innervate and control the heart, are also responsible for fascial expression, melody of voice, and other Social Engagement functions. Thus, in a very real sense, our faces and our hearts are indelibly connected. This ties back with the heart coherence and emotions link: when we are in coherence, we express our emotions on our faces and communicate well, when we lose coherence, our faces go blank and masklike, we lack melody in our voice, and we lose the ability to express ourselves.
The Heart as an EMF Generator
In her article mentioned at the top of this article, Kathleen discusses how the heart generates a strong electro-magnetic field (much stronger than that generated by the brain), which can be measured some distance from the body. I hypothesize that we may have nerve endings which can detect these fields, and hence “read” other people’s internal states when we are proximate to them.
I have also created an online course, which attempts to transfer all the knowledge I have gleaned about the human body and health, in a pragmatic and directly actionable way:
Lovely Gary-this is entirely heart-felt in delivery and a lovely spiral package all to itself! Kudos and thanks
Wonderful Gary! I look forward to watching the documentary and am happy to see this post, lots of excellent information worth remembering and exploring. Thank you, too, for the shout-out. Best.