The human heart is unique. It is the first organ developed in a baby inside their mother’s womb; the heart beats before the brain is even developed. It is the last of the organs to stop when a person dies, and in fact, can continue to beat for some time when it is removed from the body. It is the first and last, the beginning and the end.
But it is more than that.
The Heart-Brain Dialogue
In the early 1990s, a scientific study discovered that the human heart contains some 40,000 sensory neurons, the same as those found in the brain. Through these neurons, the heart and brain are engaged in an ongoing dialogue. Common knowledge asserts that the brain is the center of consciousness, perception, and thought, that, in effect, the dialogue between the heart and brain is being led and directed by the latter. Yet, the study showed that the heart was actually sending more neurological signals to the brain than vice versa. As scientist and author Gregg Braden described it,
“Our brain receives many of its instructions on what to do from the heart.”
In other words, it is often the heart leading the dialogue with the brain.
Through nervous system connections and hormones created in the heart, via the biomechanical information of blood pressure waves, and through electromagnetic fields, the heart assists with a person’s sensory experience and emotional processing, with reasoning and memory. Rollin McCraty, who is the Director of Research at the HeartMath Institute, a non-profit organization devoted to studying the heart, put it like this:
“The heart is a sensory organ and acts as a sophisticated information encoding and processing center that enables it to learn, remember, and make independent functional decisions.”
Perhaps this is why renowned French writer Antoine de Saint-Exupery famously said,
“It is only with the heart that one sees clearly, what is essential is invisible to the eye.”
Here, the question becomes, what does it see? What is the heart capable of that the brain is not?
Ancient Knowledge of the Power of the Heart
According to the ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead, the afterlife is a place called the Field of Reeds, a sort of utopia where there is no sickness or disappointment, where days are spent next to flowing streams under the shade of trees, surrounded by those loved in life.
Yet, one did not simply enter the Field of Reeds after death automatically. Rather, to get there, one first had to pass through a trial by the god Anubis. There, Anubis sat beside golden scales. On one scale, the heart of the deceased was placed; on the other, a single white feather – ‘the feather of truth.’ If the heart’s weight was lighter than the feather, the departed would be admitted to the Field of Reeds; if not, they would be cast out and eaten by a monster.
In ancient Egyptian thought, the heart was viewed as the seat of intelligence and wisdom, the director of the actions of human beings. Thus, in the Hall of Truth, the heart could be weighed down by bad deeds and negativities in life. The heart was, in essence, the difference between heaven and hell.
What is interesting about this story is that it is not unique in its view of the heart. In fact, as McCraty points out,
“The most common denominator in all religions is that the heart is the seat of wisdom.”
In ancient Chinese traditions, the heart was the ’emperor’ of all other energy systems, the place where the spirit resides, containing thoughts and emotions, and processing sensory information. For Hindus, the Heart Chakra is central among the seven chakra energy points which run up and down the body, the connection between the three above and three below, and the “true voice” of an individual. For both the Mayan and Aztec cultures, the heart was so important that when human sacrifices were made, it was often the heart which was offered to the gods.
Christianity, for its part, sees the heart as the place where emotions and desires begin, that which drives the will of an individual towards action. It was Jesus who said,
“Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also”
Similarly, the god of Islam proclaims,
“Heaven and earth cannot hold me, but I am contained within the heart of my servant.”
Of course, this type of view of the heart, this prominence among the functions of the mind, body, and soul, is not confined only to the annals of religion. It was, in fact, something known to many of the greatest thinkers among the ancients.
In Ancient Greece, Aristotle wrote at length on the heart, asserting,
“The heart is the perfection of the whole organism. Therefore, the principles of the power of perception and the soul’s ability to nourish itself must lie in the heart.”
At the time of the Roman Empire, physician and philosopher Aelius Galenus wrote, in his seminal work “On the Usefulness of the Parts of the Body”, that the heart was
“The hearthstone and source of the innate heat by which the animal is governed.”
Later, ninth-century Arabic philosopher Abu Nasr al-Farabi proclaimed:
“The ruling organ in the human body is the heart; the brain is secondary ruling organ subordinated to the heart.”
And yet, somewhere along the line, the importance of the heart diminished, giving way to the brain as master and commander, as conductor of the body dialogue. As science is now revealing, to abandon the primacy of the heart may have been wrong. It appears that knowledge which existed across cultures and religious traditions through most of human history might have contained information about the powers of the heart which has since been forgotten.
But what information, and what powers? Luckily, science is now revealing that as well.
Scientific Studies of the Powers of the Heart
In 2004, a study conducted by the HeartMath Institute sought to examine what mysterious powers the heart might hold. In the study, participants were shown 45 pictures – some beautiful, some disturbing, some neutral – while hooked up to machines measuring cardiac accelerations and decelerations, as well as the heartbeat evoked “potentials” on the surface of the skin. In short, the machines would measure what the heart was doing while the pictures were shown.
The results were shocking. Researchers found that the heart was responding to the emotionally provocative pictures, the ones which were beautiful or disturbing, prior to them even being seen. A full 6 seconds before the photos were shown, the heart would react to what was coming. Somehow, the heart was receiving intuitive information before the brain, and in fact, actually appeared to be looking into the future. Put more simply by the director of the study, it appeared that:
“The heart has access to information outside the boundaries of time and space.”
What this means is that when someone gets a ‘gut feeling’ about something, it might be more than a metaphor. Perhaps it is the heart interacting with something which cannot be perceived by the brain within the normal confines of time and space. This intuitive power, even prescience, of the heart has been illustrated by science.
So how might this power be used?
In 2011, a study conducted by the Medical Research Council Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit in Cambridge, England, asked this very question. Researchers created a card game designed so that no obvious strategy was apparent, and players would have to follow their hunches, that is, they would have to listen to their gut feelings. While playing the game, participants in the study wore various heart monitoring devices.
Most people gradually found a way to win the game, and nearly all reported relying on intuition rather than reason. However, the speed and ease with which participants discovered how to win varied greatly. As they relied on intuition, some of the participants’ gut feelings were right, and some were wrong.
Researchers asked why and were presented with an amazing explanation. It appeared that participants who were more aware of their own heartbeat had better gut feelings, that is to say, those who were able to ‘listen to their heart’ made better intuitive decisions. They were able to become better at the game, faster, using the power of their heart.
This begs the question as to whether this is a power that can be developed. Could the intuition of the heart be used to improve at things more important than a card game? And where does it stop? When does inherent intuition turn into conscious prescience, and can this actually be facilitated?
It may be that science is only beginning to scratch the surface of these questions. However, this is not the only, nor perhaps even the most impactful, of the heart’s powers.
Heart’s Electromagnetic Field
High above the earth, over both the northern and southern hemispheres, are two satellites operated by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, also known as the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite.
All-day every day, they measure the earth’s magnetic field. Generally, the data collected will look the same from day to day, month to month, and year to year. This was why it was so alarming to scientists when, one day in 2001, readings suddenly went haywire, a massive and totally out-of-the-ordinary spike in the earth’s magnetic field.
The Global Coherence Initiative, a project run by the HeartMath Institute, had an explanation. They believe there is a sort of feedback loop between the magnetic and energetic systems of human beings and the earth, and, accordingly, that a large number of people with a common emotional feeling, such as in response to a global event, can actually alter the earth’s magnetic and energetic fields.
With this in mind, the mystery of the unprecedented spike in the earth’s magnetic field recorded in 2001 began to unravel. The spike had begun on September 11, some 15 minutes after the first plane flew into the World Trade Center in New York City.
Here is the secret: the human heart is the most powerful source of electromagnetic energy in the body, producing an electrical field 60 times stronger than the brain, and a magnetic field more than 5000 times stronger. This electromagnetic energy envelops the body and extends outwards into space. In the first few feet around the body, it can be measured with scientific equipment, but many have suggested it may travel hundreds of feet or even much further.
Crucially, within this field, is encoded information about the emotional state of the heart. Each individual’s electromagnetic field interacts with that of the earth, passing on this encoded information. According to the Global Coherence Initiative, on 9/11, as the world watched while the Twin Towers fell, so much emotional information was being projected into the earth at once, that it spiked the earth’s magnetic field.
Heart Electromagnetic Communication
But perhaps more important than how it interacts with the earth, is how the heart’s electromagnetic field, projected outwards from the body, may impact and influence others. When two people are communicating, they are not only doing so with words, gestures, and body language. They are also communicating through the emotional information encoded in their electromagnetic energy. This is a concept called “energetic communication.”
Studies have shown how this works between people and animals. In one such study, a man was placed in a room with his dog, with no physical contact or attempts to get his dog’s attention allowed. He was instructed only to consciously attempt to radiate feelings of love towards the dog. In short order, a coherence developed between the heart rhythms of the man and his pet.
This type of effect is shown to be particularly strong when humans come around horses, whose electromagnetic field produced by the heart is five times larger than that produced by a human heart. In fact, science has already shown that just being in the proximity of a horse has dramatic physiological effects for humans, including lowered heart rate and blood pressure, decreased stress levels, reduced anxiety, anger, and tension, as well as increased feelings of empowerment, trust, and patience.
Going further, studies have shown that a mother’s brainwaves can become synched with her baby’s heartbeat. As one such study described,
“It appears that when the mother placed her attention on the baby that she became more sensitive to the subtle electromagnetic signals generated by the infant’s heart. These findings have intriguing implications, suggesting that a mother in a psychophysiologically coherent state became more sensitive to the subtle electromagnetic information encoded in the electromagnetic signals of her infant.”
More simply, the study concluded that
“The electromagnetic signals generated by the heart have the capacity to affect others around us.”
In other words, the idea of ‘picking up on someone’s vibes’ is not hyperbole, but rather a scientific reality.
Heart Coherent State
If electromagnetic fields affect all of our biological systems and, through energetic communication, the systems of those around us, if sending out and picking up ‘vibes’ is a real thing, then imagine how this knowledge might be used, on oneself and towards others.
The HeartMath Institute asserts that the key is adopting practices which put the heart in to what is called a “heart coherent state.” In other words, to positively impact the biological systems of oneself and others, the information encoded in the heart’s electromagnetic field must be positive and healthy. Over the decades, HeartMath has developed practices, now used by the US military, designed to put the heart in just such a state. Similarly, traditional practices such as chi gong and reiki are focused on the exchange and alteration of energy to facilitate healing.
But whatever the approach, the point should be clear: The powers of the heart, its impact on health and facilitation of unseen connections, its intuition, and its prescience, make it just as important as the ancients said it was.