Articles

The Institute of HeartMath

www.heartmath.org
www.heartmath.com
14700 West Park Avenue
P.O. Box 1463
Boulder Creek, CA. 95006

The Mission of HeartMath

“Through innovative research and public education, we aim to facilitate more balance and health in people’s lives by:

The Approach of HeartMath

IHM has developed “simple user-friendly tools people can use in the moment to relieve stress and break through into greater levels of personal balance, creativity, intuitive insight and fulfillment.”

They offer extensive quantitative research to illustrate the effects of these tools on health, in business and in education. Science of the Heart: An overview of research conducted by the IHM, published by the HM Research Center, 2001

Institute of HeartMath Websites

There are two websites: www.heartmath.org and www.heartmath.com. The former offers more information on research than does the latter. The latter has a section of “free stuff” where you may sign up for HeartQuotes and the IQ (Inner Quality) Tip of the week. Examples of the Quote and the Tip are as follows:

HeartQuote Examples

Joy

“I slept and dreamt that life was joy.
I awoke and saw that life was service.
I acted and behold, service was joy.”

— Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941)

Present Moment

“There is surely nothing other than the single purpose of the present moment. A man’s whole life is a succession of moment after moment. If one fully understands the present moment, there will be nothing else to do, and nothing else to pursue.”

— Hagakure

Vision

“Vision is not enough. It must be combined with venture. It is not enough to stare up the steps, we must step up the stairs.”

— Vaclav Havel

Inner Quality Tip Example

Inner Quality Tip: Entrainment

Entrainment occurs when two or more oscillating systems frequency-lock together and operate with increased efficiency. We see this phenomenon when flocks of birds or schools of fish synchronize their movements to more efficiently transport themselves. We also observe entrainment when the motion of several pendulum clocks in a room synchronize with the wave pattern produced by the largest one. And we know a baby’s heartbeat patterns can eventually entrain to those of its mother when it is held closely.

Entrainment also happens in our own bodies. By far the most powerful generator of rhythmic patterns of mechanical and electrical energy in the human system is the heart. There are also other biological oscillators that create rhythms in your body—the sympathetic and parasympathetic branches of your autonomic nervous system, your respiratory system, your digestive system, etc.

When you produce an appreciative and caring feeling in your heart, its powerful rhythms can pull other elements of your system into entrainment so they resonate in harmony and function with increased efficiency.

Entrainment can also happen at an organizational level. Teams or departments that are frequency bound to common core values, goals or processes and share a common positive focus can collectively create something of higher value.

Our Personal Leadership Reflection

How does this resource connect to and expand Personal Leadership: Making a World of Difference?

The approach and the research of the Institute of Heart Math speak directly to the foundational tenets of Personal Leadership (PL).

  1. The place to begin is with being, with our embodied experience.
    The Institute of Heart Math emphasizes the importance of attending to our feeling bodies. When we attend to our hearts, we make a difference in our own lives and in those of others around us.
  2. We can choose our inner state.
    Research by the Institute of Heart Math shows that we can, with intention and awareness, choose our internal state of being and that the choice we make has implications for our health, our creativity and the effect we have on others.

    Using heart-based methods to self-generate states of coherence and entrainment can:
    • improve our thinking abilities,
    • give us more mental clarity for decision-making,
    • strengthen our immune system,
    • reduce our blood pressure,
    • relieve depression,
    • lessen prolonged stress, anxiety and burnout, and
    • increase our creativity as well as our caring, our sense of connection to others and our general sense of well being.
  3. Our choice is more than a private affair!
    The IHM has completed research on cardiac energy exchange between people. Their key findings:
    • “When people touch or are in proximity, one person’s heart beat signal is registered in the other person’s brainwaves.” 1
    • “When two people are at a conversational distance, the electromagnetic signal generated by one person’s heart can influence the other person’s brain rhythms. [Moreover] when an individual is generating a coherent heart rhythm, synchronization between that individual’s brain waves and the other person’s heartbeat is more likely to occur.” 2

How might this resource expand our thinking, understanding, awareness, creativity in moving forward as practitioners of Personal Leadership?

One interesting dimension is to consider the implications of this research for facilitators, coaches, teachers, and trainers.

When we generate a coherent heart rhythm, one resonant with love and well-being, we have the potential to positively influence our clients’ brain waves and brain rhythms. Our state of being thus has as at least as much impact on our client outcomes as what we actually say and the process technologies we actually engage.

It is particularly important to note that internal coherence, and thereby entrainment, is only possible with the ‘positive’ emotions such as love and joy, Internal entrainment is not possible when one is in a state of anxiety or fear; in such states our brain waves, heart rhythms and breathing patterns do not, cannot, synchronize with one another.

It is also important to note that whether or not our clients’ brainwaves become synchronized to our heart signal is, according to HeartMath’s research as above, determined by the degree of coherence in our clients’ own heart rhythms. Therefore, the higher the degree of our clients’ internal coherence, the more our clients will be receptive to our state of love and joy—and we to theirs; it becomes mutually reinforcing. All of this means that by committing to an internal state of love and joy, the forward movement of co-creation between clients and consultant can be hugely expanded.

Therefore, how can we move individuals and/or groups toward a collective state of inner coherence—especially when they start off in a ‘funk’? What would that look like, feel like? How could we recognize such a state when it occurred?

A Story

Eight years ago, Sheila had a contract to help develop effective teams within a very, very culturally diverse group of Asian research scientists. They were together for four days, learning about each other, about teamwork and forming real-time teams for future joint project work.

As the conference progressed, one newly formed team was having a lot of difficulty; members became less and less interested in the task and in the formation of the group. At one point, they stopped doing an assignment and said basically, “We quit.”

Sheila said to herself ‘fine; no need to force this. They need to back-off their task and reconnect, to themselves and each other.’ She asked them to get back together for one last conversation before they broke-up. She gave them a set of appreciative questions, tangentially related to work, specifically designed to assist them in speaking about possibilities and opportunities in matters of personal consequence.

Looking back, it is now obvious that what Sheila was doing was giving the individuals in this group an opportunity to move into a place of internal coherence by bringing appreciative attention to things they cared about. Enabling that kind of internal coherence, HeartMath research suggests, the possibility could then arise of group members opening to and caring about one another in a new way, at a new level; they could thus entrain as a group at a high level of creative expression. And indeed, so it was.

When it became time for a break, this group was nowhere to be seen. Sheila found them, in their original room, huddled together in intense and positive conversation. They were all leaning forward, shoulder to shoulder, listening intently to each other. The air was electric.

What had happened? Had the IHM been around to measure each member’s state of coherence, what would have been found? No doubt an occurrence of collective entrainment. And the result, of course, was that they continued on as a group, moving through other moments of challenge, and did a nice piece of work together.

Concluding Thought

We have support in moments of challenge. When practicing Personal Leadership, we begin with making a choice to live and work from “our highest and best; to live and work in ways that energize ourselves and others.” There is now ample research to support the choice of such an inner state and its direct impact on performance in a wide variety of contexts.

As Personal Leadership practitioners, should we ever be criticized for emphasizing the positive or being too much of a “Pollyanna,” let us be gracious and then call on the empirical support that the Institute of HeartMath offers!

References:

  1. McCraty, Atkinson, Tomasino and Tiller, “The Electricity of Touch: Detection and Measurement of Cardiac Energy Exchange Between People,” in Science of the Heart, HeartMath Research Center, 2001, pp. 24-25.
  2. McCraty. Atkinson and Tiller, “The Role of Physiological Coherence in the Detection and Measurement of Cardiac Energy Exchange Between People,” in Science of the Heart, HeartMath Research Center, 2001, pp. 25-26.

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