The following article contains extracts from research carried out by the HeartMath Institute.

Profound studies, like the HeartMath Institute, are revealing how natural energy from the heart is acting as a hub for a source of wisdom and intelligence. The brain can use this to enhance our lives with increased balance, creativity, and intuitive capacities. This research gives us a much deeper understanding of why it is more than just a pump that sustains life. This leads us to discover how our hearts could potentially have a huge impact on our manifestation energy.

We now have a much deeper scientific understanding of many of our original questions that explains how and why heart activity affects mental clarity, creativity, emotional balance, intuition and personal effectiveness. Our and others’ research indicates the heart is far more than a simple pump. The heart is, in fact, a highly complex information-processing center with its own functional brain, commonly called the heart brain, that communicates with and influences the cranial brain via the nervous system, hormonal system and other pathways. These influences affect brain function and most of the body’s major organs and play an important role in mental and emotional experience and the quality of our lives.

We have conducted a number of research studies that have explored topics such as the electrophysiology of intuition and the degree to which the heart’s magnetic field, which radiates outside the body, carries information that affects other people and even our pets, and links people together in surprising ways. We also launched the Global Coherence Initiative (GCI), which explores the interconnectivity of humanity with Earth’s magnetic fields.

Heart-Brain Communication

HeartMath explains that traditionally, past research has studied the communication pathways between the brain and heart has been approached from a one-way perspective… the heart’s responses to the brain’s commands. Now, we can understand from their research that it's a two-way communication pathway.

We have learned, however, that communication between the heart and brain actually is a dynamic, ongoing, two-way dialogue, with each organ continuously influencing the other’s function. Research has shown that the heart communicates to the brain in four major ways: neurologically (through the transmission of nerve impulses), biochemically (via hormones and neurotransmitters), biophysically (through pressure waves) and energetically (through electromagnetic field interactions). Communication along all these conduits significantly affects the brain’s activity. Moreover, our research shows that messages the heart sends to the brain also can affect performance.

Extracts from this article are from the “Science of the Heart” research carried out by the HeartMath Institute.
The full research paper can be accessed here