The power of your heart
Using your intuition to navigate life
We all heard the saying “follow your heart".
But do we know what it actually means?
Some of us like to believe we're people of reason, and we dismiss this idea completely, tricking ourselves into thinking that our decisions are always rational.
Others of us, love the idea of following their hearts and letting themselves be totally swept away by their emotions, which at times may not end up being the best idea.
And there are a few of us who do actually understand what it means to live by their heart.
I had no idea what it meant to “follow your heart.” It wasn't until last year, when I came across the work of the Heart Math Institute, that I gained so much insight about the subtle intelligence that lives within us and is there to guide us to live a life aligned and coherent with who we are.
What you don't know about our heart
Did you know that our heart has a little brain in it? Literally.
It is composed of 40 thousand NEURONS. I was personally amazed to discover that.
Not only that, there are studies and research that show that our heart stores short and long-term memories and personality traits. This is why some heart transplant patients often recall memories from their donors and might even take on their donor's personality traits. Shocking.
Our heart emanates electrical energy 60x stronger than the one produced by our brain and a 100x stronger electromagnetic field.
Have you ever come near someone and sensed a certain kind of energy about them? The energy you feel is the electromagnetic field that the person's heart is emanating. It can be sensed everywhere on our skin's surface and up to 3 meters away from us. We can also sense things from a distance, which is called 'non-local intuition', but this is a topic for another time.
The electromagnetic waves emitted by our heart (our heartbeats) are in constant communication with our brain, and they also affect the brain activity of others around us, just as our brain is affected by the energy of those around us.
I was also surprised to learn that there's no such thing as a general pattern for heartbeats. Our heart rhythm and electromagnetic waves are unique to each one of us and the states we're in.
Contrary to common belief, it is our heart, not our brain, that interprets the electromagnetic signals from others and the environment around us - making it the core of our intuition.
Using our hearts intuition to navigate the unknown of life
If following your heart is neither about following your thoughts nor about letting yourself be swept by your emotions, then what is it about?
Inside each of one of us there's a knowing. A deeper wisdom, a subtil sensing.
You know, that time you decided not to go to that event, and then later you learned that something bad happened there. Or when someone comes to mind and then suddenly you receive a call or a message from them. Or when you sense a loved one is upset or bothered by something without speaking to them directly. Or when a glass of water is about to fall from the top of the table, but your reflex is fast enough to catch it even before you can think about it. That's the knowing.
These are all examples of energetic sensing, and it's all coming from our heart. Our heart is constantly reading the electromagnetic field around us and sending messages to our brain.
The knowing is there underneath all thought and emotion, like a whisper that tells you the way to go. However, not all of us are able to be in contact with it all the time, because the knowing doesn't speak to us through voices in our mind (this might be schizophrenia), it speaks to us in our body.
As we move through life and face the uncertainty that every day brings, whether in our professional lives or relationships, our brain is naturally wired to constantly predict possibilities for the future in an attempt to create safety. It assumes that we can act in ways to prevent "bad" things from happening to us. The problem is that this leads to overthinking, which gets us stuck in our heads.
We expend so much energy overthinking scenarios that will likely never occur - at least not in the way we anticipate - because no matter how hard we try, we will never have access to all information, variables, and the potential interactions between them. And with so much overthinking, we often find ourselves stuck or making decisions that we later discover are not the best for us.
Accepting that we can't know what life will present to us with our thinking mind, allow us space to start navigating life and making decisions through intelligence of our hearts. It sees and it knows way further than our thinking minds will ever be able to.
Making decisions from our hearts
When I started learning about the power of my heart and realized that I could tap into it to navigate the unknown and unseen, I began practicing connection to my heart and body so I could hear its messages when it spoke to me. I can say that it has definitely helped me make more assertive decisions aligned with my true self.
Like for example, when a company reached out to me with an exciting project and a large budget. Everything seemed amazing, a great opportunity, but something within me signaled that I should not move forward with it. I spent over a month overthinking why I felt this way. Everything seemed right; the money was great, the company was progressing, and the people seemed cool. But there was an itch in my chest every time we were about to close the deal. Eventually, I decided to listen to my body and declined the project, even though it seemed to make no sense (rationally) at the time. Months later, I hear news that the company was being prosecuted for having their operations harming lives of a lot of people.
Or the other time, when I decided to step away from people who were very close to me despite all my emotions and thoughts driving me to stay closer. The itch was there - and many other body signs too. I listened to it, and after a while, I realized that I would end up hurting even more if I had decided to stay.
Developing this connection to my heart and body has been building a deeper sense of trust and security in me amidst the inevitably uncertain future. The more I practice making decisions from my seat of intuition and knowing, and notice how accurate they are over time, I start gaining a broader understanding that no matter what life presents to me, whenever I choose to navigate from my heart, I will be safe, truthful to myself, and developing relationships and work that align with me.
How to hear your heart
Listening to the knowing in your heart is not a one-time thing; it's a practice. I don't speak from an expert perspective, but as someone who has just started taking their first baby steps in growing into it.
Our hearts are always speaking to us. The problem is that we're not always able to hear it.
We're constantly overwhelmed by the external environment and the chaotic overthinking of our minds. When our body is overstimulated and overstressed, our heart and brain scramble the messages passing between them and from the world around us. We won't be able to access our intuition. Our heart will be sending messages, but we won't be able to hear them because our brain will override the signals.
First, to start listening to your heart: sit still.
Develop this habit. If you can't sit still in silence with yourself, there's always going to be noise in your mind, blocking your senses.
Second, learn to provide safety to your nervous system. When our nervous system is activated, hyper-alert, and stressed - anywhere around fight, flight, freeze responses, we can't listen to our hearts. These states change our perception of others and the world around us, they generate intense emotions and provoke racing thoughts, disconnecting us from our heart. Learning how to self-soothe and regulate our nervous system when we're activated is fundamental to clear the noise to connect with the wisdom of our heart intelligence. I've found somatic (body-mind) practices very powerful for nervous system and emotional regulation.
A simple practice I learned from my therapist, which Dr. Nicole LePera also mentions in her book, is to sit still, close my eyes, place my hand on my heart, and breathe into it. I try to do this a few times a day, and I've noticed that it has helped me develop a deeper connection with my body.
Placing your hand over your heart is a powerful somatic technique to regulate your nervous system when overwhelmed with body sensations or stuck in your thinking mind. This movement brings a sense of safety and peace to our bodies - and helps us be present in the moment. Besides that, there's something magical when we focus on our heartbeat and feel it in the palm of our hand, something that reminds us we're alive.
Our heartbeat is the rhythm of our life, a force that can be felt throughout our entire body and the first vital sign doctors check to discern the living from the dead. It's our heart's intelligence language, used to communicate our emotional experiences to our brain, body, and the world around us.
Dr. Nicole LePera
With love,
Nat
P.S.: If you have any thoughts, questions, or just feel like sharing your experience, please do! The point of all this is to create conversations from which we can grow together.