Do We Really Feel Grief (and Happiness) in Our Hearts?

We explore heart coherence—the way the body, brain, and emotions sync—and how the vagus nerve helps us return from stress to calm. We share simple practices, stories from pets and people, and why a real hug can change a room.

• definition of heart coherence and why it matters
• how the autonomic and parasympathetic systems work
• role of the vagus nerve in calming the body
• what HRV reveals about stress recovery
• the heart’s electromagnetic field and social attunement
• examples with parents, teens, and pets
• a practical quick coherence technique
• the heart lock-in for group connection
• using hugs and breath to regulate
• setting boundaries with dysregulating environments

Transcript

Discovering Heart Coherence

Mary 0:00

Hey, welcome to a mini episode of No Shrinking Violets. I want to talk today about something that I read about recently in a magazine called Experience Life, which is one of my favorite magazines. It's an article by Courtney Helgo, and she talks about heart coherence. Now, I'm gonna admit I never heard this term before, but everything that means heart coherence is something I'm really familiar with, but I love this term because I love the term coherence, things that are um that work together. So let me talk a little about what is heart coherence and how can we um kind of improve it or focus on it for ourselves. So when we talk about grief or sadness, we often say our heart is broken. We feel that ache in our chest. But it can seem counterintuitive because the limbic system in our brain is really what processes emotions. But all of this is connected. And of course, I talk about this so often, how everything is connected. If something happens to our body that's traumatic, it's going to affect our emotions, it's going to affect our thinking. If we have an emotional trauma, um, a grief, that's going to affect how we feel in our body. It's going to affect the thoughts that we have. So we cannot divorce one of those systems from another. So when we think about the heart, we can think, oh, it's just an organ that pumps blood, but it's so much more than that. And one of the keys to this coherence, to all of these systems being connected, is the vagus nerve. Because the vagus nerve runs from the gut, the digestive system, to the brain. And it impacts a lot of things along that pathway. So sometimes people refer to it as the wanderer. It it originates in the brainstem, which, if you reach back and at the base of your skull, that's where your brainstem is. And the vagus nerve extends down through the neck to the chest, your abdomen. It impacts the heart, the lungs, and the digestive tract. So this nerve, the vagus nerve, is part of the parasympathetic nervous system. So I don't want to get too scientific here, but we have something called the autonomic nervous system. And this is the system that affects when we have to rev up, you know, to sort of respond to a stressor. And it impacts how we kind of wind down or rest and digest, as we might call it sometimes. And the autonomic nervous system, that part of it that is the parasympathetic nervous system, the part that helps us to come down when we have been very stressed, the vagus nerve is key in that. So when we think about something like, let's say you have a near miss in the car, you're driving, you almost have a collision. And what happens after that? Your car is stopped, you know you're safe, but you start shaking, your heart is pounding, you're breathing fast. That was your sympathetic nervous system. And it's part of the autonomic nervous system because it happens automatically. We have to automatically be able to rev up to meet the demands of a stressor. But when the stressor happens and we have nowhere for that energy to go, we're offloading it through this pounding heart and shaking. So one of the things that when we think about this response, there's something called the heart variability rate or the heart rate variability, actually, HRV. And that's something that is important in testing how well we're processing stress. So how quickly can we get back to baseline? Now, when we talk about the heart itself, one of the things that I think is so it's so fascinating is that we are actually electric. So our heartbeat, when you see on like my current favorite TV show is The Pit, so when you see them shocking someone's heart, that's electrical currents. So we're our heart is electric. So when we think about that, the heartbeat, it generates an electromagnetic field, believe it or not. Now, here's something that's really cool about this. There's a trauma therapist named Jane McCampbell Stewart, and she writes about this. She says the heartbeat generates an electromagnetic field, and it can actually be detected up to three feet away from our body on all sides. So, how do we knew this? Well, think about have you ever walked into a room and there's a mood in that room? Either there is you feel stress, you feel sadness, you feel anxiety, there's a feeling in that room. And that is that electromagnetic field coming off of other people. We just detect it. So when we're upset, typically our heart is going to have a very fast rhythm. It's going to race and maybe even become erratic. And so what is happening is we're broadcasting that stress through the heart's electromagnetic field. Now, go back to the vagus nerve for a second. The vagus nerve has an amazing power to calm us down. It's part of the parasympathetic nervous system. So one thing you can do, for instance, is if you're feeling stressed or you're feeling like your heart's kind of racing, you're feeling that body anxiety, if you can breathe in and as you breathe out, kind of hum with that. That you're making a vibration that your vagus nerve can interpret, and it's kind of like a cat purring. It can help to calm you down. But anyway, so when we're relaxed and centered, our heart rhythms communicate this sense of ease and safety. So can you think of somebody in your life that they're just chill? There's somebody who typically doesn't get too worked up, or maybe you've had an experience in your life where there's someone, and potentially it's somebody that has an addiction or someone that is going through a rough time, and their moods are very labile, meaning they change from one extreme to the other. You know, when you walk into that room, is that person elevated, stressed, anxious? Are they calm? Because you can feel that, literally feel the electrical current coming off that person. Okay, so let me circle back to heart coherence. That is a state when all of our systems, so I talked about the body, the mind, or the brain and the emotions, when our physical, mental, and emotional systems are working in harmony. There's that coherence, which I think is just a beautiful word. And that allows us to feel a sense of peace. Maybe we feel kind of um open-hearted, our heart is feel spacious and we feel calm. When we broadcast this energy to other people, it affects their coherence. So let me tell you, and this is this is animals too, and I'm gonna talk about that in a second. I can tell you from my own life. So when there have been times that I've had to give medicine to my cats, it makes me anxious, or I have to take them to the vet. I hate doing anything that makes them uncomfortable. I'm very much of a wimp like that. Well, their behavior changes. It's harder to get them into the cat carrier, or they run in hide when it's I start to think about giving them the medicine. They are reacting to my anxiety, my electromagnetic field that I'm giving off. So the more we can manage our heart coherence and keep those systems calm, the more we bring that into our environment. So here's where something like this is, it's almost defies logic, but yet, well, it isn't logical. And that's what I love about it, because we can again say that we don't feel heartbreak, but we do because all of this is connected. So, for instance, an infant's heartbeat was detectable in her mother's brain waves. So when a mother is totally focused on her child, the brain waves of the mother and the heartbeat of the infant are detectable. So cool. Okay, now this um article that was written by Courtney Helgo, she also talks about a second study where, and here's where we bring animals in, they used an electrocardiogram to measure the heart coherence between a teenager and his dog. So when the boy comes in the room, his dog is waiting, and the boy consciously focuses his feelings of love for his dog, and he focuses on the dog, his heart rhythms become more consistent. When we focus on something we love, something that makes us feel good, it's going to calm our heart down. Here is the coolest part. In turn, the dog's heart calmed down too. So when the boy comes into the room, he's thinking about how much he loves his dog, his dog's heart rate calms down. When the boy leaves, the heart, the heart rhythm of the dog became erratic because she missed her beloved human. I just think all of that is so important to recognize and not dismiss because I think that we know it, but because it isn't logical, we can try to dismiss it or dismiss the importance of it. So, one of the things I would challenge you to do is if there's think about the people in your life that are very important, whether it's a child, whether it's your partner, it's a parent, it's a friend. When you hug them, I want you to think about that your heart is connecting to their heart. That is what is so powerful about a hug. Our hearts are literally coming together. So when you think about that electromagnetic field, think about your hearts connecting. Think about your yourself opening up. It's a beautiful way to really connect to someone and don't do one of those brief pat on the back hugs. Really hug the person and breathe for a minute and hold, you know, have a good hold on that person. It's a good hug is rare. Be a good hugger. Okay, so two quick techniques to try. One is called the quick coherence technique, and there's it's from something called the Heart and Math Institute, who is they've done a lot of this research, and it can help you improve your coherence. And remember, that is the state in which all your systems are working in harmony, physical, mental, emotional. So you want to clear your head, which I know is very hard, but you're gonna try to clear your head, you're gonna check your emotions, you're gonna open your heart. So anytime before you're going into an important conversation, or maybe an event where you feel your stress is going up. Maybe you're gonna do a presentation, or maybe you have to talk to someone about something that is a little conflicted, or something you're worried about. First, focus your attention on your heart. And this is something that we do in yoga a lot. We want to feel your breath moving in and out and picture it moving into that area of your chest and slow your breathing. Make it deeper and slower, find a comfortable rhythm. And then, as you do that, think about something that you love, a person, something you're grateful for, something you really appreciate. And think about that as you are focusing on that heart breathing. And one more quick thing: there's something called the heart lock-in technique, and it's used in research studies to create attunement and connection between individuals and groups. And basically, it's the same thing as what I just told you, but you follow those steps, but then you radiate those positive feelings toward yourself and others. It's sort of mentally, emotionally creating that connection between you and a group. So again, it can be easy to dismiss this as woo-woo or you know, well, it's not logical because our emotional system, the limbic system is in our brain, it's just a feeling I get in my chest, but it's not. We are electric. And our mood impacts our environment. The environment of the mood impacts us. So conversely, when you think about how spaces that you walk into or people that are in your orbit a lot, someone that maybe you work with, or maybe a friend, or even your partner, their mood impacts you. So you have the ability to regulate what's happening for you, and that electromagnetic field can help them. But you also have to remember that sometimes you may not want to always be part of that electromagnetic field. So manage that energy well because if you have certain situations that you recognize you feel keyed up, you feel just a little off balance, you feel like quite not quite okay, those might be situations where you either need to consciously do some of what we just talked about to create that heart coherence and radiate that into the environment, or you may decide that you need to limit how much time you are in those environments. So, heart coherence, I think it is so cool. And that's just what I wanted to share with you today. And again, a lot of these thoughts came from Courtney Helgo's article in the Experience Life magazine. So that was that is what was on my mind today. We will soon be moving less than four weeks to our new city. So I already found my favorite so far, dirty chai. But there are so many more places to try. If you would love to buy me a dirty chai to help me celebrate my new city, you can click the support the show link in the show notes, and I will report back on what I find. Thanks for listening, and until next time, go out into the world and be the amazing, resilient, vibrant violet that you are.