|
by Mark Sircus
from
DrSircus Website
In HeartHealth, it is shown that the human heart is much more than an efficient pump that sustains life.
The heart, which represents our capacity to feel, is an access point to a source of wisdom and intelligence that the mind just cannot compete with. The heart, which only opens when we are vulnerable to our feelings, is important for increasing personal effectiveness, improving health and relationships and achieving greater fulfillment.
Of course, the lies we tell do not sit well with the heart.
When we first start lying, we can feel that unease but as the old saying goes once a liar, always a liar. What this means is that once a lie, and then a series of lies, overcomes our consciousness our heart shuts down and then we do not mind or feel uneasy with our lies anymore.
Psychopaths live entirely within their world of lies.
In a study (The Brain Adapts to Dishonesty) published in Nature Neuroscience, Tali Sharot from the department of experimental psychology at University College London and her colleagues devised a clever study to test people's dishonest tendencies while scanning their brains in an fMRI machine.
They found that when people were dishonest, activity in a part of the brain called the amygdala - the hub of emotional processing and arousal - changed. The more one lies the less activated the amygdala was on the fMRI.
These scientists found that with each additional lie, the arousal and conflict of telling an untruth diminishes, making it easier to lie.
These scientists say that dishonesty is an integral part of our social world, influencing domains ranging from finance and politics to personal relationships.
We can actually come to the conclusion that we live in a dishonest world, a world of the mind and all its rationalizations instead of a world of vulnerability, love, empathy and compassion because we are too busy and accustomed to lying about many things but especially about our vulnerability - about how we really feel.
Lies and infidelities close the heart, which is our capacity to feel.
That is why when people cheat on their spouses their partners can feel something wrong even and especially because nothing is being said. The psychopath is so far beyond feeling anything about the lies he or she lives that they have no more heart and without a heart it is doubtful that they can be considered to have a soul.
Dr. George Monbiot has a lot to say about the consequence of closing the heart in his essay, Neoliberalism is creating loneliness. That's what's wrenching society apart.
A recent survey in England suggests that one in four women between 16 and 24 have harmed themselves, and one in eight now suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder.
Anxiety, depression, phobias or obsessive compulsive disorder affect 26% of women in this age group. This is what a public health crisis looks like.
It's unsurprising that social isolation is strongly associated with depression, suicide, anxiety, insomnia, fear and the perception of threat. It's more surprising to discover the range of physical illnesses it causes or exacerbates.
Dementia, high blood pressure, heart disease, strokes, lowered resistance to viruses, even accidents are more common among chronically lonely people.
Loneliness has a comparable impact on physical health to smoking 15 cigarettes a day: it appears to raise the risk of early death by 26%. This is partly because it enhances production of the stress hormone cortisol, which suppresses the immune system.
People often ask if a lack of love, if heartbreak or heartache can be detrimental to our health. Mother Theresa answered this saying; "loneliness and isolation in the West" was the most significant "disease" she had encountered during her lifetime. The healthy human heart needs warmth, is warmth and can give warmth to others.
The deeper we dive into the heart and open to its super intelligent ways the more balanced, coherent, and healthy our bodies, minds, and emotions become.
The prevailing wisdom of the day, what is espoused by the media and politicians, is leading us off a cliff in terms of health, happiness, love and personal safety.
There is so much wrong with the world that it is bringing us to the brink of World War III threatening us with mass extinction via a nuclear war.
Neoliberalism only sees things in terms of rightness meaning its self-image sees no wrongness with the ideas it fixates on. The society and culture of neoliberalism is a disaster for the children and we see in England alone that a quarter of a million children are receiving mental health care.
The bottom line question is, where are our human hearts?
The State of our Hearts Tell us everything about Ourselves
The science of heart rate variability (HRV) gives us a way of exploring the incredible and wonderful world of the heart.
HRV is a physiological marker of how we experience and regulate our emotions. HRV is relatively easy to measure. Rather than calculating the number of beats per minute we measure the time that elapse between one heart beat and the next one.
Dr. Bessel van der Kolk says,
The American Institute of Stress has reported that up to 90% of doctor's visits are stress related.
The HRV of a patient gives us a full readout in terms of health, medical diagnosis and treatment pathways that will bring a person back to harmony and health. Bottom line, the heart knows what is going on in the body. In fact, it knows everything that is going on even with our emotions and minds.
HRV can provide information to users about situations where their stress or anxiety levels may be higher than normal.
Heart rate variability, or heart rhythms stand out as the most dynamic and reflective indicator of one's emotional states, current stress and cognitive processes. An optimal flexible level of HRV reflects healthy function too little variation indicates chronic stress and pathology.
The HRV of any individual is directly dependent on vagus nerve tone and function.
Health Professionals and Patients Can Tune Directly into the Heart
I have been working with my HRV for the last few years and am feeling more and more like a cardiologist, who just cannot compete with HRV with their electrocardiograms, which give very limited information about the heart.
Your cardiologist sees things in terms of black and white.
When he gives a bill of health to the heart that is the end of the story for him but just the beginning for us when we use HRV to diagnose on a more subtle level our bodies, emotions and minds.
Even before VedaPulse gives its interpretation I am watching the screen during the test to see the numerical values changing for the heart rate as well as the HRV. Then there is the graphic visualization in real time.
You can watch not only each beat but the rise and fall of HRV remembering it is the increased variability that speaks of health.
The first image above shows me on a highly stressed out day.
The image is showing very little HRV meaning I was practically flatlining in terms of HRV and stress. The flatter the more stressed out and the closer we are coming to our death.
The image directly above is showing a vastly increased HRV and it was wonderful, for a change, to see my heart changing up and down nicely as I did yogic breathing during the test showing me it is possible to get a direct hold of how my heart is beating and a direct hold on the stress I am putting my body through.
...all help the vagus nerve.
Deep and slow breathing stimulates the vagus nerve, especially yogic alternative nostril breathing and what I was doing to increase my HRV above was three part yogic breathing.
Breathing in and out with resistance will also stimulate your vagus nerve and the Breathslim is good for practicing that.
Mild exercise stimulates gut flow. This is mediated by the vagus nerve, which means that exercise stimulates the vagus nerve. The heart is the organ that loves to exercise. or reducing calories increases HRV and improves vagal tone.
Singing increases HRV as does laughter.
Conclusion
If there is any hope for us as individuals, families and societies we must return to the universe of the heart.
That means honesty and openness in public debate as well as fidelity in our intimate personal relationships. Thus, it would be a world where we give up politicians and find another way of organizing and leading ourselves.
However, not much hope in that...
Russia is one of the few countries in the Western world in which religion is becoming increasingly important and not less. To establish his authority on the Russian society, President Vladimir Putin has shaped a doctrine mobilizing the entire Russian society against a perceived Western "decadence".
He has declared that Russian traditional family values are a bulwark against the West's,
They also are anti-porn and homophobic.
and the Russians I have known are full of passion, full of heart and they certainly are seeking to preserve themselves.
The West on the other hand is suicidal and does not even care that their declining birth rates are spelling doom for their futures. Western politicians and media only know lies though there is a recent turning to the right in both Europe and the United States.
People are beginning to respond to real issues instead of the empty and false ideas of liberalism and globalization.
The basic nasty idea of today's liberalism is protect Islam, defame Christianity. Even the Catholic Church is not willing to protect itself from Islam. In France, there trends have it that there are three young practicing Muslims for every young practicing Catholic.
Perhaps the West does not deserve to survive but I think in horror for what Muslim men love to do to Western 'infidel' women.
Where or which way do we turn to find the heart and the love that resides within it? I can tell you with real security that one will not find their hearts inside of their thoughts, ideas and concepts.
Love is not an idea it is something we feel.
So, we have to find our own hearts for ourselves and it's a good bet that the best place to find that is in our families and in a spiritualization of religion, which is a place where fundamentalism has no chance of existing.
|
