Product Description

The Intelligent Heart

Access the power of your heart's intelligence to improve your focus and creativity, elevate your emotional clarity, lower your stress and anxiety levels, strengthen your immune system, promote your body's optimal performance, and slow the aging process.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #17731 in Books
• Published on: 2000-08
• Released on: 2000-07-03
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780062516060
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

Amazon.com Review
The HeartMath Solution may easily be written off as a book too eccentric for widespread public consumption, and that's unfortunate. The title's a bit misleading--it's not about cardiac care and it's not about calculus, but rather how 30 years of research have shown that the heart's "intelligence" affects emotions and physical health--especially when it comes to handling stress--and specifically what you can do to balance heart rhythms, reduce stress hormones, and boost your immune system. Yes, it sounds complicated, especially when you read that cardiologists worked with physicists and psychiatrists to develop the HeartMath program. But it's worth brushing off your skepticism and exploring the concepts in the Solution, as many employees of Fortune 500 companies have already done.

The "intelligence" that the authors focus on refers to both the heart's "brain," or the 40,000 neurons found in the heart (the same number in the brain itself), and the intuitive signals the heart sends, including feelings of love, happiness, care, and appreciation. When such positive emotions are felt, they "not only change patterns of activity in the nervous system; they also reduce the production of the stress hormone cortisol." When there's less cortisol, there's more DHEA, the so-called fountain of youth hormone known to have anti-aging effects on many of the body's systems.

The HeartMath Solution outlines 10 steps for harnessing the power of the heart's intelligence, including ways to manage your emotions and keep energy levels high. One of the most important is the "Freeze-Frame" technique for calming the nervous system, improving clarity of thought and perception, and boosting productivity (which is one of the many appealing features for those Fortune 500 companies). Each step includes references to data proving its effectiveness, with handy summaries of the key points to remember at the end of each chapter. This is a book that takes a bit of scientific understanding and a lot of time to wade through, but one that could help you prevent stress from ruling your existence. --Erica Jorgensen

From Publishers Weekly
Is the heart the missing link in the mind-body connection? By combining age-old philosophy with modern science, Childre and MartinArespectively the founder and an executive consultant of the California nonprofit research organization, Institute of HeartMathAmake a compelling case for the idea that good health is really a triumph of heart, not mind, over matter. Citing the Institute's research on the heart's role in human health, they demonstrate that the so-called metaphorical condition of the heartAwhich has long been associated with love, wisdom, courage and happinessAmay play as important a role in mental well-being as its physical function. The HeartMath solution lies in developing what Childre and Martin call the core heart feelings (such as love, forgiveness, appreciation and care), which trigger physiological responses resulting in less stress, better brain function and a stronger immune system. Although this book is about the heart, it's written with cool intelligence and intelligibility for the head. Despite slightly off-putting names (Freeze-Frame, Cut-Thru and Lock-In), the relaxation exercises, which are being taught at corporations and at schools, are simple to do, although perhaps already too familiar to anyone who has tried other kinds of meditative techniques. Nevertheless, in presenting a clear argument for following one's heart, this book certainly breaks new ground in the holistic approach to health. Author tour.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review
"An idea that could shake our world." -- --Utne Reader

"This book could save you years of therapy." -- --Deepak Copra, M.D., The Chopra Center for Well Being

Customer Reviews

Extremely useful personally and professionally.
This book is a synthesis of all I have learned, known, and intuited throughout my 30 years in the mental health field, including over 20 years as a psychotherapist.

The material is presented in a concise, readable manner, and the HeartMath exercises are simple and easily learned, especially Freeze Frame.

I am personally utilizing the Freeze Frame and Cut-Through exercises and am amazed at how quickly one gets to the"heart" of feelings, problems, etc. Although I have been a meditator for 17 years, the methods described in this book have opened up new and creative aspects of myself.

My clients have experienced equally exciting and insightful results.

I would unqualifiedly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in stress reduction, better health, personal growth, and a more peaceful way of being in this increasingly complex and fast-paced culture.

Earlene Miller Sneller, MSW,CSW, Certified Body/Energy Practitioner.

How to put your heart at the heart of everything you do!
"Care is an oil that lubricates the entire mental, emotional, and physical system. If you run your system without care, it's like running your car without oil - resulting in friction and breakdown."

If you've read many personal development books, you know that to find a truly original idea is rare. The best authors have the gift of saying something old in a new way that makes it more accessible; the worst simply have the temerity to say something old the way it's always been said and stick their names on the front cover.

What sets Doc Childre and the Heartmath team aside is that they actually came up with something new, and then back it up with a set of simple techniques to put their findings into practice.

Their discovery is that the physical heart has a lot more to do with our health and well-being than we ever thought possible, and that the simple act of "activating heart energy" by focusing attention on your physical heart and feeling sincere feelings of love, care, and appreciation reduces stress, strengthens our immune system, and gives us a reliable means to access our intuition.

The Heartmath Solution is a great overview of their work, yet practical enough to begin benefitting from immediately. As an added bonus for those of you tired of the "fuzzy science" that many new-age tomes use to "prove" reincarnation, alien abduction, and the existence of Lemuria, the "math" part of heartmath actually stands up to some examination. Studies measuring ECG, HRV, IGA, DHEA and just about every other set of initials you can think of help satisfy the part of our brain that cries out for a rational explanation for something we all intuitively know - that love is good!

Highly recommended.

Spiritual Practices with a Secular Coating, I Think
This book offers three practices. The practices all begin with "breathing through the heart" and then apply the resulting state in various ways:

- "Freeze Frame" interrupts and redirects useless thought-feeling patterns

- "Cut-Thru" slowly or quickly dissolves longstanding problems

- "Heart Lock-In" allows one to rest in, and to share, profoundly good experience

Each of these practices ends with "listening to the intuition of the heart," which may give either insights or next steps to take.

All three work with "the heart," which seems to be both the physical heart whose rhythms can be measured and the experiential heart. Heartmath both works with subjective experience and measures it objectively. From that both-ness comes the surprising name, Heartmath.

I find from trying them that all three practices work. The Freezeframe interruptor really does break into unfortunate cycles of thought and feeling. CutThru does give an easing of long-term issues, though it does not undo them suddenly. And the unfortunately-named Heart Lock-In does seem to be a resting and recharging meditation.

The practices have all been tested empirically. The book is full of graphs of the results, and some of the studies has been published in journals. The authors have been careful to use business-language, speaking of the "efficiency" and "coherence" of different feeling states.

The language and the testing seem to be ways of making very old spiritual practices palatable to skeptical people of our time. Christianity, Judaism and Islam all understand the importance of the breath and the heart to the living being, and so do Hinduism and Buddhism. It appears the creators of Heartmath have translated old wisdom into new and practical forms for our times. Bravo to them!