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: #15386 in Books
• Published on: 2000-08
• Released on: 2000-07-03
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

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

A compelling book and tools to get you to coherence
This is an excellent book and it spells out the scientific proof of the power of the heart to help us find solutions to the complexity of our emotional lives and situations.

I have practised meditation for many years and the tradition I have worked with pints to the power of the compassionate heart to resolve issues and attain insights. This book gives clear evidence along with practical, straight to the point techniques that shows that you don't have to meditate for years to get back to a life of coherence and flow. So many insights and realisations from this book. Many thanks.

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!

Excellent idea
I find the idea of breathing through the heart extremely helpful in reducing the negative voice in my head. It also helps to get in touch with one's own feelings. Highly recommend it.