Heal yourself with a grateful heart

Have you felt how blowing your top can be so emotionally and physically draining? You feel warm blood go up your face and head. Your heart beats fast, at times too fast you tremble. The more you try and contain it, the more you feel the urge to release all the steam.

How about when you are overwhelmed by the love and support of your family while receiving an award you did not expect? Your heart beats fast as well, you are tongue-tied, but you feel so light you can fly.

While there was a thinking before that emotions are created by the mind alone, we now know that emotions involve the brain, the heart, and the body.

The International HeartMath (IHM) in the USA, since it’s founding in 1981, is committed to the study of the heart and the physiology of emotions. Its research center has conducted studies that have identified the relationship between emotions and the heart and its link to health, vitality and well-being.

Our heart and our emotions

IHM research revealed a critical link between the heart and brain. There is a constant two-way dialog between the heart and the brain. When our emotions change the communication signals from the brain to the heart, the heart responds in various ways. Apparently the heart sends more information to the brain than the brain sends to the heart.

The research explained how the heart responds to emotional and mental reactions and why certain emotions stress the body and drain our energy. “As we experience feelings like anger, frustration, anxiety and insecurity, our heart-rhythm patterns become more erratic. These erratic patterns are sent to the emotional centers in the brain, which recognizes them as negative, or stressful feelings. These signals create the actual feelings we experience in the heart area and elsewhere in the body. Erratic heart rhythms also block our ability to think clearly,” HeartMath clarified.

Many studies found significantly increased heart disease risk for people who frequently experience stressful emotions such as irritation, anger or frustration. “These emotions create a chain reaction in the body: stress-hormone levels increase, blood vessels constrict, blood pressure rises, and the immune system is weakened. If we consistently experience these emotions, it can put a strain on the heart and other organs and eventually lead to serious health problems,” HeartMath added.

On the other hand, “when we experience heartfelt emotions such as appreciation, love, care, and compassion, the heart produces a very different rhythm — one that has a smooth pattern and looks something like gently rolling hills. Scientists consider harmonious, or smooth heart rhythms, which are indicative of positive emotions, to be indicators of cardiovascular efficiency and nervous-system balance. This lets the brain know the heart feels good; often we experience this as a gentle, warm feeling in the area of the heart. Learning to shift out of stressful emotional reactions to these heartfelt emotions can have profound positive effects on our cardiovascular systems and overall health,” HeartMath concluded.

Appreciation heals

Do you know that we can increase our heart-rhythm coherence or create a smoothness in our heart rhythms? Yes, we can, with the feeling of genuine appreciation or even by simply recalling moments of appreciation and reliving the feeling.

“It’s important to emphasize that it is not a mental image of a memory that creates a shift in our heart rhythms, but rather the emotions associated with the memory. Mental images alone usually do not produce the same significant results that we’ve observed when someone focuses on a positive feeling,”

IHM director of research Dr. Rollin McCraty explained.

While a healthy lifestyle of proper balanced diet, regular exercise, and sufficient quality rest all contribute to a healthy heart, IHM believes that replacing stressful thoughts and emotions with positive feelings especially of appreciation also contributes a lot to cardiac health.

Gratitude and Mindfulness

Just this month, Time magazine’s cover story was “The Mindfulness Revolution.” Although there was really no mention of gratitude in this story, I still get the same message. Then I stumbled upon the website of an Australian clinical psychologist, meditation coach, and a PhD holder in public health and community medicine Dr. Paula Watkins. Watkins said that 10 years ago, a research paper was published titled “Counting Blessings Versus Burdens: An Experimental Investigation of Gratitude and Subjective Well-Being in Daily Life.” “The study showed that participants randomly assigned to notice and appreciate up to five things they were grateful for were happier and healthier than participants who recorded neutral events or hassles,” she noted.

“Gratitude is commonly thought of as a positive psychology strategy, as well as a spiritual practice. In reality it is both of these things. Fundamentally though, I conceptualize gratitude as mindfulness. Why? Because it forces us to pay attention. When we have to be held accountable to our gratitude journal/practice we are required to notice our lives in new ways so that we have something to record,” she said.

She has two quick tips in changing one’s mindset and attitude towards gratitude. Watkins practices daily reflecting, recognizing and jotting down in a gratitude diary “Three Good Things” that happened that day before she retires every night.

Every Sunday, Watkins completes her journal.

“I’ve been doing it for years and every now and then I look back at old journals, seeing places where  I used to live, feeling  wonder for sunrises that have never waned, and seeing people who have since passed on, or are out of my life in other ways. I was grateful for them when we shared time together and it’s been my experience that conscious gratitude of relationships leads to more conscious relationships,” she shared.

In this month of hearts, let us be aware that healing our hearts and improving its health may be achieved by simply being mindful of nature, events, places, and people around us ... and consciously being thankful for them.

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Post me a note at mylene@goldsgym.com.ph or mylenedayrit@gmail.com.