I’m lucky to have C. Jeremy Jameson as a guest author! This article describes the scientific reasons why simple breathing can influence our mental-emotional-physical coherence. Very compelling! HeartMath Quick Coherence: How to De-Stress In The Moment gives you a quick and simple introduction and how – to use it. I didn’t know the science in that depth, but with 15 years of daily breathwork, I can testify to the results!

HeartMath Quick Coherence: How to De-Stress In The Moment

This article is short, but powerful. In a world full of stress, where just our thoughts can trigger anxiety, depression, weariness, and all of the associated physical responses, wouldn’t it be great if there was a scientifically proven way to move back into an elevated emotional state in a few short minutes? (Yes, please! I’ll take two.)

Great! Now that I’ve got the teaser out of the way, let me geek out a bit and mention the science behind what happens when we are stressed. This will help you understand what’s going on in your body and how this technique actually helps and puts you back in homeostasis. I know, you probably don’t want a science lesson, but, trust me, this will help you believe in the technique. Plus, it’s not rocket surgery. 

Heart Matters

Let’s start with an interesting fact about the heart. Did you know that the heart sends more signals to the brain than it receives? These signals influence the brain’s emotional processing and higher cognitive faculties. Have you ever noticed that when you are stressed out, your heart is beating faster and you can’t think straight? You can thank your triggered amygdala for hijacking the cognitive processes from your pre-frontal cortex. The heart is a powerful influencer. We’ll come back to the heart and, specifically, heart rate variability in a bit.

Let’s Talk About Stress

So, typically when you react to a threat in the environment around you, your Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) increases the amount of cortisol and adrenaline in the body, triggering the fight or flight response, knocking your body out of homeostasis. That’s why your breathing, blood pressure and heart rate rapidly increase, supplying oxygen-rich blood to your extremities, ready to fight or run. The body is not designed to stay in that threat response for too long…just long enough to protect itself from the perceived physical threat.

Yet, we can elicit and stay in this stress response by thought alone, reacting to a perceived non-physical threat like thinking about meeting with the boss, presenting to an audience or having cousin Eddie over for Christmas. We knock our body out of balance by thinking about what might happen. When our body is out of balance and our heart rate is all over the place, the heart is sending incoherent signals to the brain, the brain is sending incoherent signals to the heart and we get caught in that thinking and feeling loop again. 

So, the $64,000 question is, “How do I get out of this thinking and feeling, stress response loop?” As you’ve probably guessed by the title and the heart being mentioned a bit, it has to do with controlling your heart rate and getting back to a coherent state between the heart and the brain. So, a little bit more science and then we’ll get to the practical exercise.

HRV & Coherence

Heart rate variability (HRV) is a fancy term for the measurement of the beat-to-beat changes in heart rate. Someone with the ideal range of HRV is able to healthily regulate, adapt and is more resilient. Too much instability and you get arrhythmias or nervous system chaos. Too little and chronic stress can creep in.

The ANS is the part of the nervous system that controls the body’s internal functions, including heart rate. The ANS also controls many other functions, too. Breathing, immune response, hormones are controlled by the ANS. Did you know we can have a conscious effect on our ANS? How you think and how you feel affects your ANS and its functions. Using breath to control your heart rate also affects your ANS and its functions. So, using your breath to control your heart rate along with thinking and feeling a regenerative emotion can put your ANS and its functions back on track; back to a coherent state.

“Coherence is the state when the heart, mind, and emotions are in energetic alignment and cooperation. It is a state that builds resiliency – personal energy is accumulated, not wasted – leaving more energy to manifest intentions and harmonious outcomes.” HeartMath Institute Research 

HeartMath Institute Research Director Dr. Rollin McCraty.

I know, I know, enough of the science lesson. (But, if you’d like to learn more about the science behind heart-brain coherence in HeartMath’s signature work, Science of the Heart here. It’s the source of all the sciencey stuff above):

HeartMath Quick Coherence Technique

So, now on to the practical exercise that will trigger your ANS and get you back to homeostasis and feeling great!

I’d invite you to find a quiet place where you can sit up straight for a few minutes and close your eyes (but, read these steps first. :))

• 1. Focus your attention in the area of the heart. Imagine your breath is flowing in and out of your heart or chest area, breathing a little slower and deeper than usual. (inhale through the nose for 5 seconds, exhale through the nose for 5 seconds.)
• 2. Make a sincere attempt to experience a regenerative feeling such as appreciation or care for someone or something in your life.

You can follow along here:

And, that’s it!

Did you feel how using your breath to slow down the changes in your heart rate triggers your ANS?

And, once you really thought of and deeply felt that regenerative emotion, your ANS continued to bring you back to an awesome, coherent state? Did you notice that little smile on your face, too?

Try it for a couple minutes every day and tell me you don’t feel a little bit better? Try it for 10-15 minutes twice a day and tell me you don’t feel a lot-bit better! The great thing about this technique is that you can feel results even if you do it for just a short period of time.

Try it for a minute or two right before a meeting.

Or try it before you get out of your car for an interview.

It’s really helpful for a minute or two when your kids are getting on your last nerve.

And use it when you see cousin Eddie pulling into the driveway with his RV.

You can be in control of how you act, think and feel. Using HeartMath’s Quick Coherence Technique will pull you out of that thinking and feeling loop and back into heart-brain coherence.

Jeremy Jameson is a leadership development coach and consultant, a Resilience-Building Leadership Program instructor, and a HeartMath Add Heart facilitator. His purpose is to help all types of leaders become more self-aware, more effective at building resilient teams and more content in life. You can find him on LinkedIN.

Find a similar Leader Work article here https://theleaderswork.com/uncategorized/smile-to-cultivate-an-open-mind/

or read on Flexibility in Leadership here.