Commusings: The Hidden Power of the Five Hearts by Kimberly Snyder

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Dear Commune Community,

I am recumbent on the examination table. The nurse practitioner places six small electrode patches on my chest, arms, and legs. She wheels in a machine with wires coming out of it and connects them to the patches.
 
My heart sends signals to this machine, producing a graph that reflects the timing and strength of these signals.
 
Of course, what I am describing is the process of measuring the heart’s electrical activity with an electrocardiogram. This energy produced by the heart is leveraged to circulate 2,000 gallons of blood per day through your body across 110,000 beats. But is the heart more than a pump?
 
We know the heart produces a measurable electromagnetic field that transcends the barrier of the skin and radiates into the external world. The wave that is emitted exists on a spectrum from jagged to smooth depending on our emotional state.
 
I’m sure, once upon a time, you’ve walked into a room and sensed a tense environment. Is this intuition really an unrefined 6th sense, an ability to be conscious of whether someone’s heart is in a coherent or incoherent state?
 
Earlier this week, I sat with my friend and today’s essayist, Kimberly Snyder, to discuss the hidden powers of the heart, how we cultivate heart coherence within ourselves and with others. Her new book is a guide to greater attunement between our psychological and emotional selves. I am lucky to call her a friend and a teacher.
 
Alternately, coherent and incoherent on IG @jeffkrasno.

In love, include me,
Jeff

• • •

The Hidden Power of the Five Hearts
By Kimberly Snyder

Excerpted from her new book The Hidden Power of the Five Hearts

I have a secret to share with you. 

Your heart—your beautiful pumping, thumping, thinking (yes, thinking) smart-as-a-whip heart—contains within it a secret intelligence that, once accessed, has the power to transform every aspect of your life in a relatively short amount of time.

Consider this: You have multiple brains. One is in your head and another is in your heart (there’s also one in your gut, which is another discussion). We go to school from the time we are very young and are given a roadmap to accessing intelligence in our brains (learn to read, learn math, write reports), but no one ever gave us a clue about what to do with the heart! 

The heart is the focus of exciting scientific research around coherence, which includes the communication between the heart and the brain. Coherence is a way of coordinating the electromagnetic frequencies that give life to your heart and your brain. It’s about living in sync.

Imagine the opposite. Say you are walking down a path and come to a fork in the road. Your left leg goes left and your right leg goes left. What would happen? You’d probably split your pants or worse, but that is how our hearts and minds often operate! Coherence is a way of bringing those two parts of you together so you can go where you want to go.
 

The Power of Your Heart 

Did you know that your heart has its own independent nervous system? The heart contains 40,000 neurons, or brain-like cells that include sensory neurites, which help in receiving and transmitting information. It turns out there is a whole heart language that helps direct your brain and the rhythms in your body, and your heart sends more messages to the brain than vice versa. Your heart also creates an  electromagnetic field a hundred times greater than the field your brain creates. 

So, what does this all mean? 

It means that your heart is not just a muscle pumping blood through your body or a metaphor for sentimental love. It is a center of profound intelligence. 

Your heart is also a kind of brain. It is a central access point of energy, a doorway whereby you can experience who you really are and your connection to Spirit and your higher self, however you conceive of it. 

The science is especially interesting to me because it validates what I have been studying for years in my spiritual studies. It confirms that our hearts—not our brains as we have been led to believe—are actually the principle place of our intelligence. 

Your heart possesses an unparalleled intelligence that your mind alone could never give you access to. This is true for both your physical, tangible, and beating heart, and also your spiritual heart, which is an energetic power center where your humanness and Spirit merge. 

When I started incorporating the power of the heart, both from the science and energetic knowledge I was discovering, everything in my life—and I do mean everything—went through a major upgrade. I started to have a lot more energy throughout the day, but especially at the end of the day, when I would often be spent and emotionally frazzled. I started feeling far more peaceful, even around people I used to find greatly challenging. Chronic pain in my hips and neck resolved.

I started to bring the heart into my client work and to those around me, and I witnessed people’s whole energy and lives change. And it was all happening in a nonlinear way. Meaning that, as the heart turned on a kind of intuitive and highly intelligent power inside of each person, old blocks and patterns that had been an issue for years were now being blasted through. The heart had a way of clearing things out by providing a brand new point of view, versus the sticky and often long, roundabout way of the mind, which involves rehashing and trying to wade through the gunk.
 

The Five Hearts

The way we access our heart’s power and intelligence happens through five stages, known as The Five Hearts. In each stage, you experience a completely different reality. 

What separates each stage is the degree to which your heart’s innate intelligence is unlocked.

Stage 1: The Dark Heart: Incoherence
This stage corresponds to incoherence, a state where the heart and brain are not in communication.  You may experience frustration, fear, great confusion, unawareness, separation from others, overwhelm, negative behaviors, or perhaps not feeling at all. 

Stage 2: The Propelled Heart: The Beginning of Coherence
The beginning of coherence emerges, and the heart and the brain begin to communicate better. You are propelled to seek meaning and truth in life, whether that is directed toward getting in better shape, adopting a healthier diet or lifestyle, or moving up in your career. However, at this stage there is a great tendency to overthink, which often drowns out the subtle, intuitive wisdom of the heart. This leads to restlessness, stress, anxiety and burnout. 

Stage 3: The Steady Heart: Coherence and Connection
This is the first stage where the heart starts to lead your life instead of the ego, and this creates a sense of inner stability and being connected to your center within. You begin to let go of attachments and trying to control life. 

You discover more resilience amidst life’s challenges, and that the circumstances in your life seem to flow better when you are in your center. A major focus in this stage is creating emotional intelligence, which is rooted in heart intelligence and increases abundance and success across all areas of your life. 

Stage 4: The Devoted Heart: Intuition and Forgiveness
This is a high stage of heart awakening, a place of great rising peace and joy. You become more devoted, more in tune with the inner world than the fluctuating outer world. Intuition, or direct knowing or perception, rises because the inner connection to the heart is so strong. This high heart intelligence and high coherence open the door to expansive solutions not previously available.

The extraordinary power of unconditional love and the other heart qualities of peace, compassion, appreciation, and care come forward as the dominant energies of your life. Service for others becomes primary. You keep experiencing more abundance across your life as you continue to shed, forgive, and let go of what is not of the heart.

Stage 5: The Clear Heart: Heart-Brain Harmony 
This is a stage of unity, deep connection to oneself and others, and imperturbable inner peace. The heart and brain become one, melding into the highest level of heart-brain harmony and a seamless integration of heart intelligence and brain function. This stage enables the highest levels of creativity, innovation, and intuitive knowing as well as great synchronicities alongside the seemingly miraculous. 

These stages were inspired by the teachings of Sri Yukteswar, a mystic of penetratingly deep wisdom and profound understanding of ancient Vedic science. These stages also correspond to the science of heart coherence, starting with the first stage where we experience incoherence and then moving progressively to heart-brain harmony in the last stage.

You may resonate with one heart stage predominantly, but you may find yourself oscillating between different stages. This fluidity is totally natural. It’s not about regression but about continually shedding more of what’s not in alignment with who you really are. There’s no rush to progress from one stage to another, and there’s no need to try to force your heart open. 

Even if you’re facing challenging circumstances, tapping into your heart’s intelligence can grant you the clarity to handle stress and adversity with ease and intuition. To truly be free, you need to see things differently; otherwise, you remain trapped in the same viewpoint, allowing fear to persist and hold you back.

I offer much more in my new book, The Hidden Power of the Five Hearts, but for now I want to you leave with a simple heart coherence practice to feel your way into: 

Right here, right now, shift your attention to your heart. You can place one of your hands on your heart if that helps you bring your focus to your heart, though it’s not entirely necessary. Research published in the American Journal of Cardiology and other journals found that this alone starts to enhance communication between your heart and brain, bringing your nervous system back into balance and heightening cardiovascular efficiency.

While focusing on your heart, take a few deep breaths in and out. There’s a certain rhythm of breath practice – detailed in the book – that is shown to help increase heart coherence. However, any natural pattern of taking slow, deep breaths in and out, while focusing on your heart, will be beneficial and start to increase your coherence.

Can you start to see how powerful and simple this is? All this amazing power is right inside your own heart.

 Kimberly Snyder is a 3-time New York Times best-selling author, holistic wellness expert and nutritionist, international speaker and meditation teacher. She is also the founder of Solluna, a holistic lifestyle brand and is the host of the top-rated Feel Good Podcast.

To learn more about Kimberly and Solluna, visit mysolluna.com and @_kimberlysnyder.