Is your heart acting like your old high school coach?
I’m at that stage of life where Sunday afternoons are spent watching my son’s football games and hanging out in a minivan during rain delays while my girls listen to the Hamilton soundtrack on repeat. It provides ample time to observe and wonder.
At the last game, I noticed a series of events that stuck with me. There was a coach who continually went berserk after 85–90% of the plays. Whether it was a boy who didn’t make a perfect form-tackle, someone jumping offsides or a kid who wanted to field a punt instead of “just letting it go!”, everything was met by the coach wringing his hands, followed by a classic “full-hand-over-the-eyes-and-slow-swipe down-to-the-mouth” maneuver, culminating with the promise of “We ain’t going to be practicin’ tomorrow, we’re going to be puking!”
Curious what it would be like to try to learn the game under such circumstances, I asked my son. His response was, “I’m always worried more about making a mistake than actually making a play.” What my son doesn’t know is that his fear of the coach is inhibiting processes in his brain which would allow him to regulate his emotions, pick up on other players’ tells, read the game better and think clearly before acting. As a result, his decisions on the field tend to be impulsive. This type of behavior is found throughout our society when people are governed by fear and anxiety.
Today at work at Rocket Referrals, I brought members of our team over to my desk and hooked them up to a bio-feedback tool called the EMWave2. From a workplace point of view, it’s great to see physiologically how dealing with certain types of customer service situations impacts our psycho-physical state and how we can rise above it. The scientific principles behind the EMWave2 are based upon the following principles of coherence:
During stress and negative emotions, when the heart rhythm pattern is erratic and disordered, the corresponding pattern of neural signals traveling from the heart to the brain inhibits higher cognitive functions. This limits our ability to think clearly, remember, learn, reason, and make effective decisions. (This helps explain why we may often act impulsively and unwisely when we’re under stress.) The heart’s input to the brain during stressful or negative emotions also has a profound effect on the brain’s emotional processes — actually serving to reinforce the emotional experience of stress.
In contrast, the more ordered and stable pattern of the heart’s input to the brain during positive emotional states has the opposite effect — it facilitates cognitive function and reinforces positive feelings and emotional stability. This means that learning to generate increased heart rhythm coherence, by sustaining positive emotions, not only benefits the entire body, but also profoundly affects how we perceive, think, feel, and perform
There’s an amazing non-profit called the Heart Math Institute whose goal is to “empower people to self-regulate their emotions and behaviors to reduce stress, increase resilience, and unlock their natural intuitive guidance for making more effective choices.” Their software “decodes” the variability between the beats of your heart, maps it on a screen and shows you your corresponding emotional state. The idea is that if you can see your emotions and watch them change, you can learn to take charge of your life.
Take a look below at images from their website and the differences between the states of frustration and gratitude.
Just like any other muscle, your heart can be retrained. This means chronic anxiety, depression, attention control issues as well as persistent sleep problems can all be improved through practice. One of the techniques they employ at the Heart Math Institue is something you can practice daily– even without the aid of their software.
It’s called Heart-Centered Breathing and here’s how it works:
Simply shift your attention to your heart. If it helps, clasp your hands over your heart as an aid. Take a deep breath and exhale. Breathe in rounds of five. The first five seconds begin with a deep, easy inhale; followed by a smooth, five-second exhale. While you perform these series of breaths, imagine the breath is flowing in through the heart and then breathing out again through the heart. This will bring the head and the heart in sync.
This practice will bring your body and mind into a state of coherence (where all systems are working together in concert). This is something you can do when stuck in traffic, riding in the elevator or watching TV at night. The more you practice, the more you will notice the changes in your emotional states. When you feel yourself slipping into a state of anxiety during the day, you will now be able to right the ship. Soon, you will have memorized a new baseline and will see the lasting effects on your life, health, and relationships.
For more on the Heart Math Institute, check out their website here.
