In my energy healing practice, I often hear people say that their heart is telling them one thing, and their brain another.

I imagine we have all been in this state: one in which we are living in a state of inner conflict. We feel an expectation from some unspoken agreement or the pressure of others or our job that we follow our brain and the direction of the environment external to us. Meanwhile, the cues of our inner guidance offer some alternative that just feels better, more alluring, more soothing, more healing and more life-giving.

But we squelch it. We dismiss it. We override it.

We live in a very–I\’ll say it, OVERLY–mental society. We overthink, we stress out, we become anxious and we rely on and expect our brain in it\’s overworked, incoherent and hazy state to make perfect decisions.

And when we are overworked and overwhelmed we tend to freeze in place, afraid to make any decision or take any action. When this happens we are living in survival mind, and like an animal in the wild facing a predator, unable to empower the fight or flight mechanisms, we attempt to become invisible and freeze in place, hoping to be unseen.

Want more peace?  The key is your heart. 

Want to calm the thoughts in your brain?  The key is your heart. 

Want to reduce sensations of stress and anxiety in your body?  The key is your heart.

Our heart is the most powerful energy center on our body and it’s the center of our energy anatomy.  We have all sorts of intuitive phrases that signal that it’s our heart, not our brain, that offers the best guidance.  We “think” with our heart.  We say: “heart-felt,” “follow your heart,” from the bottom of my heart,” “half-hearted,” “had a change of heart.”

When our heart is coherent, which is to say rhythmic in its fluctuation patterns and energetically harmonious, we feel at ease, calm, well and at peace.   

We can teach ourselves to voluntarily induce a state of heart coherence.  This state helps to regulate the heartbeat and autonomic nervous system, which in turn, entrains the brain to coherent order.  Order in the brain translates to sensations of ease and peace.

Here’s a simple and easeful meditation to do anytime, anywhere:

1. Breathe into your heart center

2. Feel into the space that your heart and lungs occupy in your physical body

3. Use your imagination to generate feelings of gratitude, joy, love, care, appreciation, and other elevated emotion. Think about something that makes or will make you happy.  Feel it in this now moment as you breathe and feel into your heart.

In heart coherence we engage the unique wisdom, guidance and intelligence of our heart center, and experience sensations of connection, increased intuition, enhanced immunity, increased cognition, and the reduction of stress hormones. 

In meditation, this state fosters an elevated ability to make transcendent connection with universal life-force energy and can support energy flow within and around the body, as well as mystical experiences.

Practically speaking, heart-brain coherence meditation is an act of emotional regulation.  We simply choose to “get into our heart,” and to generate an uplifted feeling. We make it happen!  In time, the choice to meditate in this way is an act of conditioning the body to a new level of mind.  Practiced consistently and intentionally, the body will memorize the state of heart coherence and we will notice immediately any person, place, condition or environment that “knocks us out” of coherence.

And because we have practiced, we will know exactly how to get back into heart-centered gratitude.  In time, there’s an obvious contrast that the things that used to bother us don’t have such an affect on us, because we love our inner peaceful sensations more than anything.