Living with Balance
Heart, Mind and Emotions Line Up
Everyone knows how good it feels to be in balance. It’s when your heart, your mind, and you feelings are all headed in the same direction; lined up together towards an idea, a personal interaction, or a goal. When we aren’t fully lined up we feel a sense of stress. This can happen in a million ways but one very common scenario is in our day to day relationships with other people. Let’s say that you said something to a sibling, friend, classmate, teacher or co-worker and then you worry that maybe it sounded too harsh and critical. Maybe what you said was kind of mean. You could go back to that person and clear it up, but you don’t take the time to do so. This leaves you with a subtle layer of stress and worry. If this occurs in other areas of your life, with other people as well, the stress accumulates. Human interactions, left untended to, are probably the biggest source of stress for most people.
Each of us can learn how to live with our hearts, minds, and emotions in alignment more consistently. We start with a focus on the heart and set out to build a relationship with the wisdom of the heart. Our culture focuses on the mind and the power of thinking. While thinking is important, a stressed out state can lead to confused thinking. This leads to poor decision making. The thinking mind is only powerful when it is bathed in a hormonal and chemical field which has come into balance through alignment with the heart and the emotions.
A focus on the heart can bring the entire body into an organized state. How is this so? Research shows that the heart sends more information to the brain than the brain sends to the heart. The rhythms of the heart actually influence cognitive functioning. What most influences the rhythms of the heart? The emotions. Positive and life sustaining emotions such as joy, gratitude, excitement, love, and playfulness have a positive affect on heart rhythms, bringing them into an organized beat to beat pattern. The heart then sends organized messages to the brain which then shares this organization through the autonomic nervous system with the entire body and all of its functioning parts. Therefore, feelings are crucial to a balanced heart which is crucial to a well functioning brain and body.
You cannot think your way into a balanced state, you must feel your way into it. Often we discount our feelings. In fact, the entire Western culture has considered rational thinking as superior to the craziness of emotions. From this perspective, emotions are considered messy, difficult and unreliable, while King Thinking is controlled and logical. Well it is true, isn’t it, that unexamined emotions can lead to outrageous behaviors and extreme stress? However, when we stop running from our emotions and come into relationship with them we find that they aren’t so scary afterall. We find that emotions give meaning and richness to life. And, the good news is that we have some choice and influence over how we feel. We can generate positive emotional states at will. A little effort towards remembering someone that you love or a place that you enjoy and up comes that generative and renewing feeling.
Balanced heart centered living is available to anyone and everyone. Get related to your feelings. When you notice difficult feelings at the helm, try shifting to gratitude or remember a time that you felt happy or peaceful. Make a sincere attempt to feel these generative feelings and allow them to bathe the heart. This organizes the beat to beat pattern of the heart so that it can send organized information to the brain. Now you have gathered your heart, your mind and your feelings into an synchronized and balanced state. From here, enjoy your day.
A TOOL FOR BALANCE: HEARTMATH BIOFEEDBACK
HeartMath has been a pioneer in HRV (Heart Rate Variability) research and self-regulation training for over 25 years. Over 250 independent peer-reviewed studies have been published on HeartMath technologies and methodologies.
The Inner Balance technology analyzes and displays our heart rhythm, measured by HRV, which indicates how emotional states are affecting our nervous system. HRV offers a unique window into the quality of communication between the heart and brain, which directly impacts how we feel and perform.
Recommended by health professionals worldwide, HRV coherence training has been associated with many health and performance benefits. A few minutes of daily coherence practice has been shown to reduce and prevent the negative effects of stress, such as overwhelm, fatigue and exhaustion, sleep disruption, anxiety, and burnout.
Inner Balance by HeartMath for SmartPhones and Tablets
The Inner Balance technology trains us to self-generate a highly efficient physiological state called HRV coherence, which helps us increase emotional composure and clearer reasoning.
To learn more and purchase, click on photo
- Inner Balance Bluetooth Sensor for iOS and Android devices
$159.00 - Inner Balance Lightning Sensor Wired Sensor for iPhone / iPad Only
$129.00
THE HORSE IN NATURAL ATTUNEMENT
Horses do not care about how your hair looks, whether or not you wear makeup, or what clothes you are wearing. Horses care about your inner state. They are masters at reading energy! They are masters at teaching us about our energy. We can deny that we are sad or mad, to other people, but you cannot fool a horse.
Plus they will not judge you for having your feelings. They will simply respond to those feelings in an honest way. Sometimes horses do not want to stand near a person who is angry and they walk away. This gives us human beings a chance to become more aware and honest about what is going on with us.
Why is it good to be honest about your feelings? Feelings give meaning to life; feelings affect all of our relationships. Studies show that the better a person is at maintaining positive relationships, the happier she is. Studies also show that we develop emotional habits and can make ourselves feel sad by dwelling on only the difficulties of life. If we practice focusing on the positive and practice being grateful for all that we have in our lives, we will become happier people and we will have better relationships.
The horse and Dr. Jill work as a team to help girls become honest about their feelings, and honor them, and learn from them. What does this girl need to learn from her feelings? What does she need to express or experience? What is missing from her life? How can she begin to harvest the positives of her life?
We teach tools using a biofeedback program called HeartMath to help girls find more positive emotional states. We want to teach the body that feeling positive is natural, that feeling calm and confident is natural. Even teenagers may already have well developed patterns of stress and anxiety. We want to teach different patterns and make positive feeling states more the norm for the body and for the mind.
Horses respond very well to confident people and will sometimes walk all over girls who lack confidence. They are great teachers for learning more confidence and showing confidence with your body language. Horses pay attention to how you walk and where you put your focus.
Horses are very strong and having a physical power struggle with a horse is pointless. They will always win and you will always lose. If that horse wants to eat grass, and you only use your physical strength to stop it, you will lose. But if you approach a horse with a straight spine, a clear eye, and a focused mind, they will recognize that you are the leader of the herd, and will fall in line behind you.
The HERD Project works with the natural attunement of the horse to teach girls to notice and identify their feeling states. Then we add a biofeedback tool to strengthen their ability to shift from a stressed out anxious state, or a down and depressed state, to one of balance and calm. The horse then responds to this change of energy in a way that is pleasing to the teen.
A horse is most cooperative when you are in a balanced state. An angry person often encounters an avoidant horse. A sad and down person often encounters a hesitant horse. Horses will often mirror your state. They pick up on the energy field and respond to it.
A positive and confident person gives a clear message to a horse and the horse responds willingly to this type of leadership. It takes a little time to understand the great big heart of the horse, but with regular attendance, patience, and practice, every person can step into this mystery and in the process learn about themselves as well.