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Soft Medicine The Physical Heart The Electric Heart The Emotional Heart And The Spiritual Heart  One of the most difficult challenges the field of cardiology faces is the regeneration of heart tissues. Repairing the wounded heart is every cardiologists dream, but the heart can get wounded in many different ways that cardiologists cannot understand. After all--to them, it's just a pump. The heart is a vast electromagnetic generator and the In talking about the heart the first immediate difficulty we face is the confusion between the physical pump and surrounding nervous system and the core being which lives within it. The heart has always been known for more than its capacity to pump blood. It directs and aligns many systems in the body so that they can function in harmony with one another and both the Chinese and Ayurvedic medical systems have known this for thousands of years. Most western-trained minds immediately think of the pump when the word heart is used and much can be said about the physical heart. In my soon to be released book Magnesium - The Ultimate Heart Medicine I in fact spend hundreds of pages discussing cardiology and the best way to treat the physical pump. However, beyond the physical is something crucial to health and happiness and a life lived without disease. It is something we are born with which is more primordial and basic to health than the mind, because it pre-exists the mind. Deep within is our pure being that has incarnated into this body. This being is ultra sensitive and is picking up subtle impressions from the environment through the heart centre of pure feeling even before we come out of mothers womb. This being has its centre in the cardiac area of the body and the more closed it is the weaker and more vulnerable a person or child becomes to illness and disease. Even without external causes, without being poisoned by vaccines, pesticides, herbicides, chemical preservatives and fast foods; without invasions from Hun Hordes of Mercury, bacteria, viruses, fungi and polluted drinking water a human being, without a strong active being centre, is already ill. In HeartHealth, the heart is defined as the vulnerability of being. Vulnerability is the capacity or susceptibility to being hurt. The word vulnerable is also synonymous with the words openness and exposure. I wrote HeartHealth ten years ago to help people understand the hearts deep and mysterious ways. Mother Theresa said many years ago that "loneliness and isolation in the West" was the most significant ?disease? she had encountered during her lifetime. The fact that modern men cannot perceive this invisible illness, this tragedy of being is a catastrophe. This book Soft Medicine and HeartHealth offer ways to treat disease with love, empathy and compassion. They open medicine up to a softer way of approaching patients while offering insight to everyone about the importance of rediscovering the heart centre, the home of our true beings. The healthy human heart needs warmth, is warmth and can give warmth to others. The deeper we dive into the heart and open to its super intelligent ways the more balanced, coherent, and healthy our bodies, minds, and emotions become. I was taught 30 years ago that if we as a race did not learn to love we would not survive and now the harsh lessons are coming because we hardly think of love any more so unloving has the world become. This past week I have been working on two essays, two horrific nightmare stories, previsions of the future, and yes we are not even beginning to see what our lack of love is bringing down on our collective heads. I am publishing my three books on the heart (pump included,) at a time of gathering darkness when the lack of love, caring, empathy and compassion have brought about a crisis of trust and faith in governments and financial institutions. We can now look to the worst examples in modern history and expect that to come to a neighborhood near us soon. It already has, certainly the increased suicides that are happening as the financial walls crumble are disturbing for our hearts if we still have one that can feel any empathy for the pain and suffering of others. One of the most terrible secrets about humans is that a person can have a cardiac pump beating away and yet have no real heart. Western medicine has been mirroring this process for a hundred years or more as the pharmaceutical companies rose with the chemical and petrochemical industries. Anyone who says these companies have heart is lost because all the evidence points to the opposite. Medical cruelty (medicine practiced without a heart) has intensified decade by decade turning the medical industrial complex into a vast terror machine that assaults humanity from cradle to grave. Soft Medicine is medicine practiced with heart, with love tenderness and even affection. It is on the other side of the universe from the Nazi doctors in their concentration camps and the oncologists with their poisonous chemotherapy and deadly radiation machines or even the pediatricians with their deadly vaccines laced with poisons like mercury and aluminum. It is sad that most orthodox allopathic physicians are still sceptical that emotions matter clinically even though basic science sees clearly how people who experience long term depression, anxiety, long periods of sadness and pessimism, incessant hostility and aggression, have higher incidences of major diseases. A more enlightened field of cardiology would understand that the emotional and even spiritual aspects of the heart matter very much and determine to a great degree what happens to the heart physically. Medical science is resisting to the maximum the intelligent conclusion that the happy heart, a heart that feels loved and cared for is instrumental for the maintenance of health in our heart tissues. We can see that dramatic changes in heart rhythm/frequency/health patterns occur when we shift between feelings like anger and hate to those of peace, love, understanding and appreciation. Negative emotions make the heartbeat look very ragged on an electrocardiograph; love and peace transform the physical heart into a much smoother beating pump.  Experiencing emotional or physical stress causes an increase in heart rate, elevation of blood pressure, and release of stress hormones. All these result in a greater workload for the heart, which can be dangerous. Stress can cause a heart attack, sudden cardiac death, heart failure, or arrhythmias (abnormal heart rhythms) in persons who may not even know they have heart disease. When the same person practices meditation or biofeedback, an ideal, smooth pattern emerges, called coherence, which activates the parasympathetic nervous system, lowering blood pressure, stress hormones, respiration rate, and heart rate.[i] 
Cardiologists do not want to admit it but the physical pumps activity mirrors what is taking place on emotional and volitional levels. The brain structures involved in self regulation overlap considerably with the structures that control heart rate variability (HRV), which suggested that HRV would accurately reflect self regulation. The hearts electromagnetic patterns are much more coherent, healthy and harmonious when our emotional self is at peace. Emotions are really internal energies and hormonal chemicals in motion and they hold a powerful influence over body tissues. They can literally move the bones in our spine and cause dysfunction in our internal organs. But even more detrimental then ?negative emotions? are repressed emotions. Without doubt chronic baths in emotions like anger and hate do nothing for the well being of our heart, and the repression of emotions and feelings in general lead even the young to quick and deep illnesses. "It's the feeling that can change the heartbeat, not the thinking," says Dr Alan Watkins, a research fellow at Southampton University. Watkins infers that when we center on the deeper feelings and intelligence of the heart we bathe our brain in coherent energy that leads it to more harmonious function. According to researchers our heart rate alters even when we're resisting temptation. Self regulation, our strength to inhibit impulses, make decisions, persist at difficult tasks, and control emotions can be spent just like a muscle that has been lifting heavy weights. A measure of cardiac regulation called ?heart rate variability? (HRV) appears to be linked to self regulation according to an article published in Psychological Science. Heart Rate Variability is a measure of the minute differences in time between the beats of your heart. HRV is one of the hottest areas of health and biofeedback research because studies have found that a low HRV is the single most important leading indicator of heart disease.[ii] Your HRV pattern shows the state of your emotional-energetic heart. The physical organ or pump is a complex neurological, muscular and energy center of vast power and proportion and its rhythm and beat frequency act like radio waves are transmitted to all the cells in our bodies and beyond. One of the basic reasons meditation is recommended in many stress reduction programs is that slowing the mind down allows the heart to open to its deeper river of feelings. Soft Medicine is one of three books I am publishing in the area of what could be called a new cardiology. But it?s wider in scope than cardiology and even includes massage therapy. One of the most well known associations to touch is healing. The bible made reference to the "laying on of hands" to heal the sick because the most beautiful forms of touch possible are actually healing techniques. It is my assertion that in the dark times ahead we will all need more heart, more love and even touch from our loved ones and even from professionals who we trust. We will need to be calmed and returned to our security center that lies in the center of our chests. Many are so hurt and closed off from the heart though only a miracle will save them.
References [i] McCraty, R., B. Barrios-Choplin, et al. (1998). "The impact of a new emotional self-management program on stress, emotions, heart rate variability, DHEA and cortisol." Integrative Physiological and Behavioral Science 33(2): 151-170. [ii] Ponikowski et al., (1997) "Depressed HRV as an independent predictor of death in chronic congestive heart failure secondary to ischemic or idiopathic dilated cardiomyopathy." American Journal of Cardiology, 79(12):1645-50 Tsuji et al., (1996) "Impact of reduced HRV on risk for cardiac events. The Framingham Heart Study." Circulation, 94(11):2850-5 |
