Your heart is smarter than your brain

It is not a title for an article. He told me, a couple of years ago, my son, now thirteen, walking along a beach in Zanzibar. We were talking about a simile with the population of neurons that “inhabits” in the human body, understood not as an individual but as an ecosystem for cells that form it

Neurons are not limited to the brain

Neurons, nerve cells, are grouped into three large cities connected by highways (nerves and blood vessels): the brain, the digestive system, and the heart. Those of the heart live in a small city compared to the mass of the huge city, almost country, that represents the brain. New York in the brain, Barcelona in the digestive system and Stone Town in the heart, we said. And we concluded that Despite being a minority, strictly speaking it was those of the heart that “ruled”not from the imposition –a fateful and miserable formula of “command”–, but from the “convincing”.

The “sensations” originating in the heart led our consciousness to better and faster responses in emergency situations than the thoughts elaborated in the power centers of the great metropolis of the brain.

What are “hunches”?

It can be explained in another way. Since the end of the last century, already in the 1990s, we know that 40,000 neurons reside in the heart, the same as in a single cubic millimeter of brain.

Ignorant of this “detail” until twenty-five years ago, we always knewhoweverthat there are decisions that are made with the heart or that there is what is called a “hunch”. Trust the “guide” in the instinctive thinking dictated from the heart was always a behavior associated with a certain uncertainty because we were often told that important decisions had to be made with a cool head and not with a warm heart.

Rudolf Steiner –philosopher, writer, educator– did not know anything about the neurons of the heart and, instead, defined this organ as a sensitive, perceptive and intelligent center.

How does our most “cerebral” heart work?

Today we know that we really make decisions with our hearts and not in a figurative sense. The neurons of the heart have memory, they learn, remember and perceive. Today, from the rationality of science, more “quantum” and less “Newtonian”, we know that the heart sends more signals to the brain than it receives of this. He does it through four biological communication strategies between the cardiac and cranial brains:

1. Neurological mechanisms

From the brain to the heart receptor centers in the cranial brain may be neurologically inhibited. That is to say, the heart influences the perception of reality and, consequently, in the answers we give, in our reactions.

2. Biochemical mechanisms

A small 28 amino acid peptidecalled atrial natriuretic peptide (ANP), atrial natriuretic factor (ANF), atrial natriuretic hormone (ANH), or atriopeptinis synthesized in cardiac muscle and is the homeostasis modulator.

In 1865, the physician and physiologist Claude Bernard defined homeostasis as the dynamic balance that keeps us alive.

What practical meaning does that have? That can inhibit the production of stress hormones (adrenaline, norepinephrine, dopamine) and stimulate the production of oxytocin. It’s not little!

3. Biophysical mechanisms

Changes in heart rate modulate communication through pressure waves sent to the rest of the body.

4. Electromagnetic mechanisms

Finally, the heart generates a electromechanical field of enormous power, five thousand times more powerful than that of the brain. This field changes according to emotional state. It is more harmonious in states of satisfaction, positive thinking, confidence and tranquility, and instead it is more irregular or chaotic in alert states (fear, frustration, danger).

electromagnetic field reaches up to four meters outside our body. That explains why, sometimes, we synchronize our hearts with those of another person. when we are within this physical zone of influence: the baby and the mother, two people who love each other more from tenderness than from passion…

Sometimes, this mechanism is even used as a defense strategy in the face of potential danger (Thousands of tiny individuals with tiny hearts beating synchronously, for example in the sea, can give rise to a powerful electromagnetic field that will confuse a predator into thinking it is a really big “someone”).

How to put the brain and the heart in agreement?

Once the “connection” between the two brains, cardiac and cranial, is understood, we can consider how and who modulates whom and what consequences the fact that one influences the other will have. What comes next sounds like science fiction: heart rate and brain waves can be synchronized so that it is “the heart that leads the head.”

As? With what drug substance? With no one. Enough with the induction of positive thinking. If they are harmonized through emotions and positive thoughts, we could modulate a state of intelligent consciousness that would fit the definition of the concept of “love” from a perspective that is not so emotional but more neuroscientific. The eradication of negative feelings such as fear, mistrust or anger would be theoretically possible from something as basic as synchronization of heart rate with brain waves.

The fusion between states of biological coherence created by the brain and the heart could lead us to a state of superior intelligence activated through positive emotions. Perhaps this is a new evolutionary milestone in the history of humanity.

The brain of the heart activates that of the skull and transports us to a dimension of exact perception of realityno longer based on the memory of what was previously lived (experience) but on a new paradigm in in which knowledge would be generated immediately and instantaneously.

The truth is that this ability or human capacity, today, certainly seems underused. Is a potential barely activated yetonly within the reach of a minority of individuals, but the important thing: it is accessible to all. How can we develop it?

freeing ourselves from fear

Cultivating the qualities of the brain of the heart that would result in actions as basic as know how to listen (to children and, in general, to others), correctly manage the patience, encourage cooperation and teamworkto be willing to be really tolerantunderstand the differences and live them, express gratitude, offer compassion, or overflow affection, would allow us to free ourselves from the three primary mechanisms: fear, desire and dominance, which perhaps have been good for us evolutionarily in other times and circumstances, but which currently enslave us, are the source of great tension and pain and a disturbing search of “something” that we just can’t find anywhere. The capacity of take a position of observer-witness rather than judge-imposed it would help us reach this new state of mind directed from the heart. Learn to trust intuition and recognize the origin of our emotions It does not lead us to a better perception of external reality but of our interior, much more important.

We frequently hear about and read about the benefits of elementary actions that will improve our moods, reduce stress, and optimize our abilities. Often they seem very basic and elemental.

Listening and perceiving the silence, the contact with nature in a contemplative sense, a certain simplicity in the model of life, Meditation, if it is an instrument within our reach, or the enjoyment of temporary solitude, can help us feel our interior.

And all based on the “intellectual work” of 40,000 neurons located in the right place!