* * *
The result of these multifaceted connections between heart and brain, which are unknown to most people, is called heart rate variability.
Heart rate variability
Most people want a regular heartbeat, which becomes faster only when they hurry and slows down when they spend time with their loved ones. If you measure accurately, however, the heart also beats chaotically and irregularly when at peace—as discussed in Circulation and Nature, the most important journals for heart research and science respectively.27 The interval between heartbeats, too, is by nature always different, never the same; it varies by up to several hundred milliseconds. So the healthy heart is by no means the Swiss clock it was long thought to be. A conventional ECG simply measures the heart rate inaccurately, taking the mean of the intervals between several contractions. Therefore intervals appear to be of equal length, and the heartbeat regular. So while this rough timeframe of the heartbeat as displayed by an ECG seems very stable, chaos reigns on the inside with multifractal, nonlinear, and spontaneous fluctuations.28 Chaos, in this case, implies that we do not know what it means—it does not appear logical. Imagine you hear a language you don’t understand. For you it is merely a collection of sounds and noises that seem chaotic and do not appear to make any sense.
In other words, the heart does what it wants, and it is absolutely unpredictable how yours or mine will beat in the next second. The clock of the heart is like the clock of life. Every person ticks differently. If you’ve ever had the feeling that the voice of your heart is chaotic, that impression was not wrong. Nothing is ever completely and continuously regular and symmetrical in a biological system. No river, no tree, nor your thoughts and emotions.
The more distinct your heartbeat’s spontaneous adaptability, the less worn out and the more elastic your autonomic nervous system has remained. Heart and organs are still able to react flexibly. And that is the big secret of a long life. It has been unambiguously proven: the higher the heart rate variability, the lower the probability of illnesses and the higher the life expectancy.29
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This also explains something which has played a big role for thousands of years in traditional medicine: the subtle diagnostics of the twenty-eight types of pulse which have been assigned to different illnesses. The heart, the body’s center, is connected with everything, and sooner or later most illnesses affect our heart and circulation. And the other way around. Good doctors once had refined their sensitivity to a point which allowed them to recognize with their senses things which today only computers can find.
The swing of life
Organic systems are in a permanently flowing condition of simultaneous tension and relaxation.
We call such connections oscillating, swinging, or trembling. Breathing, the hormone system, sleeping, and waking are also oscillating systems. Even walking, our step, follows an ancient human oscillating rhythm. Everyone who likes to hike or go for walks will perhaps have experienced this: at some point you move according to “your” tempo. You arrive at yourself. Walking is not a constant. You adjust to your environment, to the weather, and maybe your thoughts. Or do you remember how you were on a swing as a child? My daughter sometimes sat on the swing under her tree house for hours, mused, sang, swang a little, jiggled, turned. And every mood, every thought, every idea led to a muscle movement which caused new swinging. How I would have loved to have heard her heart while she did that!
Even our genetic material, our DNA, swings. The new research field called epigenetics shows us very impressively not only how our genes define our body, but also how our behavior defines our genes. Biochemist Erwin Chargaff, co-discoverer of our genetic material’s secrets, says: “A balance that does not tremble cannot weigh. A man who does not tremble cannot live.”30
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The heart likes to oscillate or tremble—or one could say dance—in sync with the brain, and readily takes in its impulses; constraining and stimulating neuronal influences between heart and brain are an important cause of heart rate variability.31 This dance is not a choreographed foxtrot or waltz in which one partner leads while the other follows. It is a subtle giving and taking, a leading and being led. It is impossible to predict how this dance will develop in the next second. It is the dance of life: at times subtle, at others wild, at times exhausting, at others very intimate. Life, too, oscillates and is not a straight line from the cradle to the grave.
* * *
A relaxed artist of life plays a special role in this dance. It is the vagus nerve, the tenth cranial nerve. It is regarded as the most important agent of our body’s department for wellness and relaxation, also known as the parasympathetic nervous system. Old anatomists called it a stray and vagabond as it drifts through the body seemingly aimlessly, pausing a little here and there to have a chat with the organs. Its impulses connect all organs, and the more the vagus talks with the heart and the more the heart listens to it, the higher the heart rate variability will become. The heart can be seduced into relaxation within half a second.
Things are very different, however, when the sympathetic nervous system sends stress signals which may relate to work and performance. This nervous system constantly brings the latest news from the brain and reports crises and dangers. The heart, with its typical prudence, does not respond immediately but rather waits up to four seconds to see if the danger is really present or if it merely appears to be. If it were to permanently react to every warning of danger, it would quickly exhaust itself. It cannot afford that as it wants to keep dancing. Thus it sends its impulses back to travel to the brain via the vagus.32 And they will dance happily ever after.
HEART TONE
Most people I knew had already been to New York, often while studying. But I had worked for some years as a senior doctor before I went there. When I did get to know the city, I visited the usual sights and a few other gems, such as the Rubin Museum of Art, where spiritual art from all over the world is exhibited. I had been meditating regularly for some time and was interested in a spiritual path of truth, independent from any particular religious or philosophical worldview. In my opinion there could only be one truth (there was, after all, only one heart), even though many paths may lead to it—just as there are many pathways to the heart, or roads to Rome. In the museum’s foyer I browsed through an illustrated book and discovered a sentence by the Persian mystic and poet Hafiz, born around 1320. My eyes caught on two lines that gave me goosebumps: “I am a hole in a flute that the Christ’s breath moves through.”1
Suddenly I heard something. I did not know what it was: a sound, a tone being repeated. I had to pause, to listen; I was touched in my innermost being. It was a kind of peaceful humming, beautiful, warm, round, harmonious, like a warm oil bath for the ears. I opened them wide, listened intently, and followed the call up a spiral staircase to the heart of the museum. Thus, I reached an exhibition entitled “The World Is Sound,” in the center of which you could hear the syllable OM sung by people from all over the world, including several artists. A choir of light and sound. Buddhism and Hinduism regard the syllable OM as a spiritual force, as holy. OM is a metaphor for the most fundamental attributes of our existence, of its wavelike nature.
It seemed to me that both my heart and my brain responded to the OM, to this call—they went into resonance. I sat down and remained there until the syllable OM had penetrated deep inside me, until I felt that every one of my cells had absorbed this tone. I listened not only with my ears but with my whole body. The swoosh of my thoughts receded, and clarity set in. At the beginning was the word. Isn’t OM a word? Yes, there could only be one truth, no matter if it was from the Bible or from Tantric writings.
* * *
Feeling fulfilled and blessed, I left the museum. At night in my hotel I realized that I was still feeling the tone under my skin. Yet no ECG could make it visible, no stethoscope could make it audible.
Heart mathematics
For decades, the Californian HeartMath I
nstitute has been investigating the connections between heart and brain. It is called HeartMath because the researchers involved want to work out and measure the secrets of the heart in a scientific manner. For this purpose, they have developed a biofeedback device which makes one’s heart rate variability visible on a laptop screen—via an ear clip with a cable and a USB connection. Different studies have shown that negative emotions such as fear, sadness, anger, and worry disturb the communication between heart and brain.2 An irregular stress wave will appear; even just seeing it makes you nervous. And we feel as awful as it looks when we have negative emotions—our inner self loses its beat. However, it is possible to escape from this condition and get heart and brain back into a balanced and relaxed connection. This state is called coherence, or you could call it consonance. The autonomic nervous system, breathing, brain, and heart synchronize themselves and oscillate in a harmonious way.
* * *
Practicing this is actually quite easy: it requires conscious natural breathing, conscious presence of heart and emotions, and an alert spirit. In this way, your heart rate will become a little quicker with every inhalation and a little slower with every exhalation. The stress waves will disappear from the screen, and a harmonious, sinusoidal, coherent curve will replace it. Coherence is a natural state for babies and small children; their autonomic nervous system is still very elastic, their heart sensitive.
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With HeartMath’s method of changing your heart rhythm pattern you can return to this natural flow and reach a coherent (meaning harmonious and stress-free) connection between oneself and one’s heart—something we otherwise strive to achieve using Eastern methods of relaxation such as yoga and meditation. While we can calm our brain only with difficulty (because usually we are constantly thinking something), we are easily able to pacify our heartbeat without stopping it—with a few calm breaths. And suddenly the heart will beat more relaxedly, and our pulse will cradle our brain, which is snug in its shell.
Before my first self-experiment with the biofeedback device, some weeks before I traveled to New York, I did not have the slightest doubt that my heart would present itself in a coherent curve. I had been practicing meditation for a while, after all. So I would not have to prepare myself by thinking beautiful thoughts or breathe consciously. I would plug myself in and immediately see the well-formed waves that would show me everything was perfectly fine with me. Oh well, maybe I would meditate a little so my waves would appear especially rounded on the screen. That was the plan, at least. I connected myself to the device, closed my eyes, and meditated for twenty minutes. I tried very hard to relax. When I opened my eyes again, I expected to see a top performance on the screen. I was used to nothing less from myself. Always in the lead, always performing at my peak. But not this time. Even a layperson would have been able to recognize at a glance that I was stressed, given the hectic, irregular amplitude. The coherence I had expected looked more like the fever curve of someone critically ill. What a defeat for the meditating heart surgeon!
Such a silly device. I should have saved the money. I should have known that something like this was worthless. How could a mere apparatus recognize the value of my meditation! I was positively offended and put the thing away somewhere. And forgot about it. For a time.
When the heart sings
Two days after my light-bulb OM moment at the museum, I packed my suitcase as I intended to fly back to Germany the next morning. Suddenly I had a cable in my hand. At its end dangled—at first I didn’t even know what it was—the “silly device.” The malfunctioning relaxation machine. How had it gotten into the suitcase? I was about to put it away in a side pocket when I hesitated.
I was a different person now. I carried the tone in me. If the truth resides in the OM, my heart should also react to it. My performance should have changed. Should I give the device another chance? Or myself? I connected with the device and immediately looked at the curve this time; it hadn’t changed since the last attempt. Again it reminded me of the fever curve of a critically ill person. But I was no longer like that, I was on the road to convalescence; I had begun to search for my heart. My heart! But would I ever be able to grasp it with my mind? To be honest, I did not really believe it anymore. I had to admit it would not work with the mind alone. I watched the screen and the jagged curve for a long time. I was no longer annoyed. It was simply there, and I accepted it as it was. I took a deep breath and then continued to breathe consciously.
At the start it was very low. Hardly audible. With every exhalation, a tone rose from within me. A very small and tender OM. It sounded fragile. A shy sound of the soul that expressed everything I felt at that moment. I gave in, no longer wanting to meditate my heart rate into a specific curve. A sadness and an age-old pain manifested themselves in this tone. But also the freedom to be able to let go. With every exhalation I let go a little more, and the tone of OM grew from within itself. I would not say I made it, let alone sang it. It was simply there.
And then the miracle happened. The heart curve changed before my eyes. Which I could not believe at first. But it was not a hallucination. As if by magic, the nervous scribbles became a small wave. And then another. My heart made many little waves. My heart relaxed. And I with it. Perhaps for the first time in decades. It was so immensely comforting to observe that. It was so touching to see the harmonious curve of my heartbeat on the monitor.
All my thoughts vanished. I only listened to my voice and my breathing. The tone changed with the deep sensations. First there was gratitude and joy, and after a while it changed to self-compassion. When had I last felt compassion for myself? I could not remember. I had managed my whole life like a bureaucrat. At some stage all sensations gave way to a deep peace. I was in resonance with myself and the world. My heart was talking to me, and I answered with OM. No one heard me. No one saw me. I was alone and a long way from home. But maybe I had never before been so much at home as within this sound of the world, as the holy syllable is also called. Because existence of any kind is sound. Physicists have long proven that the whole universe is based on vibrations. And the curve of the connection vibrated on the screen, harmonious and round—coherent. The theory of embodiment was no longer just a concept but a reality I experienced.
WISDOM FROM THE HEART
I watched my colleagues in heart surgery. Did they have such heretical thoughts too? Was I still one of them, or had I diverted from the pure faith in the pump? Were we allowed to talk about it? How would they react if they knew I had chanted “OM” in a New York hotel room? Or if they knew I now met with people who examined their innermost heart without using a scalpel or spilling a drop of blood? To gain clarity, I had to ask them. My first port of call was a surgical nurse I trusted, whose heart I thought was in the right place.
“Tell me,” I asked her in our kitchenette, “one feels love in the heart, right?”
She stirred sugar into her cup without answering. Maybe my question was too personal?
I asked others, noticing only later that they were all women. Did I assume women would have greater competence in matters of the heart? Did I fall for the stereotype that women have hearts while men have brains? At times I felt as if the convolutions of my brain were in a knot—it was just so difficult to distinguish the anatomical heart from the one that feels and acts wisely. On top of that, I was in a terminological muddle. Did I mean the soul? Why were all these essential parts of being human so vague and blurry, and not just in everyday language: philosophy, too, had not found an answer, and psychologists used the terms “soul,” “self,” and “emotions” interchangeably, depending on the school of thought they followed. As a scientist, I would have preferred clarity. A big unknown, an unambiguous formula, a result, done. Why did I even want to know it so precisely? Wasn’t it enough to know that the voice of the heart exists in principle? To connect myself to the biofeedback device now and then to check my curve? No, that was not enough. I sensed there was more. After a cardio technician and
an intern, both female, had confirmed that the brain was responsible for feelings—“Well, Reinhard, that’s common knowledge these days”—I tried a male assistant doctor. “The heart is the source of consciousness, isn’t it? Without the heart there wouldn’t be any thinking.”
Wide-eyed, he stammered: “Yes, of course.” But I noticed that he seemed to think I was mildly insane. (He, in turn, was certainly not—or else he would have contradicted his boss.)
* * *
If I continued like this, they would suspect I was not quite all there—but were heart surgeons ever all there?
“Can I hear the joke too?” asked the anesthetist who sometimes brought in wasabi nuts hot enough to numb your tongue. Apparently I had been chuckling to myself, alone in my office with the door open.
“Love dwells in the heart,” I said.
“Where else,” she said, shrugging, and walked off.
I laughed. And noticed that my heart had become a lot softer. More flexible, so to speak, and that meant healthier, too.
A flexible, elastic heart also means more resilience, the ability to master crises, to be tougher. I badly needed that attribute right then. Because as a heart surgeon, one could say I was skating on thin ice. But I was well prepared: various studies had shown that some of the neuronal messages of the heart travel through the gate to consciousness, a region of the brain called the thalamus. There they directly influence the function of higher brain centers and our manifold inner experiences. It has been found that people with a flexible heart are more emotionally balanced when tackling difficult tasks. They also have better self-control and are less easily frustrated. Furthermore, people with a high heart rate variability can remember questions and problems better and have better short-term memory.1
The Source of All Things Page 7