Over millennia, ancient traditional healers have developed ways to enhance their intuitive intelligence, to divine and predict what is happening in their immediate environment and beyond
They have looked to their hearts for counsel. More recently, in the 1990s the HeartMath Research Institute was developed to scientifically explore the role of the human heart in guiding us. This organization has broadened our understanding of the heart as an information processing center, a second brain that can influence the cranial brain upstairs, as well as the entire body.
One of the pioneers in this realm of study is Doc Childre who has written: “Picture heart intelligence as the flow of awareness, understanding, and intuitive guidance we experience when the mind and emotions are brought into coherent alignment with the heart. This intelligence steps down the power of love from Universal Source into our life’s interactions in practical, approachable ways which inform us of a straighter path to our fulfillment.”
Observing people in clinical settings who have previously been administered MDMA suggests to me that there is something akin to a heart awakening that occurs when the medicine is onboard. In addition to the oft-mentioned increase in compassion, empathy, and love, MDMA seems to activate the heart in such a way that they develop greater mental clarity and cultivate greater intuition. And with intuition comes enhanced intra- and interpersonal connectivity, synchronicities, and paraphrasing Childre’s words, a downloading of guiding forces and knowings that come from Universal Source.
Deborah Rozman, a psychotherapist, developed an exercise that helps psychonauts add coherence between their upper and middle brains – the cranial and the heart located brains. She developed an exercise that when employed can aid us in accessing and employing an additional intellectual resource. Combining two forms of intelligence can spawn a third.
Here’s how Rozman’s exercise goes: Place two pillows on the floor -- not on your bed -- as you will be trying to do something special on the pillows beyond sleeping. One pillow will represent the head and the other pillow the heart, both sources of intelligence. While sitting on the head pillow Rozman encourages you to close your eyes and ask head to communicate an important issue to heart. After sharing head’s thoughts, worries, and judgments you move to the heart pillow and tell head what the heart’s view of the problem is, what your heart is sensing. It is often like two entirely different people exist within us, two very different reference points of awareness that may not yet be in coherence or alignment. Next, you are encouraged to go back to the head pillow and respond to your heart.
After moving from pillow to pillow in this fashion three or four times, you are likely to settle into heartspeak and find more artful ways of seeing and addressing your issue. Usually this is not only a wiser perspective but a much kinder and gentler way to resolve problems.
Turns out this complex heart of ours sends information to the upper brain and other body parts through four different pathways:
1) A neurological communication system via neuronal pathways in the autonomic nervous system.
2) Bio-physical communication via pulse waves, one wave system among countless waves continuously flowing through the universe.
3) Biochemical messaging via the secretion of hormones like oxytocin which is being produced during an MDMA treatment.
4) Electromagnetic field created by the heart, which, by the way, happens to be the biggest producer of electricity of our three brains – heart, cranial, and intestinal.
Additionally, it is also important to remember that there is a feedback loop between our skin-suited bodies and the bigger body, Mother Earth, with Her synchronizing and healing energetic/magnetic emanations. So our body is part of an even bigger body. We are invited to know and take care of it all.
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“The earth and myself are of one mind.”
- Chief Seattle
“Your brain is part of a larger brain. Give thanks for that.”
- Glenn Aparicio Parry
“The heart has its reasons that the mind will never know.”
- Blaise Pascal
“My heart knows what my mind only thinks it knows.”
-Noah Benshea
“There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy.”
- Nietzsche
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Additional Reading:
Original Thinking by Glenn Aparicio Parry
Heart Intelligence by Childre, Martin, Rozman, and McCraty