The Heart Does Feel Emotions
The heart is the star around which the other organs of the body orbit. Science is now beginning to study the effect of its heartbeat and its magnetic field on life and perceptions.
The exquisite sensitivity of the heart to emotions is well known to all of us and probably its immediate changes in functioning in the face of a feeling of empathy or love have constituted the paradigm on which the heart has been recognized as a source of thought, emotion and spiritual knowledge.
The alteration of the coherent rhythm of the heart has a powerful impact on the body, including a significant deterioration in cognitive ability, anxiety or depression, or an increased risk of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, to name just a few of the fields studied so far. the moment.
Why is the heart the organ of emotion?
The activity of the heart influences the brain stem and the vital brain automatisms of the rest of the organs, the immune system and the cognitive capacities of the individual, including learning, attention, concentration and memory. But it also affects the limbic system and your emotions.
- Our hearts are in sync
The synchronization between the hearts of a child and his mother, a loving couple, a therapist and patient or musicians of an orchestra, talks about his adaptation power and resonance. In those cases it will be the most harmonious rhythm that will be transmitted to the rest of the members of the group.
When we speak figuratively of the connection between hearts, we are unknowingly referring to a fact that is true from the physical and energetic point of view.
- An organ that relates to others
In addition to being a driving pump, the heart transmits information, which is communicated to the rest of the body with each beat. In this case, informing is equivalent to giving shape, the mission of the nearly 50,000 neurons of the heart, which reach every tissue and every corner of the body, including the signals sent to the brain – much more than those that the heart receives from it.
These signals have a significant effect on brain function, affecting attention, perception, memory and the ability to solve problems.
- Emotions change the heart rate
Negative emotions and stress disrupt the heart rhythm pattern ; then its signal on the brain limits the ability to think clearly, remember, learn, reason and make decisions, promoting instead impulsive and reckless acts, which are carried out under the effect of stress or aggressiveness.
Instead, stable and consistent patterns facilitate cognitive function and reinforce positive feelings and emotional stability.
Emotion, heart rate and health
The autonomic nervous system regulates the functioning of the viscera, including the heart, through its two branches of opposite effect: the sympathetic and the parasympathetic. The former acts as an accelerator and when stimulated by activation or stress, the heart races.
The brake is the parasympathetic, which slows the heart rate and is stimulated by rest and relaxation. A harmonic cardiac function depends on the balance of the two branches.
The autonomic nervous system in turn provides the neurophysiological substrate for emotional and affective states and its function is related to behavior.
The inhibition of the influence of the sympathetic system produces states of serenity and calm, while the tone of the vagus nerve or vagus (parasympathetic branch that reaches the heart) is a physiological marker of vulnerability to stress.
For biology, therefore, emotions could be considered as evolutionary by-products of the neural regulation of the autonomic nervous system.
As a result of this pulse between the sympathetic and parasympathetic systems, in healthy conditions the rhythm of the heart is surprisingly irregular, with the interval between two consecutive beats always different. This variation, which is measured in milliseconds, is known as heart rate variability (HRV; HRV), is given by the autonomic nervous system and is an indicator of health and fitness. The factors that affect the autonomic nervous system and with it HRV are diverse: the respiratory pattern, physical exercise and also the thoughts, feelings and emotions that are experienced at every moment. Through its fluctuations between each beat, which respond to this set of factors, the heart sends a message to the brain ; the more they vary, the richer that message is. On the contrary, the reduction in HRV fluctuations is associated with different vascular and cardiac pathological situations or endocrine, neurological and psychiatric diseases.
