HeartMath approach to self-regulation and psychosocial well-being

Abstract

The ability to alter one’s emotional responses is central to overall well-being and effectively meeting the demands of life. In this article, we discuss the perspective that one’s ability to self-regulate the quality of feeling and emotion of one’s moment-to-moment experience influences our physiology and the reciprocal interactions between physiological, cognitive, and emotional systems. We outline the bi-directional communication pathways between the heart and brain, and how neural activity in these pathways affect the central processes of cognitive and emotional function and self-regulatory capacity. We discuss how self-induced positive emotions is reflected in the pattern of one’s heart’s rhythm, which in turn increases the coherence in bodily processes. This shift in the heart rhythm plays an important role in facilitating higher cognitive functions, creating emotional flexibility, and facilitating social connectedness. Over time, this establishes a new inner-baseline reference, resulting in improvements in attention, behaviour, and measures of health and wellness.

Keywords:

• cognitive performance
• emotion
• heart coherence
• HeartMath
• heart rate variability
• trauma