The mission of the Institute of HeartMath is to help establish heart-based living and global coherence by inspiring people to connect with the intelligence and guidance of their own hearts.

The vision of Doc Childre and a small team of researchers who founded the Institute of HeartMath in 1991 was predicated on a sincere desire to help people, especially to lead them away from the destructive cycles of stress, anxiety and anger that have gripped so much of the modern world. Since those early days when the founders began exploring the budding concept that the human heart held a vast, powerful and previously unimagined intelligence and wisdom to guide us, heal us and comfort us throughout our lives, HeartMath has taken a leading role in the scientific research of what is now widely known as heart-based living.

Heart-Based Living

When all of our intentions and actions in daily life originate from the intuitive wisdom of our hearts, when we feel and act with sincere appreciation, caring and kindness for others – all qualities of the heart – and when we can observe the world around us without the preset judgments of the mind, but rather with the compassion in our hearts, then we will truly be living life from the heart.

Listen to Your Heart Speak

There are many times in our lives when we feel compelled to help, care for or show kindness toward others. These are important opportunities, when the "noise" of the mind has quieted enough for us to hear and feel the heart speaking and attempting to guide us – as it always does, though we don’t always know it or acknowledge it. Many individuals are resistant at these times, their minds convincing them they don’t have the time and can’t afford to get sidetracked – from their jobs, the race to stay ahead of the pack and, increasingly, all-too-consuming ambition.

These individuals miss out not only on these important opportunities to reconnect with their hearts, but also on the restorative mental, emotional, physical and spiritual benefits of heart-based living. Moreover, they miss yet another chance to begin establishing new habit patterns, so when the next opportunity or urge to act from the heart arises they can build on it and continue building on it until one day heart-based living becomes their natural way of life.

As we finally release the judgmental and self-centered habits of the mind and begin to sincerely appreciate, care for and love other people, a shift occurs in how we exist with one another, a shift toward the only possible state for those who practice heart-based living: a state of peace and adventure.

The Brain is Connected to the Heart

Those occasions when you’ve felt or said to yourself, My heart says to …" and you listened to your heart or said, No, I’d better not," are occasions when your heart and brain were interacting. This interaction is very normal and very natural, but unless you maintain a sincere, ongoing connection with your intuitive heart feelings, this natural heart-brain interaction can become weakened, even blocked. If the wisdom and compassion of the heart is not actively employed when anger, anxiety and other destructive emotions arise, as they naturally will, such responses to what comes up" in our lives can become engrained patterns in the mind, which, when push comes to shove in the hectic pace and stressful environment of today’s world, can go into a sort of autopilot mode, offering up to us all those stored destructive responses as we go about our daily lives.

When these emotional responses become the norm, stress levels build. Researchers at HeartMath and elsewhere who have observed anger or hostility rise in people during controlled studies have measured increases in their levels of cortisol, often referred to as the mother of all stress hormones. These high stress levels cause us to feel less energetic, even drained; many people’s immune systems suffer; and we can be much more susceptible to a host of serious illnesses, including heart problems, diabetes, overweight and more.

Improve Your Health, Improve Your World

Researchers with the Institute of HeartMath also have observed in scientifically controlled studies that we can greatly reduce stress levels and improve our health through intentional emotional management and practicing the simple principles and methods of heart-based living. HeartMath has spent many years developing the tools, techniques and technology to help you practice using your mind to sort out your heart’s intuitive feelings and wisdom from the mind’s noise and auto responses to life’s challenges.

Heart-based living helps you learn to live in the now, bringing more of your real self into each moment," Doc Childre wrote in the article, Heart-Based Living. Becoming more of who you really are releases inner security, allowing you to relate to life with increased hope and confidence. Increased fulfillment is the result of this process.

Heart-based living empowers co-creation with others for the benefit of all. In the planetary shift going on, more people living from the heart can create rapid, positive global change. Go to Solutions for Stress.

Personal Coherence

One of IHM’s key areas of research has been "heart-rhythm coherence," described in simple terms as smooth, balanced heart-rhythm patterns, which can be measured and viewed by various types of monitors.

Stress, anger, fear, compulsive behaviors and other negative states all are signs of incoherent heart-rhythm patterns and are represented on heart-rhythm monitors by jagged, irregular waves. Fatigue is common among people with such symptoms. Sickness and disease, including numerous heart problems, diabetes, overweight and obesity among other ailments are more likely among people with incoherent heart-rhythms.

In contrast, when you have a coherent heart you are at your best. Stress chemical pathways reverse, paving the way for increased synchronization between the heart and brain, and in this synchronized state, which athletes call being "in the zone," you can achieve optimal mental clarity, cognitive performance and perception. Energy levels, sleeping patterns, relationships and so much more, including your mental, physical and emotional health, all improve. Go to Heart Rhythm Coherence.

Global Coherence

A discovery suggesting we can achieve coherence on a much grander scale is the finding that the heart has a powerful electromagnetic field and its own complex nervous system and circuitry that generate up to an estimated 60 times the electrical amplitude of the brain. Scientists actually have measured the electromagnetic signal people’s heart rhythms produce in the brain waves of those around us and many researchers now conclude that the heart has its own organized intelligence network. They say this intelligence network is capable of acting independently, learning, remembering and producing feelings, all of which we traditionally have believed only the brain could do.

IHM and internationally renowned astrophysicist and nuclear scientist Elizabeth Rauscher formed a partnership in June 2007 to build the Global Coherence Monitoring System (GCMS), a worldwide network of sensing stations, to measure and explore fluctuations in the magnetic fields generated by the earth and ionosphere.

The Institute of HeartMath’s applied and practical science and wide-ranging studies serve to validate the sincere belief of the dedicated people at IHM that global coherence – the mental, physical, emotional and spiritual well-being of the greater community of human beings, while acting in concert with their own hearts, each other and nation to nation in harmony with our living planet – can conceive and achieve a noble purpose. Go to From Personal to Global Coherence.

About HeartMath Funding

The vision at the Institute of HeartMath remains what it was in the beginning: a sincere desire to help people, and we are committed to finding new and better methods of achieving that. We rely on the contributions of our members and supporters and the altruism and philanthropy of likeminded people and organizations everywhere to help foster heart-based living and global coherence by inspiring people to connect with their hearts’ intelligence and guidance. Your contributions will be used to support the important research of the Institute of HeartMath, including into stress and emotional management, heart intuition and intelligence, heart-brain interactions, epigenetics – the science of how genes are controlled by the environment and by our perception of the environment – and more. Your generosity also enables us to continue providing our programs to educate children and adults about the powerful effects of positive emotions on health, learning, performance and quality of life. Go to Make a Gift.