Emotional Energetics, Intuition, and Epigenetics Research

An important aspect of the HeartMath Research Center’s current and future research focus is furthering the scientific understanding of emotional energetics, intuition, and epigenetics. One of the goals of this research is to advance the basic scientific understanding of the energetic interactions that occur within individuals (the mind and emotions have important energetic aspects), between individuals, and between people and their environment. Another goal is the development of a wide range of practical clinical and educational products and technologies that will benefit people in many areas of their day-to-day lives.

Emotional Energetics

Energetic Interactions Within People

Energetic interactions are abundant and play a fundamental role in the functioning of the human system. For example, most neuroscientists maintain that the brain’s ability to synchronize its electrical activity forms the very basis of cognition. There are clear indications that energetic or electromagnetic interactions play an important role in the brain and nervous system’s ability to communicate information and in the brain’s ability to synchronize its electrical activity. A number of highly respected scientists suggest that the interactions of electromagnetic fields within the brain’s neural architecture are critical to the emergence of conscious awareness and cognitive and emotional experience. In essence, at their most fundamental levels, the mind and emotions may prove to be "energetic systems" that we are only beginning to understand.

The current scientific conception is that all biological communication occurs at a chemical/molecular level through the action of neurochemicals fitting into specialized receptor sites, much like keys open certain locks. However, in the final analysis, the message is actually transmitted to the interior of the cell by a weak electrical signal. This signal, in turn, can act to either stimulate or suppress enzyme systems. It is now evident that the cell membrane is more than a protective barrier; it also serves as a powerful signal amplifier.

From these and related findings, a new paradigm of energetic communication occurring within the body at the atomic and quantum levels has emerged--one which is compatible with numerous observed phenomena that could not be adequately explained within the framework of the older chemical/molecular model. For instance, our responses to stress have been exquisitely honed over millennia of evolution. "Fight or flight" reactions to life-threatening situations include shunting of blood away from the gut to the large muscles of the extremities to provide greater strength in combat or speed of locomotion away from a site of potential peril, increased blood flow to the brain to improve decision making, dilatation of the pupils to provide better vision, quicker clotting of the blood to reduce loss from lacerations or internal hemorrhage, and a host of other reactions that occur automatically and instantaneously. These responses are too immediate and manifold to be consistent with the key-lock model of communication and thermodynamic laws involving caloric exchange. However, they are comprehensible within the framework of quantum physics and an internal and external electromagnetic or energetic signaling system, which may also explain such well-acknowledged but poorly-understood phenomena as the placebo effect, spontaneous remission in cancer, the health rewards of a strong faith, prayer, homeopathy, and the energetic communication links between cells, people, and the environment.

As we gain new understanding of these fundamental aspects of human function, it will undoubtedly lead to the generation of more effective strategies for improving health, performance, and happiness. We have already found that several of the brain’s electrical rhythms, such as the alpha and beta rhythm, are naturally synchronized to the rhythm of the heart and that this heart--brain synchronization significantly increases when an individual is in a physiologically coherent mode. This synchronization is likely to be mediated at least in part by electromagnetic field interactions. This is important as synchronization between the heart and brain is likely involved in the processes that give rise to intuition, creativity, and optimal performance.

Energetic Interactions Between People

Human energetics research conducted at the HeartMath Research Center demonstrates that the electromagnetic fields generated by the heart, which extend a number of feet external to the body, contain information that is modulated by one’s emotional state. Further, this research reveals that an individual’s cardiac field can be detected by other people in proximity. This is among the first scientific research to show that energetic interactions between people can be measured and that these interactions can produce physiological effects. (For an in-depth discussion, see the research monograph The Energetic Heart: Bioelectromagnetic Interactions Within and Between People.)

Energetic Interactions Between People and the Environment

Researcher Cleve Backster has pioneered studies showing that humans are interconnected with other living organisms in significant and surprising ways. For example, Backster was the first to demonstrate that plants and other living organisms respond to changes in human emotions. Backster’s work has also demonstrated intercommunication among plants, humans, and other creatures, as well as long-distance cellular communication. These exchanges are increasingly acknowledged as reflecting a form of instantaneous (nonlocal) communication among sentient beings via some unknown type of biofield that appears to connect all living species. Backster continues to pursue his research at the Backster Research Foundation in San Diego, California, where he has accumulated additional evidence of communication among human cells. He has been on the Institute’s Scientific Advisory Board since 1992.

We have successfully replicated many of Backster’s findings in our laboratory and have developed a prototype device for home use that will allow people to see for themselves how plants and other biological systems respond to their emotional energies. It is our hope that devices such as these will facilitate increased awareness of how we interact with and significantly affect our environment.

Intuition

An intriguing line of energetics research currently underway at IHM is the study of intuition. We have found compelling electrophysiological evidence that shows, under controlled experimental conditions, that both the brain and the heart process information about the emotionality of a stimulus before this stimulus is presented to research participants. (See the paper Electrophysiological Evidence of Intuition: The Surprising Role of the Heart.)

Assuming these physiological effects continue to be replicated, this is strong evidence for the proposition that intuitive processes involve the body accessing a field of information that is not limited by the constraints of space and time; that it accesses a field of potential energy that exists as a domain apart from space-time reality into which information is spectrally enfolded on "future" events. Through scientific research such as this, we can build an understanding of how and under what conditions intuition occurs, and thus also learn how to harness and develop its power.

Epigenetics Research

Our overarching hypothesis is that the range of phenomena described briefly above involves a common mechanism that operates via quantum-level "energetic" interactions and connectivity. The HeartMath model therefore proposes that coherent energy structures exist in the quantum vacuum, and these structures are organized according to principles of quantum holography and form "holographic blueprints" that serve to maintain and evolve the organization of biological and physical structures. These structures project an epigenetic information field that guides cell organization and sets the boundaries for an organism’s ability to vary in its physical, mental, and emotional domains. The term epigenetics, as used here, refers to the science that studies how the development, functioning, and evolution of biological systems are influenced by forces operating outside the primary DNA sequence of the genome (i.e., intracellular, environmental, and energetic influences).

In living systems, information appears to be encoded in the language of pattern. Patterns occur at all levels of scale within an organism. Highly specific spatial patterns characterize the most fundamental structures that comprise a living system. An obvious example of a spatial pattern capable of encoding vital information in biological systems is the "genetic code." The maximum information contained within DNA can be determined since it is based on an alphabet of four letters--two bits per symbol. By knowing the amount of DNA in a particular organism, the maximum amount of information it contains can then be estimated. The obvious question then becomes: Is this enough information to specify the structure of the mature organism? It is difficult to determine how much information is represented by the three-dimensional structure of the organism; however, one model of the brain as a wiring board shows that there is not enough information in DNA to construct even the vertebrate brain, let alone the rest of the animal. If this is correct, it implies that a higher-order control system must exist whereby epigenetic information interacts with the DNA to inform the complete genetic information.

In essence, the HeartMath model holds that human beings consist of both physical and nonmaterial bodies. We each have an individual spirit, which is nonphysical in the classical sense, yet has a very real, dynamic and evolving structure organized along quantum-holographic principles. These structures act as individual "holographic blueprints" that serve to maintain and evolve the pattern of physical structures. Thus, the quantum-holographic-level structures or "spirit" provide the missing information--the epigenetic information.

It is our view that at a high level in the hierarchy, this flow of information gives rise to what we experience as intuition, and each individual has the capacity to tune his/her receiving structures to increase the signal quality and flow of informational content. By refining the tuning of the energetic and physical systems, the coupling to the spirit level can be increased, resulting in greater signal strength and thus more clarity and accurate interpretation of the information and its meaning. Our observations and experience have led us to propose that when one is in a physiologically coherent mode (see the research monograph The Appreciative Heart: The Psychophysiology of Positive Emotions and Optimal Functioning), one experiences increased connectivity with one’s spirit, and thus more intuitive intelligence can be brought into day-to-day decisions and actions.

For additional information, see: Emotional Energetics, Intuition, and Epigenetics Research Publications.