If you believe your heart is the center of intuition, love,
creativity, wisdom and gratitude, you may be on to something. While researching my soon-to-be-published novel, HEARTLESS,
I came across an article from Vijai P. Sharma, PhD. The article concerned
recent research that connects the human heart with emotions. When we hear
someone say, “do what your heart tells you,” or, “go with your gut,” there is
some scientific research that supports the heart is more connected to how we
act and conduct ourselves than we may have previously believed.
Researchers at the HeartMath Institute, I didn’t even know
such a place existed, claim that the heart plays a role in the functioning of
human intelligence, emotions and personality, according to Dr. Sharma’s paper. Imagine
if the heart were not just a muscle circulating the blood in our bodies and
actually played a greater roll in our mental well being than simply keeping us
alive physically. The article supports this concept and suggests that, not only
does our heart communicate with our brain affecting our emotions, but also our
gut communicates with our brain. To support their claim, the research points to
a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine that found memory,
attention and concentration declined after patients had bypass surgery and the
effects lasted for five years after.
So if you already knew this in your heart, you may be better
tuned in than many of us. The next time you read in a novel about a detective
who, “acts on gut instinct,” or a mother who tells her distraught daughter, “listen
to your heart,” it may not be the author’s creative license at work, but a
greater universal axiom. What does your heart tell you?
