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The Heart's Pathway

Howard Martin, Executive Vice President of HeartMath LLC, is the developer of the Nightingale-Conant tape series, The HeartMath Method. He's also co-author of The HeartMath Solution. HeartMath LLC is a research institution studying the relationship between the heart and the brain.

The heart and brain communicate via physiological mechanisms to influence perception, emotion, and overall health. The heart has been discovered to be just as important a piece of intelligence as the brain is. In a nutshell, the brain tells you what to think, but the heart tells you how to think.

In conversation, your brain is the source of information. However, it's the heart that tells you what tone of voice to use during the situation, when to step back, and when to speak more aggressively. For many years, the thought that the heart was involved in thought dwelt only among the religious or philosophical world.

HeartMath LLC wants to change the way people look at the heart. Actually, it's the reason "math" is included in the company's name. This math isn't about numbers. It's the representation of understanding the heart as an organ that sends healing signals to the brain and body.

According to Howard Martin, the heart has four distinct ways of sending messages to the body. He believes the heart is part of the nervous system (traditionally thought to include mainly the brain and spinal column) because it is made up of complex nervous system cells. Researchers have found that the body's neural pathways carry more messages from the heart to the brain than from the brain to the heart.

In the second type of communication, blood pressure waves are sent through the body. These waves of blood through the arteries and veins are mediators of change in the electrical activity of the brain. This is a biophysical type of communication.

Third, hormones are involved in the communication process. Howard Martin believes that some of the body's hormones like cortisol and oxytocin are produced and circulated by the heart. Cortisol is the body's stress hormone. Oxytocin has been labeled the "love hormone" because it is more abundant during periods of emotional activities like sex or childbirth.

Finally, Howard Martin believes the heart is not only a biological organ, but also an electrical organ. It's why a heart doctor performs an EKG on patients - to measure electrical impulses. This electrical energy passes through the skin into space as a measureable electromagnetic field extending approximately three to four feet. In this way, people around us can actually feel what type of mood we're having at the moment they're near us, whether positive or negative.

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Do you know how a person's heart and brain form a team? Howard Martin will show you how the heart transmits messages to the body. Go to Howard Martin to learn more about this fascinating subject! Get your own completely unique content version of this article.

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