HeartMath is designed to work with your heart rhythm, which is the change in your heart rate over time.  This is called Heart Rate Variability. As your heart rate changes, it can rise and fall in an orderly, efficient way, a coherent rhythm ,or it can change in a disorganized, unpredictable way, an incoherent rhythm.  

Heart rhythms respond to emotion. Difficult, depleting emotions like anger and frustration produce an incoherent heart rhythm and positive emotions like gratitude produce a coherent heart rhythm.   Both these rhythms are normal rhythms, and we all experience them at various times.

HeartMath practice is designed to produce a coherent heart rhythm, which brings balance to the nervous system and leads to greater mental clarity, creativity and resilience.

So how can we help our heart find a coherent rhythm?

Heart rhythms and breath rhythms are synchronized.  An easy, relaxed breathing rhythm produces an organized heart rhythm.  All body systems have rhythms, and the heart is the strongest rhythm in the body.  Since no cell in the body is more than four cells away from a blood vessel, every cell in the body feels the heart rhythm and responds to it. The fourth element of this breath, heart, body dynamic is the mind. Intentionally focusing on a positive emotion causes a cascade of neural and biochemical events that benefits the whole body.

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