heart led Humaning

Nicky Rowbotham

We don’t need any more fear, scarcity or division in society. Turning on the news recently shows how prevalent that already is and we don’t need to perpetuate it. We need more heart-led humaning where empathy, compassion and love become more commonplace. But leading our lives from our hearts is not what we are used to. In a society that values using our heads through the intellectual and logical processes of deductive reasoning embedded through traditional school systems, we tend to grasp new concepts intellectually and logically first. We value Intellectual Quotient (IQ) in our reasoning ability and Emotional Quotient (EQ) in how we manage our emotions, thinking that this creates balance. In my opinion this is still a wobbly stool, unstable on two legs. We need to bring in Soul Quotient (SQ) from a heart space, as the third leg to the stool to create a truly stable foundation for ourselves in life. Our inner authority, unconditional love, trusting ourselves and intuition are key components of our SQ and it comes from our bodies and our hearts, rather than our minds. The true intention behind our actions also emanates from our SQ. This is not a stated, logical intention that we rationalise under the guise of social acceptability, rather an energetic one that people pick up on whether conscious or not.  We sense this in the drivers bobbing and weaving frantically behind us in traffic or attuning to a person’s mood when they enter the room. And this kind of intent can’t be faked nor explained away with a well-constructed argument.  Our energy never lies.

If we just rely on intellect or emotions, our minds are prone to conditioning as we have been bought up to value rational thought, logic and accepted norms; and our emotions can be prone to habitual patterning, trauma responses and societal expectations. Developing our SQ allows us to integrate and balance our growth and understand where ego and conditioning have played a role in our lives as we step into a more authentic and aligned path for ourselves. One that is more heart-led where we can hold empathy and compassion for ourselves and others. When we create an internal alignment for ourselves that is anchored from our heart to balance logic and emotion, we are less buffeted by whatever else is going on in the world and the external projections of others. When we are externally anchored in titles, comparison, other’s opinions or societal conditioning, our energy can be easily scattered and thrown into scarcity and fear as these are all changeable constructs. When we lead from our minds, the need to control and create predictable outcomes steps in. We’re susceptible to our egos and conditioning, which can move us into less coherent emotions like anxiety. This often leads to frustration as we try to force outcomes to meet our own expectations on our own timelines. Very little is within our control, although we have been taught traditionally that we can ‘make things happen’, but this is often at the expense of our energy and health as we force our way through life.

The Heart Math Institute in the United States has found that the heart’s electrical field is 60 times greater in amplitude than that of the brain. The heart’s electrical activity is also found to be greater with the heart sending more information to the brain, than the brain transmits to the heart. This electrical field is a toroidal field that can create coherence for us through a unified energy between body, mind and soul. This is how we sense each other’s energy, whether conscious or not and how we feel resonant with or repulsed by another’s energy. When we are in a balanced emotion like love, joy, peace, gratitude or compassion, these are coherent harmonious emotions, and then there is a consistency and regularity to our energy.

Dr Rollin McCrathy, the Heart Math Institute Research Director, defined coherence as the state when the heart, mind and emotion are in energetic alignment and cooperation. It’s a state that builds resilience, and we are better able to cope with any challenges in life. When we engage with judgement, comparison, fear or hate often driven by ego, trauma and conditioning, our own field becomes incoherent and irregular creating interference or static in our heart-rhythm patterns where our parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous systems are out of sync and not in flow. That can produce irrational heart rhythms and an incoherent state in our heart’s toroidal field, which impacts us and others we come in contact with. This generally creates more incoherence and resistance as we move further from our essence and step deeper into ego. We need to bring our hearts back into the equation and become aware of our energy and move back into more coherence and harmony in our body, mind and soul. This allows us to stay in a state of positive equilibrium despite what is going on for us and around us. We can then come from a more balanced, heart-led intention and respond with more empathy, compassion and love in the turbulent times we find ourselves in. And wouldn’t the world be a better place with more heart-led humaning?