You may have heart before statements like, “Love heals.” Or, “listen to your heart.”  Science is now proving all these classic proverbs to be true!

Today’s feng shui is all about love as a force of wellness and thriving.

“We are coming to understand health not as the absence of disease, but rather as the process by which individuals maintain their sense of coherence (i.e.) a sense that life is comprehensible, manageable and meaningful) and ability to function in the face of changes in themselves and their relationship with their environment.” ~ The Heartmath Organization

This is one huge statement: the idea of being “healthy” is being reimagined as connection to life and one’s environment, adaptability and harmony.  And the studies being done on the role of the energy of the heart (which truly is a super-powerful magnetic energy of love) in that health is tremendously inspiring.

The Institute of HeartMath is a non-profit research based organization that studies emotional physiology, neurocardiology and biophysics. The institute aims to advance the knowledge of the heart-brain interaction, heart-rate variability and heart-rhythm coherence.

The overall goal of the Institute is to connect the heart and mind to, …”empower people to greatly reduce stress, build resilience, and unlock their natural intuitive guide to make better choices.”

The HeartMath Institute has studied heart-brain communication and how this can influence our perceptions, emotions, intuition, and over-all health.

Here’s much more on Resilience, Stress and Emotions:
“As far back as the middle of the last century, it was recognized that the heart, overtaxed by constant emotional influences or excessive physical effort and thus deprived of its appropriate rest, suffers disorders of function and becomes vulnerable to disease.” – Hilton, J., On the Influence of Mechanical and Physiological Rest. 1863, London: Bell and Daldy.

When responding to stressful stimuli in any given environment, our bodies can experience emotional stress and this can come about through handling challenging changes, and internal feelings of worry, doubt and the resulting anxiety that rears it’s head as a product of this stress. When I was extremely sick and just begining to recover from an autoimmune episode that felt unending, my acupuncturist, Dr. Wing, impressed upon me twice a week the need to be free of emotional stress.  He told me over and over again that if I continued to suffer from the emotional stresses my body’s energy systems would have a hard time recovering.  It was like two steps forward and two backward every time another wave of stress would hit.

The HeartMath Institute, through its research, has found that the thoughts alone of challenging times do not provoke physiological changes in reaction to the stress one is undergoing, as much as the emotions attached to the memory of such stress.

In essence, the thoughts of the experiences alone are not the major culprit in the cause of physiological responses to stress. Rather, it’s the remembrance of the emotions attached to the experience that set-off a physiological reaction. 

According to WebMD (*and every great doctor I know!) :

• 75% to 90% of all doctors visits are for stress related ailments and complaints.
• Stress can play a part in problems such as headaches, high blood pressure, heart problems, diabetes, skin conditions, asthma, arthritis, depression, and anxiety.
• The lifetime prevalence of an emotional disorder is more than 50%, often due to chronic, untreated stress reactions.

The effects of intense and continuous painful emotions on our heart is profound.  In a study entitled, “Anxiety and Risk of Incident Coronary Heart Disease: A Meta-Analysis” designed to assess the correlation between anxiety, depression, negative emotions and stress on heart disease, 20 studies of 249, 846 people yielded the results that anxiety is an independent risk factor (which means it is a variable that has a statistically significant impact on the outcome being tested) on the development of coronary heart disease in people.

That said, all emotions are great.  We just can’t live in the heaviness as a lifestyle and still thrive.

Our emotions are what give us our unique character and drive. They give us indicators of what we like and dislike, what we feel is right and what we feel is wrong, and are therefore completely integral to not only our individuality, but to our survival.

Resilience is our flexibility.  In feng shui, it is the wood element.  It is the ability to overcome adversity, trauma, problems with relationships and financial troubles. It’s the ability to cope with stressors in your environment and “bounce back”. According to the American Psychiatric Association, “Resilience is not a trait that people either have or do not have. It involves behaviors, thoughts and actions that can be learned and developed in anyone.”

Emotional self-regulation and resilience are closely intertwined. Since emotions steer the direction of our emotional responses and our ability to bounce back, it’s important to be resilient and self-regulate those responses before they become a physiological danger to our health.

In other words- we need to stay awake to when emotions are intensifying and move into more calming modes to discharge the stress.  That’s where LOVE comes in!

The HeartMath Institute has discovered 4 domains of importance in order to have resilience and emotional self-regulation. They are:

Physical – our physical flexibility, endurance and strength

Mental – our mental flexibility, attention span, ability to focus and capability to understand multiple points of view

Emotional – our emotional flexibility, optimism for the future, and our ability to self-regulate our emotions

Spiritual – our spiritual flexibility, steadfast commitment to values and understanding of other people’s beliefs

The HeartMath Institute explains: “By learning self-regulation techniques that allow us to shift our physiology into a more coherent state, the increased physiological efficiency and alignment of the mental and emotional systems accumulates resilience (energy) across all four energetic domains. Having a high level of resilience is important not only for bouncing back from challenging situations, but also for preventing unnecessary stress reactions (frustration, impatience, anxiety), which often lead to further energy and time waste and deplete our physical and psychological resources.”

When we learn to meditate or breathe through stress, to exercise and contact nature in times of turmoil, to rest and refocus, to lay on the self-love in the midst of challenge… this is where major change happens.

It’s where you have a tool-kit for life. 

It’s where you can keep taking the vital risks in order to grow, even after disappointments. 

It’s how we stay calmer, more flexible and more mindful. 

And your home plays a huge part in all that “coherence.”  Your home can radiate love, safety, grounding open-hearted bliss… It can be a center of rejuvenation, self-care and nature.

Home is, after all, where the heart is!

And, in this season of open-hearted bliss-making, your home is getting loaded with joy, radiance and LOVE!

xoxo!!!

Dana

P.S.: The Love Camp is coming (!!!) to transform life with so much more love! It’s the ultimate in Feng Shui to multiply your manifesting magic.

The FREE 3-Video series kicks things off right HERE!!! It’s packed with Feng Shui to help you create even more openness, magnetism and more LOVE in awesome, tangible ways!

This hour of Feng Shui videos for love starts soon and it’s only up for 21 days a year…so if you’re ready for a lighter, brighter, more love-filled life, you won’t want to miss it! xoxo!!!