chapter 6

Invisible Communication

The Unseen Effect of Emotions and Attitudes

When we talk about communicating with or relating to others, we usually think about doing this with words, body language, and tone of voice. In this chapter, however, we’re going to talk about some surprising “invisible” ways that people relate to and communicate with each other. This “invisible communication” may not be something that your textbooks talk about, but it’s very real and it happens all the time! You experience it yourself every day without even knowing it. Although it’s invisible, you can sure feel it. And as you might have guessed by now, your heart plays an important and fascinating role in this kind of communication. Let’s take a look now at this “invisible communication.”

Feelings in the Air

Have you ever walked into a room, and even though no one was saying anything, you could feel tension in the air? You couldn’t quite explain how you had the feeling, but you could sense that an argument or disagreement had just taken place. Something just felt “off.” There is even an expression that describes this sensation: “The tension was so thick that you could cut it with a knife.”

Or maybe you have felt tension, dread, or anxiety in your classroom on the day of a big test or when a pop quiz was announced. The air felt “heavy.” Perhaps when your mother got home from work, you could tell the moment she walked in the door that she had had a rotten day. It was just a feeling you had that let you know that it was not the best of days. Or maybe you’ve come home having had a rotten day, and even though you didn’t say anything, your family could just sense you’d had a bad day.

On the other hand, have you noticed there are some people who make you feel good just to be around them? Maybe you walk into one of your classes or sit down with some friends and you feel uplifted. Something just feels good. Or perhaps you have felt the “excitement in the air” around a special holiday, sporting event, or other fun event. So just what is it that’s happening that makes it possible for you to sense those types of things?

The Electricity of the Heart

To help understand this, we’re going to give you another short science lesson about your heart. It turns out your heart can play a big role in this invisible communication. We think you’ll find it pretty fascinating stuff.

Earlier we talked about how the different emotions you experience create different heart rhythm patterns—depleting emotions create an incoherent heart rhythm and renewing emotions create a more coherent heart rhythm. Now let’s look at another amazing fact about the heart.

Every time your heart beats, it actually produces electricity. There is a device called an electrocardiograph that doctors use in their offices to measure the electricity produced by a person’s heart. Doctors use an electrocardiograph to check for problems with the electrical activity of the heart. Typically, the way it works is that a nurse puts electrodes on a person’s chest to pick up the heart’s electrical signals so they can be measured. Doctors in some hospitals use a device called a superconducting quantum interference device to measure the heart’s magnetic field. How’s that for a mouthful! Good thing it’s commonly referred to as a SQUID. Looking at the heart’s magnetic field can help doctors find the source of a problem in someone’s heart.

Whenever electricity is produced, a magnetic field is also produced. A magnetic field is measured with a device called a magnetometer, and a SQUID is just a special type of magnetometer. Together, the electricity and the magnetic field are called an electromagnetic field. We’re going to call it a magnetic field to make it simpler. Don’t worry about the long words. What’s important is what we’re going to explain next.

What’s interesting about magnetic fields is that they go through things such as walls, doors, cars, school buses—they go through about everything! Magnetic fields not only go through things, but they also carry information. Because a magnetic field can go through things, that’s what makes it possible for cell phones, for example, to be able to work when you’re inside a building. It’s what makes it possible for a car radio to work. In the case of cell phones, the information the magnetic field carries is text and voice messages, and the photos you send from one cell phone to another. In the case of a radio in a car, it’s the magnetic field that carries or broadcasts the music playing at the radio station to your car’s radio.

So what do cell phones and your heart have in common? Now that’s an interesting question! If a magnetic field carries or broadcasts your cell phone information (that is, your voice and text messages), then what does the magnetic field radiating from your heart carry? Here’s a hint: It’s something we’ve been talking a whole lot about. You can think of the magnetic field produced by your heart as carrying or broadcasting your emotions.

Remember that we said that magnetic fields go through things? The magnetic field your heart produces goes through your body and even the clothes you’re wearing—no matter how many layers of sweaters, coats, and long underwear you have on. Your heart’s magnetic field can actually be measured three feet away from your body using a magnetometer. It’s believed that it goes much farther than three feet, but the equipment that scientists have now is not sensitive enough to measure it farther. (By the way, the magnetic field is not the same thing as an aura, which is perhaps a term you’ve heard some people use.)

The Heart’s Magnetic Field

Take a look at the diagram below. The diagram was made by a computer to show the shape of the heart’s magnetic field. The diagram is a good way to see that the magnetic field extends out beyond your body in all directions—front, back, sideways, and head to toe. What else do you notice about the magnetic fields? Take a close look. They overlap and cross over each other. Think for a moment what that might mean.

Your emotions and attitudes, all of them, are being carried or broadcast by your heart’s magnetic field out beyond your body and are mixing with other people’s magnetic fields. And their magnetic fields are bumping into yours! You can think of this as a type of energetic communication. It can help explain why being around someone who is anxious or angry, for example, doesn’t feel very good. In a very real sense, they are sending out that anxious or angry feeling by their magnetic field and you can feel it. If you are frustrated or bothered about something or have a lousy attitude, others can feel that, if they are sensitive or paying attention, because that’s what you’re sending out. So we are all affecting each other all the time with our emotions—whether or not we are aware of it. Of course, feelings of care, excitement, joy, enthusiasm, and calm, for instance, are also carried by your magnetic field. That can explain why it feels good to be around certain people; you can feel their renewing emotions.

Feeding the Field

From what you just learned, you can see that the emotions you experience throughout the day—the depleting ones and the renewing ones—don’t just stay inside you. They go out around you and can affect other people in the same way that other people’s emotions and attitudes affect you. It’s why you can feel “excitement in the air” or “tension so thick you can cut it with a knife.” The magnetic field produced by your heart radiates out around you and surrounds you, forming what could be called your very own “personal field environment.” Now let’s go a step further. You can think of your emotions, then, as what you are “feeding the field.” Remember, just like the diagram above shows, the magnetic field is all around you and can potentially be felt by other people.

In earlier chapters, you began taking an inventory of the emotions you experience each day, both those that drain your inner battery and that feel really lousy and those that revitalize you. Now that you know you are “feeding the field” with your emotions and that others can feel them whether or not they are aware of it, you might ask yourself, What am I feeding the field? In other words, Am I radiating or broadcasting depleting emotions that may drag others down, or am I radiating renewing emotions that might just give a friend a boost?

On the flip side, you can often sense when something feels off about your friends—they just don’t seem like themselves. They may look fine, say they’re fine, but maybe you detect they’re worried about something or are unusually self-absorbed. You may be right. So rather than automatically giving someone a hard time or taking it personally when you sense things are out of sync, take a moment to consider that there might be an emotion running beneath the radar. Getting into your heart can help you find patience and understanding.

Getting coherent, then, is important because you can change what you’re feeding the field. Getting coherent, in other words, helps you hold steady when others are upset or not quite themselves. It helps you to be flexible and stay balanced so you don’t get pulled into any drama. Responding with more drama to someone else’s drama doesn’t help you, the other person, or the situation.

By asking yourself what you are feeding the field, you are taking a big step in being responsible—not only for yourself, but also for how you impact others. That’s important self-awareness. Being self-responsible takes maturity. Being self-responsible helps your maturity grow. So make it fun by asking yourself throughout the day, What am I feeding the field right now?

Another way to think of it is that whatever feeling you are radiating outward, you are surrounding yourself in it, too. So, for example, not only do you feel anxious inside, but you’re also surrounded by that anxious feeling. And who wants to be surrounded by a feeling like that? Why not surround yourself with a field environment that’s filled with “good vibes”?

How We Can Affect Others

We’re going to describe an interesting experiment that tried to determine if people could affect others when they are coherent. In this experiment, forty people were divided into ten groups with four people in each group.

Three of the four people in each group were taught how to get coherent by practicing Quick Coherence (chapter 2). They practiced it for only a couple of weeks. Each group of four people sat around a table with each person hooked up to a device that measured their heart rhythms. The three people who were taught how to get coherent were instructed to practice the technique as they sat there. The fourth person did not know the others were doing anything other than just sitting around the table. What do you suppose happened to the fourth person when the other three got coherent? If you guessed that the fourth person became more coherent, you’re right. As the three people got more in sync, their heart rhythms shifted into a smooth and ordered pattern. What the researchers found really interesting was that the fourth person’s heart rhythms also became more coherent. The experiment showed that we can indeed affect others by our personal field environments and the emotions we experience.

Next is a fun experiment that includes two graphs showing how the heart rhythms change when one gets coherent and how it measurably affects another.

Josh and Mabel, His Dog

In this next experiment, you’ll see that it’s not just people that can be affected by other people’s emotions—animals can, too. Josh’s dad is a scientist at the HeartMath Institute Research Center. One day when Josh was twelve, his dad asked him to come to the research lab and told him to bring his dog, Mabel. His dad put a noninvasive heart rhythm monitor on both Josh and Mabel so that he could measure the activity happening in Josh and Mabel’s hearts. The following graph shows what happened. We’ll explain the experiment so you’ll understand what you see in the graphs.

Looking at the diagram, you’ll see that the top graph shows Mabel’s heart rhythms and the bottom graph shows Josh’s heart rhythms. At the top left, you’ll see the graph labeled “Josh and Mabel in separate rooms,” which is when the experiment started. Mabel was in the lab sniffing around while Josh was in another room. You can see that Mabel’s heart rhythm pattern is chaotic. Josh’s heart rhythms were also incoherent.

Josh’s dad then told Josh to go into the lab where Mabel was, sit down, and not touch or talk to Mabel. Josh then did a HeartMath technique called the Heart Lock-In, which we will teach you shortly. Basically, Josh sent love and appreciation to Mabel for several minutes. Notice what happened to Josh’s heart rhythms when he practiced the technique. His heart rhythms became smoother, or what you now know is called a coherent heart rhythm. Look at what happened to Mabel’s heart rhythms when Josh became coherent. Her heart rhythms became coherent, too! Their coherent heart rhythms are shown in the middle part of the two graphs. Remember, Josh was not touching her or talking to her. Finally, Josh was told to get up and leave the room, leaving Mabel by herself. You can see how both of their heart rhythms then became incoherent.

More studies have been done to show how one’s emotions can affect other people, but this was a fun way to show that we can affect others, even animals. When Josh did the Heart Lock-In technique, he activated the feeling of love and “sent” it to Mabel. What was really happening was that the feeling of love was being carried on his magnetic field. Mabel could feel it and she became coherent, too.

Ellen and Tonopah, Her Horse

Another simple study took place in a corral rather than in a lab. Professor Ellen Gehrke has a number of horses and was curious to see if her coherence could affect her horses in the same way Mabel became coherent when Josh got coherent.

One of the researchers went to Dr. Gehrke’s farm and hooked her up to a heart rhythm monitor. She also hooked up each of the horses to a monitor, one at a time. Ellen walked into the corral and sat down near one of the horses. She did not touch or speak to the horse. She did a Heart Lock-In, and just as Mabel became coherent as Josh got coherent, the horse became coherent, too. You can see in the above graph how the heart rhythms of each changed into a more coherent pattern. The researcher hooked up four of the horses to heart rhythm monitors and got the same results for all but one. The one that did not become coherent is well known for not liking humans.

After the study, Dr. Gehrke talked about horses: “Horses receive information from body language and give feedback. They don’t think very much, they feel. They are very emotional and honest. They also have a powerful impact on your sense of self and ability to lead.”

Heart Lock-In Technique

Now we want to introduce the Heart Lock-In technique to you. It’s a favorite of many people. For one, it feels good practicing it. And if you practice it regularly, you may begin to feel better more often and you may also become more resilient—from the inside out. It helps you add more coherence into your system so that the coherent state becomes more familiar and automatic.

The Heart Lock-In is a coherence-building technique because it requires you to activate or experience a renewing emotion, similar to the Quick Coherence technique (chapter 2), but for a longer period of time. It’s a powerful technique that you can use whenever you want to go deeper into your heart. Using this technique can be a refreshing break from all your busy head thoughts. With a little practice, it activates your heart coherence, helping you maintain more inner balance during your busy day. Also, with practice, the Heart Lock-In can release feelings of insecurity, anger, anxiety, and other depleting emotions. As you get more coherent, the old attitudes and emotional reactions release bit by bit.

“The Heart Lock-In is one of the best things to help me deal with my stress. I can leave behind all the school pressures and get calmer. It is kind of like taking a shower. I wash away all the dirt.”

First, we’ll introduce the three steps of the technique. Next, we’ll give you some helpful tips to get the most out of the Heart Lock-In. Then we will explain each step in more depth before you give it a try.

Technique: Heart Lock-In

Step 1: Focus your attention in the area of the heart. Imagine your breath is flowing in and out of your heart or chest area, breathing a little slower and deeper than usual.

Step 2: Activate and sustain a renewing feeling such as appreciation, care, or compassion.

Step 3: Radiate that renewing feeling to yourself and others.

Here are a few helpful tips to get the most out of the Heart Lock-In:

Step by Step: How to Do the Heart Lock-In Technique

Step 1: Focus your attention in the area of the heart. Imagine your breath is flowing in and out of your heart or chest area, breathing a little slower and deeper than usual.

You probably recognize this step as the Heart-Focused Breathing technique (chapter 1). Hopefully, you’ve been doing Heart-Focused Breathing a lot throughout your day. Remember, you can do it anytime, anywhere, and no one knows you’re doing it.

Step 2: Activate and sustain a renewing feeling such as appreciation, care, or compassion.

This step is similar to step 2 in the Quick Coherence technique (chapter 2). In both techniques, you activate a renewing feeling. In the Heart Lock-In technique, after you activate a renewing feeling, you sustain it. You might think of sustaining a renewing feeling as “locking into it” and “holding on to it”—“it” being the renewing feeling. Who wouldn’t want to lock in and hang out in a renewing feeling? When you first start practicing Heart Lock-In, generate the feeling of appreciation or care by choosing something that’s easy for you to appreciate or care about—such as a special friendship; your dog or cat; a warm coat for a cold, wintry day; a teacher who spent some extra time to help you sort out a problem; or the sun shining after days of rain.

Step 3: Radiate that renewing feeling to yourself and others.

Then in this step, you radiate or send out the renewing feeling. You don’t have to push it out or force anything to happen here. It’s enough to have the intent to radiate the renewing feeling. Having the intent is like giving yourself instructions and then just letting it happen. Some people have found it helpful to think of waves radiating out like the ripples that go out when you throw a stone in the water. Others think of the image of the sun radiating out warmth. In step 3, you’re “giving off” or “sending out” a renewing emotion in a similar way. Appreciation or care is a great feeling to feed the field!

Before you begin, decide what renewing feeling you would like to activate. When you get to steps 2 and 3, take your time. We want you to hang out in the feeling for at least two minutes to begin with, or three minutes if you can stretch yourself. Why? Because not only does it feel good to do so, but by staying coherent longer, you naturally build coherence into your body. When that happens, you might start to notice that things that once troubled you don’t bother you anymore—or at least not nearly as much. You might notice—or others might notice—that you are calmer, even when you’re not practicing a technique. The more coherence you build, the more naturally resilient you’ll be. One more thing: we suggest that you find a quiet place to practice the Heart Lock-In, and close your eyes as you do it.

You can do a Heart Lock-In for as long as you like, but do it now for about two or three minutes or longer. After you practice it, write down in your notebook what you observed or noticed as you did it. Maybe you’ll decide to do it again. Great! Do it often.

A Few More Helpful Hints

Now that you have done your first Heart Lock-In, let’s check in. Perhaps you noticed that your mind was really active at times and was wandering all over the place. This is normal, especially when you are first learning it, but it happens to more experienced people, too. For instance, during your first few times trying out Heart Lock-In, you may find yourself thinking about some fun future event or even worrying about an upcoming school project. When these thoughts come up, acknowledge them, refocus your attention on your heart, and breathe a little slower and deeper. Even though your focus will be challenged and you might drift in and out of practicing the technique, the fact that you are doing it at all is big.

Keep expanding the length of time you do the Heart Lock-In technique. See if you can go from a two- to three-minute lock-in to five minutes at the end of the week. And above all, be patient with yourself.

When to Do a Heart Lock-In

Practice the Heart Lock-In technique in a quiet place for three to fifteen minutes, one or more times a day, to build your power to sustain coherence. You might want to first do it for three to five minutes and gradually, as you get more familiar with it, do it for longer periods. You might find you want to do it for thirty minutes. Great! An effective time to practice a Heart Lock-In is at the beginning of your day. It’s a great way to kick off your day by activating a renewing feeling and soaking yourself in that good feeling. Radiate the renewing feeling to your entire day or to a friend. Or just simply radiate it out. You might also practice it during a midafternoon break in order to get coherent and add energy to your battery.

Another good time to the Heart Lock-In is before you go to bed or when you feel like crashing because you’re worn out. Many people find it helps them fall asleep faster or sleep deeper. Better sleep helps recharge your inner battery. With a fully charged inner battery, you have greater ability to handle any of life’s situations.

There are other times, too, that you might want to do a Heart Lock-In. Sometimes it can be helpful to radiate care to yourself when you’re in a tough situation, such as before a test or maybe when you’re sick. In fact, you could activate any of the replacement attitudes listed in chapter 4 and radiate those to yourself and to others. You could also radiate a renewing feeling to a friend who’s having a difficult time. When you get the hang of doing it, you’ll know just the right time to use the Heart Lock-In.



You can see now that how you feel inside—calm, patient, angry, bored, sad, or happy, for instance—not only affects you, but those emotions and attitudes also can affect other people. Others can sense your frustration, and they can feel your care and appreciation, too. Practicing the Heart Lock-In technique is a powerful way to generate more coherence in your system and charge your battery while also “feeding the field” around you with renewing emotions that can help uplift and support others.

In the next chapter, you’ll see that how you feel inside also affects how you communicate with others. Communication, as it turns out, is a major source of stress, and considering we’re communicating with each other every day, it’s well worth exploring. We’ll also talk about something you’re probably quite familiar with—drama—but we’ll look at it with a twist.

Your Stress-Bustin’, Resilience-Boostin’ On-the-Go Action Plan

  1. As always, continue to notice when you’re draining your inner battery. It’s not unusual for small energy drains to sneak up and before you know it, the situation or issue becomes a big energy drain. Catch them early! Use your notebook and write down energy drains.
  2. Throughout the day, ask yourself, Which quadrant of the Emotional Landscape am I in right now? In which quadrant would I like to be? What technique will I practice to help get me there? Have fun doing this. If you keep using the Landscape (chapter 3) and the techniques, we think you’ll find that you are spending more time on the right side of the Landscape. You may find it gets a little easier to make the inner shift to feeling balanced and calmer.
  3. Practice the Heart Lock-In technique at least once a day for the next week. Do it for at least three to five minutes each time. You might want to do it longer—maybe ten or fifteen minutes! Eventually, you might find you want to do it even longer. Write down in your notebook what you observe when you do it. You might also write down when you feel it would be most helpful for you to do it.