part0011

As I was waking up this morning and before I opened my eyes, these thoughts flooded into my consciousness: The world needs as much care and compassion as it can get. What if we could collectively put out enough pure radiant love into the earth’s energetic fields that it would create a multiplier effect or a quantum coherence effect? What will it really take to shift the consciousness of humanity? These thoughts stayed with me through my morning meditation as I radiated as much pure love, care and compassion to the planet and humanity as I could.

When Sir Roger Penrose attended a conference in 1998 at the HeartMath Institute on whether quantum processes were involved in brain function, I asked him, "What is quantum coherence?” He replied, “This is when large numbers of particles can collectively cooperate in a single quantum state." I wondered if this could apply on a macro scale of people as well. Later, I read in Mae-Wan Ho’s book The Rainbow and the Worm that quantum coherence is what defines any living system. She also wrote, "A quantum coherent state thus maximizes both global cohesion and also local freedom! Nature presents us with a deep riddle that compels us to accommodate seemingly polar opposites..." This riddle certainly describes the current state of our world. I pondered, “How does nature create global cohesion and also allow for free will?”

We learned in the last chapter that research findings have shown that as we practice heart coherence and radiate love and compassion, our heart generates a coherent electromagnetic wave into the local field environment that facilitates social coherence , whether in the home, workplace, classroom or sitting around a table. As more individuals radiate heart coherence, it builds an energetic field that makes it easier for others to connect with their heart. So, theoretically it is possible that enough people building individual and social coherence could actually contribute to an unfolding global coherence.

Science is beginning to acknowledge that we are all part of a vast web of connections that encompass not only life on this planet but the solar system and beyond. It is through this energetic connectivity that information, heart coherence and resonance are exchanged. Let’s look at how this energetic connectivity could potentially increase global coherence.

As said before, the term “coherence” implies order, structure, harmony—an alignment within and amongst systems—whether quantum particles, organisms, human beings, social groups, planets or galaxies. This harmonious order signifies a coherent system whose optimal functioning is directly related to the ease and flow in its processes.[1]

The inner state of heart coherence is what a lot of meditation techniques (often unknowingly) attempt to achieve. There are thousands of groups and organizations all around the world using various forms of meditation or prayer to energetically help make things easier for others. Many organizations conduct synchronized meditations, prayers, intention experiments and so forth to facilitate healing or to create a more harmonious world. Numerous studies have shown that group or collective meditation, prayer and focused intention directed toward a specific positive outcome can have increased beneficial and measurable effects .

For example, a study conducted in 1993 in Washington, D.C., showed a 25% drop in crime rate when 2,500 meditators meditated during specific periods of time with that intention, which means that a relatively small group of a few thousand was able to influence a much larger group—a million and a half.[2] The question was then posed that if crime rates could be decreased, could a group of meditators also influence social conflicts and wars? A similar experiment was done during the peak of the Israel–Lebanon war in the 1980s. Drs. Charles Alexander and John Davies at Harvard University organized groups of experienced meditators in Jerusalem, Yugoslavia, and the United States to meditate and focus attention on the area at various intervals over a 27-month period. After adjusting for variant influences, such as weather changes, Lebanese, Muslim, Christian and Jewish holidays, police activity, fluctuation in group sizes, etc., during the course of the study, the levels of violence in Lebanon decreased between 40% and 80% each time a meditating group was in place, with the largest reductions occurring when the numbers of meditators were largest. During these periods, the average number of people killed during the war per day dropped from 12 to three, a decrease of more than 70%. War-related injuries fell by 68% and the intensity level of conflict decreased by 48%.[3, 4] Quantum physicist John Hagelin concluded from this research on the “Power of the Collective” that “since meditation provides an effective, scientifically proven way to dissolve individual stress and if society is composed of individuals, then it seems like common sense to use meditation to similarly diffuse societal stress.” [5]

Every individual’s energy affects the collective field environment. This means each person’s emotions and intentions generate an energy that affects the field. A first step in diffusing societal stress in the global field is for each of us to take personal responsibility for our own energies. We can do this by increasing our personal coherence and raising our vibratory rate, which helps us become more conscious of the thoughts, feelings and attitudes that we are “feeding the field” each day. We have a choice in every moment to “take to heart” the significance of intentionally managing our energies. This is the free will or local freedom that can create global cohesion.

Each of us is also responsible for allowing thoughts and feelings of frustration, worry or blame to run unmanaged in our system. These attitudes and emotions keep our inner rhythms incoherent and out of sync, which has a depleting carryover effect on our hormonal, immune and nervous systems. Heart coherence practices and technology can assist us in resetting our emotional energy and shifting into a balanced inner rhythm. They help us increase our vibratory rate and coherence baseline, so our spirit, heart, brain and nervous system operate in sync and with increased efficiency. This coherence carryover effect enables us to be more conscious and intuitive at choice points—to move in a state of ease and choose our actions and reactions rather than mechanically responding in the same old stress-producing patterns.

Through raising our vibratory rate, we become conscious that our energetic heart is coupled to a deeper part of our self. Many call this their “higher power” or their “higher capacities,” and links us to a non-local field of information and energy that physicist David Bohm called the implicate order and undivided wholeness.[6] When we are in heart coherence, we have a tighter alignment with the heart intelligence that connects us to that source .

In 2008 the HeartMath Institute launched the Global Coherence Initiative (GCI). GCI is an international cooperative effort to help activate the heart of humanity and facilitate a shift in global consciousness. I am honored to be a member of the Global Coherence Initiative Steering Committee and to contribute to this vision. GCI has three primary focuses. The first is to invite people to participate by actively adding more heart coherent love, care and compassion into the planetary field. The second is scientific research on how we are energetically interconnected with each other and the earth; and the third is to educate people on how we can utilize this interconnectivity to more quickly raise our personal and collective vibratory rate to create a better world.

Here are a few hypotheses that guide GCI’s ongoing research, in collaboration with other institutions:

Scientists know a lot about these energetic fields, yet many mysteries remain. One thing that is clear is that solar activity and the rhythms taking place in the earth’s magnetic fields have an impact on health and behavior.[7] A large body of research has shown that numerous physiological rhythms and global collective behaviors are not only synchronized with solar and geomagnetic activity, but that disruptions in these fields can create adverse effects on human health and behaviors. [8-10] When the earth’s magnetic field environment is disturbed, it can cause sleep problems, mental confusion, unusual lack of energy or a feeling of being on edge or overwhelmed for no apparent reason. Sound familiar? At other times, when the earth’s fields are stable and certain measures of solar activity are increased, people report increased positive feelings and more creativity and inspiration.[11] This is likely due to a coupling between the human brain, cardiovascular and nervous systems with resonating geomagnetic frequencies.

The earth and ionosphere generate a symphony of frequencies ranging from 0.01 hertz to 300 hertz. Some of these are in the exact same frequency range as those occurring in our cardiovascular system, brain and autonomic nervous system[7] . This helps explain how fluctuations in the earth’s and sun’s magnetic fields can affect us. Changes in the earth’s fields have been shown to affect our brain waves and heart rhythms, and have been associated with changes in memory and other tasks; athletic performance; number of reported traffic violations and accidents; mortality from heart attacks and strokes; and incidence of depression and suicide.[7] Changes in the earth’s fields from high solar activity have also been linked to some of humanity’s greatest flourishing of creativity and art.[12] This implies the increased solar activity is not necessarily problematic; but rather it’s how we respond to and manage this increased energy.

GCI scientists suggest that because we have brain wave and heart rhythm frequencies overlapping the earth’s field resonances, we are not only receivers of biologically relevant information, but we also feed information into the global field environment and essentially create a feedback loop with the earth’s magnetic fields .[11, 13] In fact, research is indicating that human emotions and consciousness encode information into the geomagnetic field and this encoded information is distributed globally. The earth’s magnetic fields act as carrier waves for this information which influences all living systems and the collective consciousness. To further test this hypothesis and research, GCI has created a Global Coherence Monitoring System (GCMS).

The GCMS is a worldwide network of ultra-sensitive magnetometers, designed to continuously measure magnetic signals that occur in the same range as human physiological frequencies, including our brain and heart rhythms. It is the first global network of GPS time-synchronized geomagnetic field detectors that track and measure resonances and fluctuations in the fields caused by solar storms, changes in solar wind speed, other magnetic field disruptions and, potentially, major global events that have a strong emotional component. As of this writing, there are six sensor sites located in Northern New Zealand; Boulder Creek, California; Hofuf, Saudi Arabia; Alberta, Canada; Baisogala, Lithuania; and Bonamanzi Game Park, South Africa. The GCMS will eventually expand to approximately 12 sensor sites. Each site collects continuous data that enables us to research how the fields affect human mental and emotional processes, health outcomes, and collective behaviors. GCMS technology will also enable the research teams to explore how collective human emotional states, meditations and intentions may be reflected in the earth’s fields. In addition, we hope to investigate if changes in the earth’s magnetic fields occur before natural catastrophes, like earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, or human events that have a strong global emotional impact, such as a social crisis or terrorist attack.

Although scientists have previously looked at some of the possible interactions between the earth’s fields and human, animal and plant activity, data coming from GCI research studies and the GCMS are showing that we may be more deeply interconnected with the earth’s fields than previously seen. The figure below shows an example of Earth’s field line resonances, recorded at the GCMS site in Boulder Creek, California.

Figure 1 - The frequencies of these particular field line resonances are in the same range as many of the rhythms found in human and animal cardiovascular and autonomic nervous-system functions. In this Boulder Creek GCMS site graph, there is a clear frequency at 0.1 hertz (the same frequency as the heart rhythm in a heart coherent state). Most mathematical models show that the resonance frequency of the human cardiovascular system is determined by feedback loops between the heart and brain. In humans and in many animals, the resonance frequency of the system is approximately 0.1 Hz.

If the GCI hypothesis that Earth’s magnetic fields are a carrier of information that connects all living systems proves true, it will help people understand how individually and collectively we are affecting a global information field. That our attitudes, emotions and intentions matter and can affect all life on Earth and that coherent, cooperative intent could impact global events and improve the quality of life on Earth. It suggests that when large numbers of people respond to a global event with common emotional feeling, their collective response can have an effect on the quality of information distributed in the earth’s field. In cases where the event evokes a negative or fearful emotional response, this can be thought of as a planetary stress wave (of information), and in cases where a positive emotional response is evoked, it could create a planetary coherence wave. One of GCI’s goals is to research whether large numbers of people generating heart coherent states of love, care, appreciation and compassion can build a coherent field environment and a mutually beneficial feedback loop between people and the earth itself, creating global coherence .

One of our interconnectivity studies involved 1,600 Global Coherence Initiative members from countries around the world. The main goal of the study was to see if there were correlations that would indicate an interconnectedness study with groups of participants located near four sites around the globe where we have Global Coherence Monitoring System sensors. Six scales were used: Positive Affect/Positive Feelings, Well-Being, Anxiety, Confusion, Fatigue and Physical Symptoms. The study found that as solar wind speed and polar cap activity increased, Positive Affect/Positive Feelings and Well-Being decreased and Anxiety, Confusion and Fatigue increased.[11] Additional studies involved groups of participants wearing heart rate variability (HRV) recorders over long time periods to determine how solar and Earth magnetic fields affect autonomic nervous system functioning. One surprise was that certain solar radio changes and lower magnetic field disturbances evoked a positive nervous system response. Mental clarity increased and people felt better. An even more surprising finding from the data was an indication that human beings apparently are synchronizing at a deep level to an external signal in Earth’s magnetic field environment.

The results of these studies should be published in 2016. We have recently completed the next phase of this research, which was to conduct an interconnectedness study multiple sites with groups of participants located near four locations around the globe where we have Global Coherence Monitoring System sensor sites: Saudi Arabia, Lithuania, New Zealand and California. Participants near each location were coordinated to record their HRV over the same time period. Analyzing the data will allow us to determine if the synchronization between participants and Earth is occurring both locally and globally.

Tens of thousands of people from over 150 countries have become GCI ambassadors to help co-create a better world through sending collective love and compassion into the global field environment. GCI ambassadors can join together in a Global Care Room on the GCI website (www.heartmath.org/gci) as they send heart-focused energy to the planet to help raise the vibratory rate or send care and compassion to high stress areas to help lessen the suffering of people, especially during times of crisis. Due to the increased disruptions, stress and pain that many people are experiencing throughout the world, sending compassion is one of the highest forms of love we can give to help people restore and rebalance their system.

The Global Care Room has several interesting features. When you log in to the Care Room, you see a beautiful globe of planet Earth. You see a green marker on the globe where your Internet provider is located and gold markers of all the other people around the world who are participating in the Care Room at that time. It’s a refreshing experience to see gold light points representing people across the world who are coming together to connect in the heart at the same time. It is inspirational to know that a gold marker can represent a person, family or a large group of people who are doing a “Care Focus” together. Seeing this image—our Earth and people from all around the world there with you/me at the same moment—offers a powerful feeling of heart connection.

In the Global Care Room you can also leave a comment and read comments from others. Seeing someone from Malta sharing something similar to a person from Singapore or Saudi Arabia, who in turn are making inspirational comments that resonate with a person in Australia, shows that people all over the world care about creating a heart-coherent energetic field on Earth. It helps confirm the global nature of a planetary shift in action. Anyone can participate in the Global Care Room as a Guest or as a GCI Ambassador and everyone’s heart energy counts.

GCI Ambassadors also commit to practicing heart coherence techniques and radiating compassion and care out to the planet. Because of increasing time pressures these days, GCI does not require specific time commitments. GCI Ambassadors determine how much time and energy and when they can contribute to a Care Focus or to radiate compassion to the planet. Using emWave or Inner Balance heart coherence feedback technology is not at all required, but is recommended for two reasons: It helps you track and increase your personal coherence baseline, which raises the community’s collective coherence; and it enables you to participate in GCI research studies that require objective measures of the participants’ coherence levels.

How long should you do the Heart Coherence Technique? You decide. Most people practice this technique at least five minutes a day to build personal coherence. The amount of time often increases for people when they begin to understand and experience the carryover effect and the benefits of coherence for themselves and others. Depending on your schedule, you likely will spend more time some days than others.

As we increase our personal coherence we become more sensitive to our heart’s signals. When we act more often on what our heart intelligence is saying, our heart’s signals get stronger and clearer. In Chapter 2 we mentioned the seminal work of John and Beatrice Lacey on heart-brain interactions. Joseph Chilton Pearce quotes the Lacey’s in his book Evolution’s End [14] (p. 103): “Our brain sends a running report of our environmental situation to the heart, and the heart exhorts the brain to make a proper response.” GCI’s theory is that increased individual coherence leads to increased social coherence , which in turn leads to increased global coherence in an iterative process .

As the iterative process spirals up, it generates a higher vibrational consciousness field that couples with the earth’s information fields to accelerate individual, social and global coherence and resonance. If this theory proves true, it will support co-creative alliances and empower us as a species to serve as caretakers for our planet and generations to come. In time, global coherence will be reflected in leaders and countries adopting a more coherent global view. At this scale, and from this level of consciousness, social and economic oppression, warfare, cultural intolerance, crime and disregard for the environment can be addressed meaningfully and successfully. As the often repeated quote of Albert Einstein says, “No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.” Now more than ever, people are experiencing the desire to raise the vibration of their consciousness and they conveniently have all of the directions within them .

At HeartMath we use the phrase heart-based living as a “street” term for coherent living. The term heart-based is randomly used by many people as a generic reference to “leading with the heart” or something

similar. We didn’t coin the term but we like it because it’s easy to say and it casually projects its meaning. HeartMath is only one of many systems and practices that promote heart-based living. There are numerous taglines and expressions which refer to living from the heart; but regardless of what label we put on it, practicing it can make a life changing difference. Most of us sense that profound societal changes will continue to take place as our world becomes increasingly interconnected and interdependent. Increasing our heart coherence can support a new world with more collaboration, along with more authentic love, care and compassion .