Heart - Brain Coherence: the Life-Line of Wellness
a few backgrounds for measurement and entrainment with the Heart
Tuner
by Frank van den Bovenkamp, Heart Coherence team - 17-12-2006
www.heartcoherence.com/heartbraincoherence
The practical working area of Heart - Brain coherence lies inbetween the
purely physiological functions of heart and brain, and their "subjective"
effects of feeling resp. thinking plus the vital aspects. This is where
the heart and brain measurably influence one another, and which can be
optimized through entrainment with the help of spectrum- and further analysis
of the EKG resp. EEG.
Heart - Brain coherence can thus be an adequate help or addition for (psycho-) therapy and biofeedback by measuring the electrical harmonics in those physical organs most intimately related to our inner " I " - feeling in relation resp. to self and the world. (In this connection, the nerval density in the colon area, sometimes called the "belly-brain", is considered another centre but it not much in swing in our culture).
To bring the possibilities of Heart - Brain coherence in perspective,
it is helpfull to briefly review their resp. functions in their evolutionary
background.
The heart obviously combines the purely mechanical function of circulating
blood, with the emergent, subtle ("subjective") function of
"feeling", or more precisely "heart intelligence",
which is really a combination of vitality and empowerment on the one hand,
and awareness-focus and empathy on the other. This should not be confused
with the "heart-cakra" (anahatha cakra) of yogic tradition,
and neither with the esoteric heart (local "atman"). The heart
thus mediates between the mechanical and subtle functions (between "objective"
and "subjective") and this is closely related to the immune
system (your vital unison). The actual shape of the heart, as it coherently
evolved from a distributed system, still reflects its holistic origin
and is thought to function as a "vortex-thrower", hydro-dynamically
informing the blood, rather than being a plain blood pump. The heart's
electro-physiology essentially reflects the synchroneous pulsing of the
myocardium (neural muscle tissue) modulated by one central region called
the SA-node.
The primary function of the brain is to mediate between sensory-motoric information, and the various internal metabolisms and glandular secretions, rather than between sensory and motor information. This is mostly its function in primitive (e.g. insect, reptilian) species, with barely any emergent subjective feeling. Detached memory evolved later (mammal) allowing awareness of context and events, and with that came primary social behaviour and subjective feeling in the form of "group-mind". Yet later evolved intellect, that is, detached thinking, and the quality of attributing meaning and purpose to events, and that is typically human. So, we could say that thinking is closest to the brain's "subjective" function, creating a sense of time and space, individual body and senses and individual psychology. Brain-intelligence is a combination of action-perception (analytic, using various stages of memory) and the actually perceived, vital reward (synthesis, which is but the evolutionary result and reward of trial and error). Hence, we hear a sound, never a sound-wave. The higher evolved a species, the more the balance leans toward individuality and hence the use of memory in learning, evolving from on-board instincts, to trial-error, to social learning, and finally analytical learning. The brain's electro-physiology essentially reflects detectable amounts of neurons pulse-streaming, synchroneously frequency-modulated by the distributed neural network.
These brief mappings of the heart and brain may provide a practical working guide of heart-brain general interactions and especially coherence and its use in therapy and biofeedback.
Allthough from the viewpoint of physiology, the "subjective" effects of resp. vital force and feeling or thinking are purely emergent, they nevertheless play a crucial role in biology and verily in all life, as right from the onset, through coherent feeling and thinking alone life can emerge, survive and evolve. This is why, allthough they are no doubt physiological effects, they are said to form an "attractor" or pathway out of choas at the same time (allthough not directly for the very same part of physiology they emerged from). The latter we could think of as a subtle controlling or facilitating function. These various subjective effects fall in the category of life-force resp. self-awareness (together referred to as "consciousness"). The precise dynamics of how the flows of expressing life-force and self-awareness interact with the material world (i.e. physiology) is the unique formula for measuring and entraining wellness with the Heart Tuner, including Heart-Brain coherence. This same principle explained in terms of wave-dynamics is called Harmonic Inclusiveness and forms the basis of pattern recognition in EKG and EEG.
|
Heart + Brain in perspective
|
||||
| HEART: | BRAIN: | |||
| PHYSIOLOGICAL FUNCTION: circulating the blood |
PHYSIOLOGICAL FUNCTION: mediating senso-motoric with internal organic (metabolism, secretion, etc..) |
|||
| ELECTRO-PHYSIOLOGY: All neurons firing in unison, frequency-modulated from one central node (HRV) Raw data shows: actual peaks (pulses) Nominal pulse rate apprx. 0.5 to 2 Hz HRV bandwidth apprx. 0.5 Hz |
ELECTRO-PHYSIOLOGY: A detectable amount of pulse-streaming neurons, frequency-modulated in unison by distributed network Raw data shows: avaraged firing density (note: this is as if measuring the ekg with a low-pass filter, or ekg tacho measured as pulse-density) Nominal firing rate apprx. ? EEG spectrum bandwidth apprx. 40 Hz (note the EEG spectrum is like the tacho-spectrum of the heart, measured as pulse-density) |
|||
|
COHERENCE: Arithmetic component: Internal Cardiac Coherence, mathematically
octave controlled |
COHERENCE: Octave component: sensory discrimination, instinct, intellect, mental discrimination --> telepathy Golden Mean component: internal sensory reward, sense of context, sense of beauty, sense of meaning --> bliss |
|||
| SUBJECTIVE QUALITIES a) Self-awareness b) Vitality of self |
SUBJECTIVE QUALITIES a) Self-awareness in relation to world b) Vitality in relation to world |
|||
|
HEART-BRAIN COHERENCE: THE LIFE LINE OF WELLNESS
MEASURING HEART-BRAIN COHERENCE WITH THE HEART TUNER Method A - Based upon correlation of internal cardiac coherence (ICC) in the cepstrum display, with brain coherence in the EEG spectrum (energy-exchange). According to the above diagram, it should be expected that strong cepstrum peaks shall encourage Golden Mean ratio's in the EEG spectrum, whereas fractal HRV encourages Octave ratio's in the EEG spectrum. Note that for mathematical reasons octaves in the ECG spectrum could result in some degree of brain-cepstrum effect. Method B - Based upon harmonic inclusiveness
(matching frequencies). This is still very preliminary at this
point, however in its simplest form it could include the matching
of actual frequencies in heart and brain, as viewed in resp.
the EKG and EEG spectra. |
||||
© all rights reserved Heart Coherence team, 2006