Danielle Benvenuto – “Listen to your heart.” How many times have you heard this phrase in the course of your lifetime?
In mine, I have encountered it countless times. It’s advice I have been given, it’s a message I like to share, and despite its timelessness, is a phrase that I find often gets ignored. So why, since the beginning of time, have we been given this instruction? And why do we so easily file these four words of wisdom away as something to eventually consider instead of something to do, or at very least, be actively open and about?
Over the course of my life, having had many experiences filing away this advice along with the stirrings of my heart, I have discovered that when it comes to the heart, what gets ignored always reappears in ways that are really not the most comfortable. For me it has reappeared in the form of depression, the only way my heart was able to get me to see I was following the wrong career path; as burnout-the only way my heart was able to wake me up to the fact that I wasn’t taking good enough care of myself; as a physical illness, with no apparent medical diagnosis, which taught me about a trauma I was neglecting to work through and belief systems that were no longer serving me.
Our hearts wake us up in some ways that we prefer not to experience but if we work on listening to it, instead of waiting to be woken up through some uncomfortable experience then well, we can save a lot of time and pain. Here’s the science behind our heart’s intelligence for the rational part of our brain that is afraid to trust the unknown and a few guidelines to begin practicing, because, like any muscle that you want to build, it takes some discipline and effort.
The Science Behind Our Heart’s Intelligence
The heart is an organ of enormous electro-magnetic intelligence. Sixty to 65 percent of the heart is composed of neuron cells (not muscle cells) and like the brain generates a very powerful electromagnetic field that permeates every cell in the body — but is about 60 times greater in amplitude than the brain!! An electromagnetic field is essentially a broadcasting device so to rephrase that last sentence: the heart’s ability to broadcast messages is 60 times greater in amplitude than the brain! The heart is also the first organ to function after conception whereas the brain begins to start operating after 90 days.