The Systemic Benefits of Coherence - Dr. Steven Geanopulos

Dr. Steven Geanopulos

The Systemic Benefits of Coherence

Posted on February 1, 2016 by Dr. G

This week, I’m going to share with you how simply focusing on positive emotions and breathing for 10 minutes, twice a day for 6-8 weeks can give you skills to permanently change your life in the most meaningful ways. Here are a few examples of what this simple exercise can do:

It sounds like these are a bunch of fantastical claims, right? Well the research and clinical science is clear. The only requirement is that you have to do the work, no one can do it for you. The good news is that there are technology and systems that make it easy. You do not have to spend 20 years becoming a monk or master practitioner of transcendental meditation.

Basic Knowledge.

The nervous system has 3 components. The first is Sensory, which determines how we perceive the world around us using the five senses. Then there is the Motor system, which dictates how we voluntarily move our body. Lastly, the Autonomic (automatic) system handles all of the things that we don’t have to think about like digestion, heart beating, breathing, and blood pressure.

I’d like to focus on the autonomic system. The autonomic nervous system has two branches: the sympathetic (“fight or flight”) system and the parasympathetic (“resting and digesting”) system.

All living things can either be in a state of growth, healing and repair (parasympathetic), or protection and defense (sympathetic). You cannot be in both states at the same time. It would be ideal to spend more time in the parasympathetic state and less time in the sympathetic state. We know that the body is constantly growing and healing and time is a very important component of healing. If you spend too little time in growth, healing and repair, it won’t be long before you are in a state of dis-repair also known as dis-ease, which leads to disease.

Our stressful modern lifestyles can certainly put us in a state of what we call “sympathetic tone,” but how do we know if we are in that state? What if you feel no stress, your life is good and you are still in a state sympathetic tone or dominance? This is more common than you think.

We have all heard that every chronic symptom and ailment can be attributed to stress and that stress kills. Well, this is why. Increased sympathetic tone is due to poor adaptability to stress. Therefore, if you spend less time in sympathetic physiology and more time in parasympathetic physiology, you will be less likely to succumb to the ill effects of stress.

The Heart of It All.

Heart Rate Variability (H.R.V.) is a an excellent way to check your state of physiology at any time of day and it can be used as a form of biofeedback to improve your state and move into a healthy parasympathetic state at any time. I believe this is lifesaving technology that is now readily available, inexpensive and easy to use.

The emWave2 and inner balance sensor technology are devices invented by the organization HeartMath. I have no relationship with this company and do not receive any form of compensation (although I wish I did). These products are money well spent. These devices offer a form of biofeedback to help you train your nervous system. Poor H.R.V. has been associated to all forms of premature death and chronic disease. This is one of my favorite bio-hacks for living a modern life and dealing with stress.

HRV tells us whether we are in a state of sympathetic dominance or parasympathetic dominance, regardless of how we are feeling. As I stated above, you could be totally relaxed on vacation and still be in a state of sympathetic tone. This occurs because we actually unknowingly train our nervous system to do so. We turn the sympathetic system into the road more easily traveled and the parasympathetic system into the road less traveled, and therefore the body will assume the state it is most used to.

Just a decade ago, HRV was confined to a cardiologist’s office or a research environment. The machines used to measure HRV were large, very costly and the interpretation of the data required specialized knowledge. Now HRV monitoring is cheap, easy and can be interpreted with a free app on your phone.

Coherence.

Now we have devices and procedures, like the ones mentioned above, that improve HRV and therefore put us in a state of growth, healing and repair. We’ve always known that regular exercise improves HRV, but now we have techniques to improve HRV and parasympathetic tone that are quick and easy and can be done at will. When our HRV pattern is smooth and you are in the parasympathetic state, we are in what is called a state of “coherence.” Coherence is when our psychological state and our physiological state are balanced and working together.

The techniques for achieving “coherence” are similar to simple meditation. The more you do it, the faster you can recognize when you are out of coherence, and the easier it is to restore coherence and thus an optimal state. I have had anxiety as it relates to flying in an airplane my whole life…not debilitating, but enough to thrust me deep into sympathetic tone and out of coherence, especially during turbulence. There are also people whose professions require them to be out of coherence and in sympathetic tone, for example, working on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange for 40 hours a week.

Even in the environments mentioned above, you can restore parasympathetic tone and coherence. In a recent trip to Las Vegas, I used the skills I had learned from HeartMath in restoring coherence and was able to easily shift to coherence when we hit turbulence. This was a remarkable feat for me. More importantly, I have trained myself to know how it feels to be in sympathetic tone, and using the emWave2, I can easily shift back.

Coherence is not necessarily a state of relaxation, although relaxation represents an autonomic shift toward parasympathetic tone. Coherence can be experienced while you are working and not in a state of relaxation. Coherence is just a synchrony between your psychology and physiology; the electrical impulse produced by your heart and your brain are in sync.

How the heart communicates.

Energetically (Electromagnetic fields)

The two most electrically active parts of the body are the heart and the brain. This is evidenced by all of the medical technology we have to diagnose brain and heart pathology using electrophysiology such as EEG (electro encephalogram) and EKG (electrocardiogram). The electromagnetic field of a living human can be detected 360 degrees and up to 4 feet away. Coherence occurs when the brain and heart electrophysiology are in sync with each other while in a state of parasympathetic tone or what I call “growth, healing and repair.” It is only in this state that our immune system is regulated, our digestive system is optimal, our hormone production and insulin sensitivity is appropriate, our blood pressure and blood perfusion is what it should be, and so much more. The heart produces over 40X more bioelectricity than the brain.

Neurologically (Vagus Nerve Network)

The connection between the heart and brain is through the vagus nerve, the most extensive nerve network found in the human body. The Vagal system is also involved in digestion, where 85% of the immune system lives. There are more signals going from the heart to the brain than from the brain to the heart.

Hormonally (Atrial Peptide)

The heart makes a hormone called “atrial peptide,” which will actually decrease the cortisol response. It protects us from making too much cortisol.

Biophysically (Pulse wave)

The pulse wave with each heartbeat is felt in every tissue organ system in the body that has a blood supply. This pulse wave is another form of communication between the heart and brain and the heart and rest of the body. Every beat, every day is telling your brain and the rest of your body information about your environment. Is it a stressful dangerous one or is it one in which resting and digesting are safe to do?

Simple, reproducible emotional states can change the message sent out by your heart to your brain and body. Best of all, the heart is trainable. The research shows it can be trained in just 6-8 weeks.

That is 6-8 weeks to:

Please come back to this post after your 8 weeks and tell us your stories. My breakthrough experience was when I was able to fly, hit turbulence and maintain parasympathetic tone. That was my test, and now I am a true believer and practitioner of coherence.

Previous Article

Next Article