THE SCIENCE OF HEART COHERENCE

In December 2022, DR. ROLLIN MCCRATY, Director of Research at the HeartMath Institute, gave an online presentation at the international Heartfulness conference, "An Integrative Approach to Health and Well-being," at Kanha Shanti Vanam. Here we share some highlights from his talk

-  ANANYA PATEL

What Is Coherence?

Most people have an intuitive understanding of coherence, but in the scientific community it's a term and a concept used in every branch of science, from the macro to the micro scale. We use it to describe the behavior of the parts of a complex system.

In a coherent system, those parts have to be communicating and talking to each other so there's connectedness. It's inherent to the concept of coherence, and it's really a measure of the harmonious order of how all the parts of a system are working together.

A coherent system implies stability and energy efficiency. Another key concept of coherence is that in any system whether it's a human being, or any other scale we want to look at there's a greater wholeness than you can derive from the sum of the parts. This is why we chose to use this term in our research so many years ago.

Our research focuses on three primary domains: personal, social, and global. For the personal, We have spent many years looking at the coherence within our bodies, especially between the heart and brain. Socially, we can define the coherence of a group, whether that's a family, a work team, a leadership team, or even a community. I won't have a lot of time to go into global coherence, but I'll give you a teaser.

The heart profoundly affects brain function

It probably isn't a surprise to you that the heart sends far more information to the brain than the brain sends to the heart, but it is a big surprise for a lot of people in our medical communities in the Western world. It is not a new finding - it has been known since the late 1800s; in fact it's basic anatomy.