From Activation to Coherence…reflections.
I have been affiliated in the past with Matrix Leadership Institute, learning and co-facilitating groups with others from this organization. It taught me about roles, past traumas and how they can activate a group. I am more aware of dreams and projections and how they play apart in our communication with each other. As I go through my present class in Conversational Intelligence with Judith Glaser, I was re-minded of what I learned 15 years ago. I find that sometimes I truly need to revisit teachings to integrate them into my daily life.
The concepts presented by all the systems I incorporate are very similar. How can an individual connect from his or her heart? What impact does trauma have on the brain and the heart? How can we resource ourselves and heal from these impacts?I want to begin by presenting a view of the heart as our power center. With Kirlian photography scientist can actually see the energy being emitted by our bodies. This show that the energy emitted around the heat is much bigger than that emitted from anywhere else in the body, even the brain. Research has shown that it extends 15′ or more beyond our bodies.
All spiritual practices teach this also. “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he” (Proverbs 23). In NCBI it is said “We don’t change minds, we change hearts”, and in HeartMath® “A change in heart changes everything”. Think about the gesture you make when you refer to yourself. Don’t you point to your heart rather than your head?
Research from the HeartMath Institute (which I am a coach/mentor and trainer) reveals that there is more communication going from the heart to the brain than from the brain to the heart. When we can intentionally shift our heart rhythm pattern, we can enter into states that allow the two branches of the nervous system to synchronize. When we are stressed (real or imagined) the sympathetic nervous system (gas pedal) and the parasympathetic (brake) become chaotic.
Breathing can begin to synchronize this system. This is why when we et scared, nervous or anxious, we often hold our breath. Breathing is a main technique that is taught in yoga, which is also designed to balance the cardiovascular and nervous systems. When the heart’s rhythm is a smooth sine wave rather than a jagged one, scientists call this coherence.
When we are in this state of coherence, we are actually entraining our body into a healthier state. Our immune system, cardiac system, blood pressure, hormonal/endocrine systems and the five parts of our brain work together in a harmonious way. I have found that experiencing this harmonious balance actually changes how I perceive the world and the people around me.
We all know what it is like to be traumatized at some point in our life. Often activation in the nervous system overwhelms us and the response in our physiology is fight, flight, freeze or appease. Later in life, the emotional activation that corresponds to a traumatic experience and creates the energy to drive the firing of our neural networks, is actually needed in order to change. The hardwiring of that activation or feeling state is what needs to be changed or re-wired.
In the brain, the amygdala reacts faster than our cognitive centers. One of the functions of this part of the brain is to sense (emotionally) whether we are safe. It does so based on past conditioning. The current experience does not have to be an exact match with our original experience, only similar. The term ” hijacking “is often used to describe this phenomenon .
When you walk into a group of people and have an emotional reaction to someone without knowing why, that person’s voice or behavior may remind you of someone from the past who hurt you or embarrassed you. That past feeling comes alive in the present and your project this memory, often unconsciously, on to this new person. You might even get angry. In the Course in Miracles they call this bringing shadows of the past to the present.
Now if our higher cognitive centers were functioning, the part of the brain that can assess, become mindful, analyze and differentiate , we could “see” them in present time and as they truly “are”. However, when hijacked, this shuts down. This makes it difficult to know if this reactions is real or imagined. Hours or days later we could be saying to ourselves , “Oh, this is from the past.” She/he is not doing anything to me. It just reminds of that past person (stored samscara) the arousal in our nervous system then settles and once again synchronizes.
Resourcing – a term used in both HeartMath, Matrix and trauma teachings – refers to what you do within yourself to get our of what our brain, nervous systems and emotions are telling our is happening that is not actually occurring int he present. Resourcing is about changing the patten of incoherence to coherence. It is about rewiring the heart rhythm pattern to a smooth one so that our bodies and brains can make another choice. It opens us to the Now and the possibility of a “new story”.
One key practice of re-Sourcing is that of giving and receiving appreciation. The feelings associated with appreciations generate a smooth heart rhythm pattern, which overrides any other habitual feeling. We begin to remember that our relations to others may result from conditioned beliefs (mind movies- old stories) and that we have allowed our past unhealthy experiences to influence us, rather that question them or intentionally change them. Deep feelings of appreciation and gratitude are one of the best antidotes for stress (anxiety, depression, fear, worry etc)
My invitation to you is that next time you are in a group, use this appreciation along with breathing into and out of your heart, to shift your physiology so your higher perceptual centers become available to you again.(in a way to see them as God would see them).
Each time I have done this in a group, the shifting of my own energy, it changes the impact I have on a group. It takes me out of fight/flight/freeze/appease and aligns me with the “True Power Within”. Let’s all try to serve more cocktails of oxytocin to each other rather than those of cortisol ;-).
As I or you shift my own physiology, I perceive others with compassion, openness, heart and LOVE. As Gandhi said “You must become the change you want to see in the world”.
The world needs this shift to LOVE and HEART more than ever!!! will you be of service to humanity this way?
