LOVE POWER

Love increases endorphins – (you may know this). But that’s not all love does to us. Love also increases nitric oxide, (no, not laughing gas –that’s nitrous oxide – confusing I know!) Nitric oxide reduces blood pressure, improves blood circulation, and decreases clotting as it relaxes your arteries. In the brain, love activates areas associated with motivation, focused attention, making positive choices and taking care of yourself. 

Love also deactivates pathways in the brain responsible for negative emotions such as fear and social judgment. Aside from being an explanation for why we say 'love is blind', it also explains the many reported acts of heroism and kindness by ordinary people in recent terror attacks and disasters here in the UK. 

There are many different types of love (seven according to the ancient Greeks) but they all release chemicals and activate specific parts of the brain that propel us to connect, to care, and to take caring action. Of the different types of love studied over the centuries, the love of humanity, selfless love or what the Greeks call Agape, is often referred to as the highest form of love and I imagine that this is the type of love we see expressed in distressing times. It is the antidote to terror and facilitates clear and values-based thinking. Feeling such love gives us more clarity of mind and forward-thinking insights than any of the fear-based rhetoric we are also currently exposed to. Love in its highest form is not a touchy-feely approach, it actually makes us smarter. This is a biological fact*.

When I was seventeen, I read the first of what would become an endless array of books and papers on the subject of love, ‘The Art of Loving’ by psychologist Erich Fromm. It inspired a lifelong fascination with the subject in its many forms, a fascination which is just as strong today as it ever was, not least because of the one factor that has been present in every single book, study and paper: that loving is part of the inherent human condition. We are innately programmed to love in all its forms, whether physiologically, neurologically, or otherwise by some means we have yet to discover. Fromm famously claimed that love is not something that just happens to us, it is a decision we make.

So, in this time of hate and self-interest all around us, to feel love and compassion for the victims of horrendous acts of terror and violence is a no-brainer and for most people comes quite naturally, but how, you may ask, can we ‘make the decision’ to sustain those feelings of love in the process of seeking solutions, when it feels so much more natural to slip into anger, even fury? I admit, it does take a conscious intention, and a decision to refrain from what feels like the ‘natural’ path. Ironically, acknowledging the anger and other emotions you might be feeling is the first step, regardless of whether you choose to channel those emotions into a more positive force. However, acknowledging doesn’t mean getting stuck in the emotion. It is equally important to ask yourself whether the emotion is working for you; i.e. is it depleting your health or enhancing it; fogging your brain or helping you think clearly and creatively; is it helping you achieve the outcome you want?

Making that observation and then making the decision to change to a more productive, constructive emotion (and yes, you can change what you feel), to channel the emotion into a positive force, that decision is the first and most important step you can make. The choice and intention to act from state of centred love, must surely be the only way forward.

A famous quote by Jimi Hendrix might be an appropriate conclusion: “Only when the power of love overcomes the love of power will the world know peace.”

*For references and information on research please email us at jennifer@AppliedEmotionalMastery.com

MINDFULNESS or HEARTFULNESS?

-->

 In Asian languages, the word for mind is usually the same as the word for heart. 

 

In this time when mindfulness has become a trend so popular it’s just about gone viral, it could be worth considering whether such a linguistic fact may be relevant to the true practice of mindfulness; is it just about simply quieting the mind and being fully present in the moment (as many describe it), or should it also somehow involve the heart? And if the answer is ‘yes’ (as the more serious practitioners have it), what does that look like?

Mindfulness has been around for thousands of years – as a part of the Buddhist religion but also in other forms, and framed in many ways. According to Jon Kabat-Zinn, (the originator of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction MBSR, and responsible for bringing mindfulness to both medical and mainstream popularity) “If you’re not hearing the word heartfulness when you’re hearing the word mindfulness, you’re really not understanding what it’s all about. ……. Mindfulness is pointing at something beyond words, underneath words, underneath thinking.” 

So what is underneath words and thinking? What is heartfulness? Some would say it’s the wisdom of the heart, and others would say it is feelings such as love, compassion, and kindness. I would say it’s all of the above and more, for it involves the balanced management of emotions. The heart reflects the emotions we feel, revealed in the patterns created by the heart’s rhythms. When our emotions are brought into our awareness and we learn to manage them so they serve us, our relationships, our life-path and our values, then our heart rhythms will be harmonious - and coherent with a fully present mind. On the other hand, if those emotions are disturbing or unpleasant and unmanaged, so too are the rhythms of the heart. At this point our conscious mind will take a hike up into the busy-ness of our ‘monkey brain’, and mindfulness will no longer happen.

Mind and heart must combine to create the deeper present moment awareness –the mindfulness- that gives us the ability to accept and take pleasure in each moment of work and play, to fully listen to those we dialog with, to deeply appreciate each interaction with loved ones, to savour each morsel we eat and drink, to relish tastes and smells and sights and sounds, delight in musical notes as they reach our ears and in views as we glance upon them, and to surrender to the experience of life, in all it’s glory and messiness. In short, mindfulness need not be a passing fad, or a short-term, fast-acting replacement for pain-killers or anti-depressants, or even the latest way to deal with the stresses and strains of modern or corporate life.

Mindfulness in it’s true form is heartfulness – (it is in the work we do with Applied Emotional Mastery as well as in the work of many of our contemporaries and peers); - it's message is to maximize good and minimize harm, both to oneself and others. It is a daily decision, a way of life, a discipline (in the best sense of the word), that increases awareness and acceptance, insights and wisdom, and that helps us BE fully in-the-moment and (to paraphrase Viktor Frankl) conscious of that space between stimulus and response – where we can pause to make more informed choices - where we can choose to move in the direction of maximizing good.

So even if commercialism takes over and the popularity of mindfulness eventually wanes, the message it has brought and spread, and the heartfulness within it, will surely only have contributed positively to our planet. And (quite fitting for this 'month of the heart') I figure that's good news, however you look at it.