HeartMath Biofeedback

I am excited to offer Biofeedback with the HeartMath research and technology, both as it’s own powerful stand-alone modality and in combination with the other modalities that I offer such as Hypnotherapy, Life Coaching, Nervous System Regulation training, and Presence.  

This form of Biofeedback helps client to realize how much control we each have to experience the Power in true heart resonance, authentic gratitude and how this influences the field around us for miles.  Our bodies and emotions can be exquisitely regulated with this practice, healing accelerated and old patterns dissolved.
Her Biofeedback expertise is a unique and potent life transforming opportunity for her clients to increase their internal awareness and to develop self-empowerment skills.

Benefits In Many Areas of Our Life

Clients can learn to reduce their stress and anxiety, develop self-regulation skills, and build mental and emotional resilience while seeing their present state and improvement in real-time on the screen.
Even the most highly pressured individuals can break the stress habit ~ even when doing so feels impossible.

Transforming stress reactions is the first and most essential ingredient of effective life, leadership, and health. The Important Truth that Alaya has learned in her own life is that… to Transform Your Ability to Regulate Your Nervous System is to Transform Your Life.

Biofeedback in the HeartMath model can have a profoundly transformational effect on generalized state of Being, state of Contentment, and ability to Accomplish whatever is the focus. It teaches skills that help to improve Sleep, Eating Patterns, Ability to Focus, Efficiency, Organizational Ease, Communication, Job Satisfaction and Performance, Sports Acuity, Trauma Release, Optimism, Adjustment and Adaptation.

In Healing

It is very useful in assisting and supporting other forms used in an individual’s Healing Process such as Acupuncture, Medicines and Herbs, Pre-Surgery and Recovery from Surgery, Fear and Phobias including Dental Fear, Public Speaking, Meditation, and in all things significant to a healthy, fulfilling, and content life.
Accumulated over time, negative stress affects the body physically, mentally and emotionally. It can cause illness and even death.

How Stress Impacts Us

It is not the event or situation that creates the stress. It is how we respond to it. Emotions are different than thoughts. The introduction of positive thoughts in the form of affirmation has been introduced as the cure to negative human experiences and even disease. However, this has been proven to not have the alchemical effect that has been proposed.

Emotions are the key. Emotions as felt through the senses and within the heart center have a powerful impact on the human body. Positive emotions like appreciation, care, kindness, love, and gratitude feel good and are good for us. They help the systems in our body synchronize and work better. Research has shown that when we intentionally shift to a positive emotion, the heart rhythms immediately change.

Heart Rhythms Shift

This shift in heart rhythms creates a favorable cascade of neural, hormonal, and biochemical events that benefit the entire body and the entire area that surrounds it including others within that area. This is called “The Heart Field.”  

There are significant bodies of research supporting the fact that it is the Heart that gives messages to the brain, not the reverse order. The Heart is the Master Mind, the Miracle Worker, and the answer to our need for nervous system regulation.

  • At the Physiological level, this mode is characterized by increased efficiency and harmony in the activity and interactions of the body’s systems.
  • Psychologically, this mode is linked with a notable reduction in internal mental dialogue, reduced perceptions of stress, increased emotional balance, and enhanced mental clarity, intuitive discernment, and cognitive performance.

Research  

Recent scientific research suggests that consciousness actually emerges from the brain and body acting together. A growing body of evidence suggests that the heart plays a particularly significant role in this process. The heart is a sensory organ and a sophisticated center for receiving and processing information. The nervous system with-in the heart (or “heart brain”) enables it to learn, remember, and make functional decisions independent of the brain’s cerebral cortex.

Moreover, numerous experiments have demonstrated that the signals the heart continuously sends to the brain influence the function of higher brain centers involved in perception, cognition, and emotional processing. In addition to the extensive neural communication network linking the heart with the brain and body, the Body’s Heart Field is a powerful conductor that influences others significantly. Far more than a simple pmp, as was once believed, scientists now recognize the heart as a highly complex system with it's own functional "brain."  Research in the new discipline of neurocardiology shows that they heart also communicates information to the brain and throughout the body via electromagnetic field interactions.

Heart Power and It's Field of Transmission

The heart generates the body’s most powerful and most extensive rhythmic electromagnetic field. Compared to the electromagnetic field produced by the brain, the electrical component of the heart’s field is about 60 times greater in amplitude, and permeates every cell in the body. The magnetic component is approximately 5000 times stronger than the brain’s magnetic field and can be detected several feet away from the body with sensitive magnetometers.

Heart Fields

Basic research at the Institute of HeartMath shows that information pertaining to a person’s emotional state is also communicated throughout the body via the heart’s electromagnetic field. The rhythmic beating patterns of the heart change significantly as we experience different emotions. Negative emotions, such as anger or frustration, are associated with an erratic, disordered, incoherent pattern in the heart’s rhythms.

In contrast, positive emotions, such as love or appreciation, are associated with a smooth, ordered, coherent pattern in the heart’s rhythmic activity (a wavy rather than jagged pattern emerges on the screen in real-time clearly displaying one’s coherent or incoherent pattern).

In turn, these changes in the heart’s beating patterns create corresponding changes in the structure of the electromagnetic field radiated by the heart, measurable by a technique called spectral analysis. More specifically, it has been demonstrated that sustained positive emotions appear to give rise to a distinct mode of functioning, which is called psycho-physiological coherence. During this mode, heart rhythms exhibit a sine wave-like pattern and the heart’s electromagnetic field becomes correspondingly more organized.

Measuring Heart Energy

It is possible to measure an exchange of heart energy between individuals up to five feet apart, and it has been found that one person’s brain waves can actually synchronize to another person’s heart. Furthermore, when an individual is generating a coherent heart rhythm, synchronization between that person’s brain waves and another person’s heartbeat is more likely to occur.

These findings have intriguing implications, suggesting that individuals in a psycho physiologically coherent state become more aware of the information encoded in the heart fields of those around them.  This brings to light the power that each of us has in influencing and creating a life experience both for ourselves and for the betterment of mankind and life on earth.

Biology of Belief

Dr. Bruce Lipton, Ph.D. is an internationally recognized authority and author of several books. His field of science, called “epigenetics,” examines the principles of quantum physics as integrated into the cell’s information processing systems. Though considered controversial by some, his research at Stanford University’s School of Medicine 1987-1992 revealed that the environment, operating through the membrane, controls the behavior and physiology of the cell turning cells on and off. This stunning scientific discovery about the biochemical effects of the brain’s functioning showed that all the cells of the body are affected by our thoughts.

Dr. Lipton, in his published findings, describes the precise molecular pathways through which this occurs. He researched the structure and function of biological organisms as intimately intertwined, the correlation of the cell’s microscopic anatomy with its behavior, and his research revealed insight into the nature of Nature.

What's Really In Control

He showed that genes and DNA do not control our biology; that instead DNA is controlled by signals from outside the cell, including the energetic messages emanating from our positive and negative thoughts, thus revealing that our bodies can be changed as we retrain our thinking. He stated that it is a single cell’s awareness of the environment, not its genes, that set into motion the mechanisms of life. DNA was thought to be responsible not only for our physical characteristics, but also that our genes control our emotions and behaviors.

Dr. Lipton’s research concluded that just as single cells are controlled by their awareness of the environment, so too are trillion-celled human beings. Just like a single cell, the character of our lives is determined not by our genes but by our responses to the environmental signals that propel life.
Dr. Lipton’s findings revealed that cells teach about the mechanisms of life, as well as how to live rich, full lives.

The Body As A Community

His view is that the body is a cooperative community of approximately fifty trillion single-celled citizens, with almost all of the cells being amoeba-like individual organisms that have evolved a cooperative strategy for their mutual survival. Just as a nation reflects the traits of its citizens, humanness must reflect the basic nature of our cellular communities.

His message is that we are not powerless biochemical machines, not victims of our genes, but instead masters designed to create lives overflowing with peace and other valued qualities essential for our physical and mental health. As Dr. Lipton states, knowledge is power and knowledge of self provides self-empowerment.

With hypnotherapy, I unite with my clients as a partner in the goal of self knowledge revealing deeply held positive~negative thoughts, their associated feelings and emotions in the conscious and subconscious mind, and importantly in the body, and transforming them and their manifestations into self empowerment.

Links & Articles

Links

  • Dr. Rev. C. Scot Giles, D.Min. (2003): “A Method for using Hypnotism with Persons Living with Cancer”
  • Summary Highlights — Mayo Clinic Review, April 2005: “Hypnosis in Contemporary Medicine”
  • Mayo Clinic Review, April 2005: “Hypnosis in Contemporary Medicine”
  • Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, April 2000: “Hypnosis Reduces Surgical Pain and Time, Improves Safety”
  • “The Art of Healing Trauma, On the Importance of Titration for Trauma Healing,” Somatic Experiencing, Trauma Release Model, by Heidi Hanson, May 2016
  • “Why Self Regulation is the Most Important Thing in the World.”

Articles & Bibliography

Hypnotherapy and Persons Living with Cancer:
  • Austin JH. (2000) Zen and the Brain. Toward an Understanding of Meditation and Consciousness.London: MIT Press.
  • Benjenke CJ. (2000) Benefits of early interventions with cancer patients: A clinician’s 15 year experience. Hypnos, 27(2), 75-81.
  • Cardena E, Lyn SJ, Krippner S (Eds) (2000) Varieties of Anomalous Experiences: Examining the Scientific Evidence. American Psychological Association, Washington DC.
  • Chaves JF. (1994) Recent advances in the application of hypnosis to pain management. American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis, 37, 117-129.
  • Chopra M.D., Deepak. Quantum Healing, Perfect Health/Unconditional Life, Creating Health
  • Edwin DM. (2001) What suggestion is best for pain? American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis, 43(3-4), 329-330.
  • Eger EL. (1999 Jun) Intraoperative therapeutic suggestions. British Journal of Anaesthesia, 82(6), 861-866.
  • Genuis ML. (1995) The use of hypnosis in helping cancer patients control anxiety, pain, and emesis: A review of recent empirical studies. American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis, 4, 316-325.
  • Fromm E, Kahn S. (1990) Self-Hypnosis. The Chicago Paradigm. New York: Guilford.
  • Gibbons D, deJarnette J. (1972) Hypnotic susceptibility and religious experience. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 11, 152-156.
  • Hammond DC. (1990) Handbook of Hypnotic Suggestions and Metaphors. New York: Norton.
  • Hannigan K. (1999) Hypnosis and immune system functioning. Australian Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis, 27(1), 68-75.
  • Hilgard ER, Hilgard JR. (1994) Hypnosis in the Relief of Pain. New York: Brunner Mazel.
  • Holden Lund C. (1988) Effects of relaxation with guided imagery on surgical stress and wound healing. Research in Nursing and Health, 11, 235-244.
  • Holroyd J. (1996 Jan) Hypnosis treatment of clinical pain: Understanding why hypnosis is useful. International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis, 44(1), 33-51.
  • Hornyak LM, Green J. (2000) Healing from Within: The Use of Hypnosis in Women’s Health Care. American Psychological Association, Washington DC.
  • James, W. (1935) The Varieties of Religious Experience. New York: Longmans Green.
  • Kalt HW. (2000) Psychoneuroimmunology: An interpretation of experimental case study evidence towards a paradigm for predictable results. American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis, 43(1), 41-52.

Access The Full Power Of Your Mind.

Accessing the full power of your mind is like turning on the lights of a dark room, and finding that you hold unlimited possibilities. Much is revealed, you have clear direction and regain control, with valuable skills for a lifetime.