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Doc Lew Childre & Howard Martin – The HeartMath SolutionThe Institute of HeartMath’s Revolutionary Program for Engaging the Power of the Heart’s IntelligenceThe Intelligent HeartAccess the power of your heart’s intelligence to improve your focus and creativity, elevate your emotional clarity, lower your stress and anxiety levels, strengthen your immune system, promote your body’s optimal performance, and slow the aging process.The HeartMath Solution may easily be written off as a book too eccentric for widespread public consumption, and that’s unfortunate. The title’s a bit misleading–it’s not about cardiac care and it’s not about calculus, but rather how 30 years of research have shown that the heart’s “intelligence” affects emotions and physical health–especially when it comes to handling stress–and specifically what you can do to balance heart rhythms, reduce stress hormones, and boost your immune system. Yes, it sounds complicated, especially when you read that cardiologists worked with physicists and psychiatrists to develop the HeartMath program. But it’s worth brushing off your skepticism and exploring the concepts in the Solution, as many employees of Fortune 500 companies have already done.The “intelligence” that the authors focus on refers to both the heart’s “brain,” or the 40,000 neurons found in the heart (the same number in the brain itself), and the intuitive signals the heart sends, including feelings of love, happiness, care, and appreciation. When such positive emotions are felt, they “not only change patterns of activity in the nervous system; they also reduce the production of the stress hormone cortisol.” When there’s less cortisol, there’s more DHEA, the so-called fountain of youth hormone known to have anti-aging effects on many of the body’s systems.The HeartMath Solution outlines 10 steps for harnessing the power of the heart’s intelligence, including ways to manage your emotions and keep energy levels high. One of the most important is the “Freeze-frame” technique for calming the nervous system, improving clarity of thought and perception, and boosting productivity (which is one of the many appealing features for those Fortune 500 companies). Each step includes references to data proving its effectiveness, with handy summaries of the key points to remember at the end of each chapter. This is a book that takes a bit of scientific understanding and a lot of time to wade through, but one that could help you prevent stress from ruling your existence. –Erica JorgensenReviewsThe techniques in this book are really helping me control and modify negative thoughts and moods, rapidly. I have struggled with depression for the past 10 years and I’m off my meds due to negative side-effects. While my mood still fluctuates, I now feel that I can do something to manage them and I pull out of them faster. I’m a school social worker and my job is very fast paced and I really need to manage my response to stress. I’m hoping that with continued practice I will have a better year and not feel so battered by the stress in my life. I think I will read this book again and again.ReviewsThe ideas behind this book are earth-moving — but the type font is so bad that the book is almost unreadable. Also, the prose is so uninteresting that even fabulous ideas become boring. This book deserves to be rewritten and reprinted. The ideas could change your life — but you will have to work hard to absorb them from this edition.ReviewsI’ve read many types of self-help books, and Heartmath is the one I’ve been looking for all along.It offers a simple way of engaging the heart (the physical heart) through simple methods that help to deal with strong emotions.It’s very practical and easy to do.I recommend it highly.ReviewsThis is an excellent book and it spells out the scientific proof of the power of the heart to help us find solutions to the complexity of our emotional lives and situations.I have practised meditation for many years and the tradition I have worked with pints to the power of the compassionate heart to resolve issues and attain insights. This book gives clear evidence along with practical, straight to the point techniques that shows that you don’t have to meditate for years to get back to a life of coherence and flow. So many insights and realisations from this book. Many thanks.ReviewsThis book offers three practices. The practices all begin with “breathing through the heart” and then apply the resulting state in various ways:- “Freeze frame” interrupts and redirects useless thought-feeling patterns- “Cut-Thru” slowly or quickly dissolves longstanding problems- “Heart Lock-In” allows one to rest in, and to share, profoundly good experienceEach of these practices ends with “listening to the intuition of the heart,” which may give either insights or next steps to take.All three work with “the heart,” which seems to be both the physical heart whose rhythms can be measured and the experiential heart. Heartmath both works with subjective experience and measures it objectively. From that both-ness comes the surprising name, Heartmath.I find from trying them that all three practices work. The Freezeframe interruptor really does break into unfortunate cycles of thought and feeling. CutThru does give an easing of long-term issues, though it does not undo them suddenly. And the unfortunately-named Heart Lock-In does seem to be a resting and recharging meditation.The practices have all been tested empirically. The book is full of graphs of the results, and some of the studies has been published in journals. The authors have been careful to use business-language, speaking of the “efficiency” and “coherence” of different feeling states.The language and the testing seem to be ways of making very old spiritual practices palatable to skeptical people of our time. Christianity, Judaism and Islam all understand the importance of the breath and the heart to the living being, and so do Hinduism and Buddhism. It appears the creators of Heartmath have translated old wisdom into new and practical forms for our times. Bravo to them!