We’ve all heard the expression ‘Follow Your Heart’, but what does that really mean? How do we tell the difference between what our heart is guiding us to do and what our brain thinks we should do?

Our heart speaks to us every moment of every day, but most of us have stopped listening to its signal; it’s like we’ve turned off that part of us that intuitively knows the answer to all our problems.

In today’s episode on I Love Me The Podcast we learn how the heart has it’s own brain. Yes, a brain!!! How this brain is far superior to our head brain. And how it’s our heart-brain that was designed to guide us through life.

 

Have you ever played Chinese whispers?

You know the game…

One person whispers a message into the next person’s ear, then they whisper the message to the next person, and so on it goes, until the message finally gets around the circle and the last person announces the message they received.

Isn’t it amazing how quickly that initial message loses it’s meaning, and becomes something entirely different??

Well… this happens to us on a daily basis.

You see, our heart is always communicating with us.

Communicating to us via feelings and signals, words and whisperings, to help us live a happy, healthy, abundant life.

But those words of wisdom often get tangled up, and over-written by the chatter of the mind.

A mind, that is pulling its guidance from a storehouse of limiting beliefs, stories and ideas that we constructed based on what we learnt as a child.

So of course, the information we gain from our mind – often the information we base our decisions on, that informs our actions – is coming from a place that has been mis-informed.

A place that’s designed to think thoughts based on our current ‘belief system’, as opposed to thinking thoughts based on our inner truth, or inner intelligence.

For it’s our heart, that speaks our truth.

It’s our heart that was designed to guide us through life, not our brain.

Yes, the brain is important – in school I learnt it’s the master organ in the body – yet, interestingly, it’s our heart, that is the first organ to form in the womb.

As we were growing inside our mother’s belly, it was the heart that began to beat in the womb, regulating chemistry throughout the rest of our body.

And this is because our humble heart has a brain of its own.

According to modern science, we all have a ‘heart brain’.

And it’s our heart brain that sends a signal to the brain in our head, that triggers chemistry into the body.

Yes, the signals come from our heart brain, and then go to the head brain, not the other way around.

Which makes sense, why the heart is the first organ to form inside the womb, right?

Because the heart brain, is way more powerful than our head brain…

To be exact, our heart brain is 100 times electrically stronger than the brain in our head, and up to 5000 times stronger magnetically.

The heart brain is so powerful, it knows things are going to happen, before they even happen!

Scientists at the HeartMath Institute in America carried out this really interesting experiment to show the power of the heart.

Participants were connected to sensors to measure their brain waves and heartbeats.

Then they were exposed to randomly selected images – some were high arousal, like the mangled face of a car crash victim or a snake with huge fangs, and other images were calming pictures, like a cute bunny rabbit, butterflies or beautiful nature scenes.

What the data showed was that the heart seemed to know the nature of the image before they physically saw it with their eyes.

So if the image was to be one of the highly arousing photos, the heart rate started to increase around 5 seconds before the image was even selected.

Crazy, right!

Crazy… and very very cool!

Now these results have been replicated all over the world showing that the heart knows things that are going to happen, before we could logically know, they’re going to happen.

That’s the power of the heart!

And that’s why we want to listen to our heart’s voice – those gentle feelings and inner guidance –  as opposed to our head’s voice which is delivered via a whole lotta mind chatter.

Often of a negative, fear-based nature, and that generally leads people into unloving behaviours and situations.

Maybe there’s been a time in your life where you’ve had this strong inner feeling to do something, but ignored it once your logical, rational brain kicked in, only to find out later, that the initial feeling  you felt, was correct.

This is what some people call ‘intuition’.

You can call it your sixth sense – just like touching, seeing, hearing, tasting and smelling gives us information, so too, can the knowing energy the heart generates.

For our physical world is made up of electrical fields of energy.

It’s this same energy that sees programs on radios, transmitted to our home or car.

This energy is something we’re made up of, as is every living being around us – plants, animals, the Earth – they all have their own energy.

For us, we can access that energy source within us, via our heart.

And why do we want to do this?

Because our heart is not vulnerable to the conditioning, limiting beliefs and stories that we took on as a child.

So for example, if we’re about to make a big life changing decision.

If we follow the messages from our heart, we’ll get clear information and direction, that will serve us, and be in our highest good.

If, on the other hand, we listen to the fears and limitations of our brain, and base our decision-making on that mental chatter, then we’re far more likely to make decisions that will cause us problems in the future.

Because remember, the thinking brain, is creating thoughts based on all the stuff we learnt from the big people around us when we were kids.

I talk in depth about this in Episode 2: Programmed for Love.

Maybe you learnt that money doesn’t grow on trees, and so when a great financial opportunity arises, you dismiss it, because you have a deep inner belief that it’s too good to be true.

You believe in order to make money, you need to work hard.

And so that’s your pattern.

You work hard for your money.

When in actual fact, that financial opportunity was a very healthy way to grow your wealth and had you listened to your heart – which knows what is best for you – you would have invested in that opportunity.

And in doing so, allowed money to come more easily to you.

Maybe, your parents set you up with this really hot guy.

They think he’s great, but upon meeting him, you have this feeling inside, that this isn’t a good match for you.

You shove down that feeling, because there’s no logical reason to substantiate your feelings.

And hey, he’s cute, he seems to treat you well, and… your parents like him.

Up until this point, you haven’t made the best choices in men.

So you think maybe your parents are onto something.

And so you enter into relationship with him.

One year into the relationship you find out he’s been seeing someone else behind your back.

The whole time you’ve been together.

You knew, from day one, that he wasn’t a good choice.

Your heart communicated that to you, via a feeling.

A feeling of ‘Something’s not quite right here’.

You couldn’t logically make sense of that feeling – there was no physical evidence to support that feeling.

So you ignored that inner voice, and opted to side with your brain which was telling you: ‘Oh, better not waste this opportunity, you’ll be left on the shelf!’

After years of people telling you you’d never find the right guy, you grabbed a hold of this one, for fear of being alone.

Even though, you knew something was off.

This is how our heart’s messages get all mixed up, and turn into something entirely different.

The head brain – the mind chatter, and thinking, logical, rational mind – has a habit of convoluting the messages from the heart.

Because like I said, our heart opens up our line of communication.

It’s the one that initiates our metaphorical Chinese Whisper.

Our heart sends a signal to the brain, which then delivers a signal to the body.

That is the order of any bodily reaction.

Problem is, our brain puts those messages through its ‘gunk’ filter.

What I mean by that, is all the negative childhood conditioning we took on as a child – all of our fears and traumas – they taint the message when it gets to the brain.

What are we left with?

The residue.

The gunk.

An error-filled message.

The message from our heart may have started out like ‘Hey beautiful, it’s time to change careers.’

Fairly straight forward message, but if we have some subconscious gunk that makes us feel like we’re not good enough for the career our heart is guiding us towards, our mind will take that initial message from the heart, twist it about, throw some head-gunk on it, and give us a message like:

‘Hey lady, you better stay in your safe, cosy career, because you just don’t have the skills for that new job. You’ll make a fool of yourself if you apply.’

Our head-voice can be quite belittling and cruel sometimes.

Especially if we have a lot of limiting beliefs for it to feed off.

And so maybe you listen to your head voice and stay in the mediocre career.

Why?

Because you want to feel safe.

And so you listen to your head instead of your heart.

Not realising, that you got your messages – which can have life-changing consequences… You got those messages from the end of the line, instead of going to the source.

An end of a line that had been coated in other people’s judgements and fears from their childhood.

That was the passed down to you.

Yet, if you’d outted the middleman and gone straight to your heart for the answers, you would have acted very differently, and most likely been enjoying the career that would be more suited to you, bring you more joy.

And probably a bigger pay packet.

See how it works??

It’s kind of like writing up a letter and giving it to your secretary to type up and send.

Now technically this should work fine.

Except maybe your secretary is a bit scrambled, gets easily distracted, and makes errors frequently, resulting in the initial message losing it’s true meaning – hence the person receiving the letter gets something completely out of context, or coated in fear.

This is what happens to our body when we let our mind run the show.

Our mind, is the not so capable secretary.

We start getting sent messages to feel overwhelmed, instead of at peace.

We get delivered messages to do things that go against our highest good.

We’re led down a path of struggle, pain, disappointment… and it doesn’t feel good.

It doesn’t feel good, because we’re not listening to the source.

We’re listening to the mind, as opposed to our wise inner voice.

The voice of our heart.

Yet we can learn how to cut out the middleman and get the messages straight from our heart.

For our heart has all the answers we need to live a happy, healthy, abundant and peaceful life where every day flows with ease, and we feel a deep sense of inner joy.

When life throws us a challenge, it’s our heart that can guide us smoothly through that hailstorm.

But if we let our mind get involved, then who knows what will rain down on our life.

For me, there is no substitute for living a life full of daily miracles.

Full of peace.

Full of beauty.

Full of abundance.

The only way you’re going to live a brilliant life – where you feel at ease with yourself, content – is to listen to the right guide.

And that guide is your heart.

Hand over your decision-making to your head brain, and your mind will only lead you astray.

Now this idea of following our heart, is not unfamiliar to us.

Just consider the popular expressions such as ‘Put your heart into it’, ‘Learn it by heart’, ‘Speak from your heart’, ‘Sing with all your heart’…

We were born with the natural inclination to follow our heart.

Hence why it’s peppered through our language.

But as children, we get taught to dismiss our heart’s guidance.

Maybe you were a toddler, and your grandpa’s new wife comes to spend a day with you.

You, little toddler you, feels this person isn’t safe.

Doesn’t have a good energy about them.

Because as young children, we are super sensitive to other people, and what they have going on.

So when your grandpa asks you to hug your step grandma goodbye, you turn away.

Now your grandpa feels embarrassed by your rejection of his new wife, and so he strongly encourages you to hug her.

And so you do, against that inner feeling.

You don’t want to let down your grandpa.

And if your grandpa says its safe, maybe it is.

This experience teaches you that you can’t trust those inner feelings.

You love your grandpa, so he must be right.

And so you start to mistrust that inner guidance system that is your heart brain.

We live in a world where there are ways of doing things, expectations placed upon us, that force us to go against our heart’s guidance, time and time again…

So eventually we become disconnected from our heart.

And we go through life, relying on our head brain.

Yet our heart is always communicating to us…

And these expressions like ‘Follow your heart’ are simply a reminder of what deep down, we know to be true.

That we have an inner voice.

A voice that can be listened to through connecting with our heart.

For our heart was always meant to be our GPS through life.

It’s just that somewhere along the way, we switched off to this inner guidance system, and instead started to listen to the more negative, fear-driven chatter of the mind.

But that’s ok.

Because, while listening to your head brain may have become a habit.

All habits can be broken.

With time and practise and commitment, you can find your way back home to your heart.

And that all begins with a willingness to listen to those innate feelings.

Those tiny whispers of love.

The dreams and desires we throw away, thinking we’re being too whimsical.

Our heart places those dreams in our heart, so we can live them out.

It’s our mind that tells us they’re out of our reach.

That we’re being silly in believing in Princes and white horses.

A mind that was ill-informed from our earliest influences.

Yet, we can choose, today, to put our lives back in the loving hands of our heart.

Or if you’ve already started to cultivate a relationship with your inner voice, to go deeper into that connection with your heart.

For we can always learn to listen and embody more of our heart’s truths.

Now you may be wondering…

How do you know you’re listening to the wise whisperings of your heart, as opposed to the fear-invoking words of your brain?

Because they feel good.

When we’re listening to our heart…

There is a calm knowing that we’re safe, and all is well.

This is a state of being, that’s known as ‘coherence’.

And this is why I created the Love Wrap I shared with you back in Episode 3, because we can use the Love Wrap as a tool to come into this coherent state, where we’re open and available to our heart’s guidance.

When we’re in this state, we hear our heart’s voice more easily.

Because we’re in sync with our heart.

But what’s really cool when we’re in this state, which can be measured as 0.01 hertz – or 0.01 cycles per second – is that our heart begins to release life-affirming chemistry into our bodies.

Healing chemistry.

Our immune system gets a boost; even our anti-ageing hormones increase 100% over a three-minute period of time, just from indulging in this feeling of coherence.

This feeling of love.

Where we are connected to the energy and vibration of our heart.

On the flip side, when we’re not in this coherent state – I’m talking about ongoing feelings of anger, fear, frustration, worry – all those negative emotions…

When we’re in these states of stress or overwhelm, it throws our heart rhythm out of sync.

And this directly impacts our hormones and nervous system.

Once our hormones and nervous system are thrown out of whack, we’re more susceptible to disease and illness.

This is also when we start attracting negative outcomes into our life, because our energy is what creates our physical reality.

And this is what we explored a couple of episodes ago when we looked at how manifesting works.

When the heart returns to its natural rhythm it helps us become more conscious and intuitive around decisions and emotional responses.

So instead of going back into stress-inducing behaviours, we’re more likely to respond in a calmer manner.

And this is vital when decision-making because:

When emotion increases, intelligence decreases.

In other words, when we’re in an emotional state, because we’re following the lead of our head brain, we’re more likely to make rash decisions and say and do things that will have negative consequences.

We want to stay connected to our heart brain, not just because it feels good, but because it helps us be a better person and make decisions that serve the greatest good of all.

Listening to our heart then, is the natural antidote to the damaging effects of living in a modern world, that is rapidly moving towards higher stress and more separation from community.

Swiss Psychologist and psychiatrist, Carl Jung, once wrote:

‘Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart.’

And I believe this is sooo true.

Our heart’s voice lives within us.

It is always there.

It was never lost.

We simply stopped listening.

Of course, trusting your heart to be a reliable co-pilot takes time and practise, just as it does to build trust in a new friendship.

The more time you spend sitting with your heart and listening, the more you’ll start to hear.

Just remember, you’ve probably spent much of your life listening to your head brain, so don’t be hard on yourself if it takes a while to develop that connection with your heart again.

Self-love all the way.

For me, there are two life skills I believe everyone needs, to make the most of their time here on planet Earth.

Firstly, we need to be able to clear the beliefs that are limiting our experience of life.

We discussed that in depth in Episode 2: Programmed for Love.

And we looked at how beliefs can make us feel unworthy last week.

Secondly, we need to establish a clear line of communication with our heart, so we can let our heart guide us through life.

And these are the two main skills I teach in my Remarkable Relationships course.

I designed this course with the intention to give people like you, the core skills you need to overcome challenges, to feel safe in your expression of their authentic self, to have a deep inner trust that everything is working in your favour, and that you can create a life, far greater than you could ever imagine.

These skills are essentials when it comes to changing situations that no longer serve you, and breaking old patterns and addictions that have held you back for longer than is ideal.

It’s these two skills that have become a way of life for me and my clients, because they’re so powerful.

I clear beliefs and tune into my heart, EVERY day.

So this week I invite you to ask yourself:

Would you like to go on a beautiful three-month journey, where you get to learn how to tune into your heart, clear your limiting beliefs, and in doing so, deepen your love for yourself?

If your answer is yes, doors are now open to my Remarkable Relationships course.

This program will give you the necessary tools and skills and understanding you need to have a remarkable relationship with each area of your life.

Hence the name, Remarkable Relationships.

AND 10% of all profits from this program go to planting trees, so together we can re-robe Mother Earth.

So if you feel called to dive heart-first into love, if you feel ready to solidify your relationship with you, I look forward to guiding you home.