The One You Feed - Howard Martin (HeartMath)

Episode Date: August 31, 2016

Join our new The One You Feed Facebook Discussion Group   This week we talk to Howard Martin (HeartMath) about the intelligence of the heart Howard Martin is one of the original leaders who helped found HeartMath. HeartMath was founded to help individuals, organizations and the global community incorporate the heart’s intelligence into their day-to-day experience of life. They do this by connecting heart and science in ways that empower people to greatly reduce stress, build resilience, and unlock their natural intuitive guidance for making better choices. During his career with HeartMath, Howard has delivered programs for Fortune 100 companies, government agencies, all four branches of the U.S. military, and many school system. He coauthored The HeartMath Solution and Heart Intelligence:Connecting with the Intuitive Guidance of the Heart.  In This Interview, Howard Martin (HeartMath) and I Discuss... The One You Feed parable How polarized our world is How important our day to day choices are What "heart intelligence is" The benefit of looking "within" The science of heart intelligence What heart rate variability is How the heart is considered part of our hormonal system The two-way communication between the heart and the brain Measuring heart rate variability  What heart coherence is  The Heart Coherence method How it takes time for these practices to create results The difference between our heart talking and our mind Following our heart HeartMath promotion     Join our new The One You Feed Facebook Discussion GroupSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It's those choices that we make moment-to-moment, day-to-day, that create the movie of our own life. Welcome to The One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like, garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think, ring true. And yet, for many of us, or you are what you think ring true. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit.

But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like

why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you? We have the answer. Go to reallyknowreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The Really No Really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts

or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Howard Martin who helped found HeartMath. HeartMath was created to help individuals, organizations, and the global community incorporate the heart's intelligence into their day-to-day experience of life. They do this by connecting heart and science in ways that empower people to greatly reduce stress, build resilience, and unlock their natural intuitive guidance for making

better choices. During his career with HeartMath, Howard has delivered programs for Fortune 100 companies, government agencies, all four branches of the U.S. military, and many school systems. He co-authored The HeartMath Solution and Heart Intelligence, connecting with the intuitive guidance of the heart. Hey everybody, I've got an announcement that I'm really excited about. One of the big things I've learned from doing this show and my years in recovery is that the community is such an important part in making lasting transformative change in our lives. It's great to listen to important ideas, but the lessons stick more

when we have a chance to discuss them and go deeper. I've been thinking about ways that would allow us to do this with the show, so I've created the One You Feed Facebook group. In the group, we plan to have in-depth discussions of the weekly episodes, book giveaways, practical tips for incorporating some of these ideas into your life, author Q&A, and lots of other things. To kick it off, we're going to have a book giveaway contest. So anyone who signs up in the next three days will be entered into a contest to win five free books that have been featured on the show. So go to oneufeed.net slash Facebook or search for the One You Feed discussion group

on Facebook. It's a closed group, so you'll have to ask for acceptance and then we'll let you in. We did this so you could feel free to share more without having to worry about it being in public. So I'm really excited about this. I'm really looking for ways to help all of us get more value out of the show and to incorporate these things into our day to day life. So I think this is a great step in that direction. And I hope to see you there. So again, OneYouFeed.net slash Facebook, or search for the One You Feed discussion group on Facebook. Talk to you soon. Thanks. And here is the interview with Howard Martin. Hi, Howard. Welcome to the show. Hello, Eric. Thank you very much for having me.

Excellent. Yeah, you were recommended, I think a couple different listeners have said that they thought the HeartMath group, which you're part of, would be a good guest for the show. So I put you guys on the list, and as I started looking more into it, I thought, yeah, that would be an interesting conversation. So I'm looking forward to getting into some of the things put you guys on the list, and as I started looking more into it, I thought, yeah, that would be an interesting conversation. So I'm looking forward to getting into some of the things that you guys do. Let's do it. Yeah. But before we get into it, let's start like we always do with the parable.

There's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson. He says, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love. And the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and he thinks about it for a second. He looks up at his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. That's great. A nice parable. Well, I think, you know, obviously the

parable speaks to polarity and to division. And we see a lot of that in the world today. That's for sure. We see, you know, polarization happening everywhere. It's endemic of the times, I think. And at the same time, I think that, you know, those type of characterizations of good and bad and right and wrong are actually, you know, beginning to move out in some ways. We're beginning to see things a little bit differently, a bit more openly, a bit more holistically in a sense. But what I'm hearing in that parable is that basically there are different sides to every one of us. And some of those sides relate to more of the qualities based on heart, you know, the type of work that I do, certainly the kindness, the care, the compassion, that aspect

of humankind. And then there are the parts of us that aren't so glowing, you know, where we have the jealousies and the angers and the hates and the fears and the judgments and that part of ourselves. And what the parable is saying is that the one that wins is the one we feed. So if we want to live our life, you know, in judgment So if we want to live our life in judgment, if we want to live our life in an unappreciative state, if we want to live through that lens, then we're going to create a life that looks like that. That's what's going to win, and that's what our life's going to be. And we're going to experience a life that doesn't have as much quality or fulfillment in it as we deserve and we really can have. On the other hand,

if moment to moment, day to day, we make the effort to generate more of the type of inner attitudes and emotions that regenerate us like care and compassion and kindness and appreciation and love, we're going to create a different picture of our life. We're going to create a different life that one that to me offers a heck of a lot more fulfillment. And so it becomes a matter of the choices that we make moment to moment, day to day, on which way we go. And that varies for each and every one of us. I can have lots of wonderful, high aspirations in my day

and leave the house in the morning in a loving, caring state, and I can get an email that upsets me. Right in that moment, what choice am I going to make? Am I going to be angry about to make? Am I going to be angry about the email? Am I going to lash out with a response? Or am I going to be more balanced and neutral about it? Am I going to pause? Am I going to consider some things? Am I going to assess it from a different perspective? And it's those little choices that I think are represented by the term, it's the one we feed. It's those choices that we make moment to moment, day to day, that create the movie of our own life. So your organization is called HeartMath.

Is it the HeartMath Institute? Yeah, the HeartMath Institute is our nonprofit. It's the original organization. That nonprofit evolved into a for-profit company, HeartMath LLC, which is the larger entity today. But HeartMath is what people know in the world. They don't really separate us out as a institute or for-profit. They know heart math. And heart math is really an institution in a sense that is a very large footprint in the world today. Well, let's talk about at the heart of heart math, pun intended there, you guys talk about the idea of heart intelligence. So why don't we start off by having you explain what heart intelligence means? Well, a long, long time ago, before there ever was a HeartMath,

there was an exploration of trying to be better people. Doc Chaudhry, HeartMath's founder, myself, and many others, all involved in a personal growth process. That led us to looking at heart. I mean, if you look at a lot of the personal growth processes, teachings, spiritual teachings, philosophies, they all talk about heart in very different and unusual ways than the way it's often characterized in modern society. We took a deep look at that to see if there was something there or not. And what we found was is that within every single one of us, there is this intelligence that can and does lift us beyond our problems, even in the midst of the chaos and confusion that we often experience. It's been talked about in all those philosophies and religious teachings for thousands of years, and what is called is heart. So what we did is we began to look at heart and how we could take heart from the respected confines of spirituality, religion, philosophy, and then put it into daily living

where it was needed the most. That transfer of the qualities of heart in a very practical, bottom line, empirical way into how we lived our lives. And so that's where the term heart math even came from. People have an understanding of what heart means to them, and then it needs a groundedness. It needs to be taken into something that's very practical and useful. So that's where heart math came from. So we have this intelligence that we've been exploring for a long time now that's more important in these times, I believe, Eric, than ever before. And we found that it's intuitive in nature. It's the type of intelligence that's super high speed that allows us to go more to direct knowingness and bypass some of the logical linear processes that we often need to use to reach understanding.

It's an intelligence that really exists at the very core of who we are, a true authentic self. When we're in touch with that intelligence, that's when we have the ability to move beyond our mediocrity, to do things that surprise ourselves, you know, to accomplish things or to make changes in ourselves that we go, wow, do we really do that? That has a lot to do with being in touch with that core of ourselves, the intelligence of the heart. To me, it's also the source of self-security. It's a place that we look to when we are confronted with challenges that we simply can't figure out. when we are confronted with challenges that we simply can't figure out, when there's nowhere else to go,

when we can't come up with a solution to a daunting problem or challenge or something that's very, very difficult, we will look within, one way or another, whether it's someone who prays or somebody who meditates or simply taking a walk in the woods or driving off into the car in the middle of the night. We pull deeper inside ourselves looking for something. And when we do, we often find a sense of self-security and comfort. The problem doesn't go away, but we feel something inside ourselves that gives us a sense that somehow this will work out or that we will overcome what's in front of us.

And that's the intelligence of the heart. So it's kind of the hero within, within all of us. So it's kind of the hero within, within all of us. And I think, Eric, one of the things that I've learned in all these years of exploring heart is that when it comes right down to it, my heart and the intelligence of my heart is really my own best friend. And it's the most reliable guide I have to making decisions that I need to make in life, whether they be big decisions or little decisions. So that's a picture of what we call heart intelligence.

It's both mental, emotional, and spiritual, and even physical. It's a core aspect of who we are, and developing heart intelligence really is one of the initiatives of our time, one of the most important things that I believe we can do. Excellent. So you guys, you know, you had this intuition that the heart was important, and then you started turning to some research. And one of the areas that you spent a lot of time on research is around the area of heart rate variability. Can we talk about what that is? And strangely, we want more variability than less, which sounds counterintuitive. Yeah, let me put it back at it just a little bit,

if I may, and say that, yeah, we had an understanding of heart in ourselves when we started HeartMath, and we wanted to create a system that could be shared with the world that could bring more heart in a very practical, non-sentimental, non-sweet, soft, and fluffy way into modern life. Now, to do that, we knew we had to have a bridge between the sort of philosophical heart and the practical heart. We chose science to be that bridge. And the reason we chose science is because of how much weight it carries in our society. When something is proven scientifically, it becomes empirical. And once it becomes empirical, then the power of belief in it increases. So we began research early on when we started HeartMath now 25 years ago.

And we were looking at the physical heart. We wanted to know if the physical heart was more than just the blood pump. And what we found was amazing. We found through our research and through research scattered throughout the research literature that the heart was actually a very important and powerful information processing center in our bodies. It wasn't just slavishly pumping blood. It was sending information to the brain and throughout the rest of the body. Now, our researchers put together this story, which has really changed the view of the physical heart, of how we understand the physical heart, not just the blood pump, but rather an information processing center.

It communicates this information in four different ways. Through a neurological communication, a nervous system that exists within the heart itself that communicates with the brain. It communicates through something called a blood pressure wave, which is the wave of energy created by the squeezing of the heart muscle that pumps the blood. And that blood pressure wave influences all kinds of body functions, including electrical activity in the brain. We also found, Eric, that in 1983, this is one of these examples of who knew. This was in the research literature, but who knew about it? But in 1983, the heart was actually reclassified as being part of our hormonal system because it produced a number of very important and powerful hormones.

our hormonal system because it produced a number of very important and powerful hormones. The fourth way is an energetic communication. The heart is an electrical organ. It produces by far the strongest source of bioelectricity in our bodies, so strong, in fact, that it creates an electromagnetic field that surrounds each and every one of us in 360 degrees. And that electromagnetic field produced by the heart can be measured outside the skin. It actually extends beyond our skin about three to four feet out into space. The frequencies in that field are constantly changing, and they're changing because of what we're feeling emotionally. If we're feeling angry, it produces a very incoherent field. If we're feeling loving, it produces a very coherent field. So we're literally, in a sense, broadcasting our emotions through this electromagnetic field. Now, that's a backdrop to your question about heart rate variability.

We needed a way to measure the quality of this heart-brain-body communication. We call heart rate variability analysis. And here's what that is. It's not just a measurement of heart rate like, say, a fitness monitor. It's really measuring the timing that takes place between heartbeats. You know, the heart builds up and then it pumps, and then it reloads again, and then it pumps, and then reloads again and pumps. Well, the timing between one pump and another pump could be something like 0.326 seconds. Between the next two could be something like 0.548,

so it's varying all the time. So heart rate variability ends up being a great measurement of the quality of heart-brain-body communication. It's also a very important measurement of the autonomic nervous system, and it's also used to measure things like cardiovascular health and aging. So we do want a lot of variability. When we're first born, we have the most variability we ever have. In other words, we want the heart to have a wide range of speeds it can operate in. We want it to have a sense of flexibility. We actually begin to lose variability the older that we get.

We don't have as much when we're older as we do when we're younger. So we look at heart rate variability, and we can analyze heart rate variability patterns, and we can see clearly the quality of this heart-brain-body communication. So it's an amazing science, and it's given us a window of view into so many things, including our emotional states. It's really cool. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast,

our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you, and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise

really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Bryan Cranston is with us today. Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really, No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman.

And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really No Really. Yeah, really. No really. Go to reallynoreally.com. And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason Bobblehead. It's called Really No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

And so you guys talk about within the heart rate variability, but in general, this idea of coherence. Walk me through coherence. Okay. Coherence is a highly ordered state, both psychologically and physiologically. It is a high-performance state. It is not a sleepy time state. It's a very aware, engaged state. going to be more coherent. Being with their child, being with their grandchild, doing something we love to do, being in nature, or when we do meditative practices. Physiologically, all the major body systems begin to synchronize to the rhythmic beating pattern of the heart. Those systems would be things like brain function, digestion, respiration, immune system response, hormonal response. All those systems sync up, and when that happens, we end up in a very healthy, high-performance state. Now, this is useful. I'll give you one example.

One of the areas in which we've done a lot of training is athletics. We've trained professional golfers, Olympic gymnasts, swimmers, lots of different people, NFL kickers, baseball players, basketball players, all trained in coherence. Now, why would they want to be trained in something related to heart? Well, it's because in that physiological state of high coherence, things like reaction speed times improve, visual field improves. The athlete is operating at a more efficient level. And that's your physiological explanation of high coherence. The psychological one is this. Coherence is triggered by feeling a sustained positive emotion. When we're feeling that love we feel when we're with our child or grandkid, that engenders coherence. When we're feeling that love we feel when we're with our child or grandkid, that engenders coherence.

When we're showing appreciation rather than frustration, we're going to be more coherent. Once we're in that coherent state, once we have it triggered, then what's really happening is that those type of emotions become more readily available. They begin to flow more. So we end up feeling better at an emotional level. more. So we end up feeling better at an emotional level. So coherence is both a highly efficient and effective physiological state triggered by and accompanied by a very healthy, productive, and positive emotional state. So is it a chicken or egg or both? Do you have positive emotions, which puts you into coherence, or do you go into coherence, which produces positive emotions? That's a really great question, Eric. A hard one to answer.

It all happens pretty quick, doesn't it? Yep. Certainly, when we're measuring coherence, it requires the individual to make an effort to activate a positive emotion. And sometimes there'll be suggestions like, just feel appreciation for the good things in your life. Or can you feel the care and love you have for someone or something in your life? So there's a self-initiated effort made. And then once it's triggered, that's the chicken and the egg thing. And it's true of all emotions, really. We have emotional choices. We can choose emotions, yet we also are triggered by life's events, and we feel emotions as we are triggered. So it's a back-and-forth process. The best way to

deal with it is to recognize that whether it's chicken or egg, that we can create more coherence in our lives by actively activating more heart-related emotions. Yeah, I'm distracted by chicken and egg. I saw a completely inappropriate cartoon the other day that I seem to be unable to not say, and it's got a chicken laying in bed, and on the edge of the bed sitting there looking very despairing is the egg, and the chicken says, well, it only took me about 25 seconds to answer that question. Oh my God. I know, inappropriate. I couldn't help it though. It is a, it's a funny one. So when you talk about coherence and heart rate variability, you,

you're actually measuring this. We're not, we're, you have tools that you use to measure how our heart rate variability looks, how much in this coherent state we are, correct? Yeah, we took it even further than that. We have, I mean, there's research equipment and things that we use for research studies, but we took that same technology down to something that anybody can use. We turn it into consumer-related product. Yep. We have the Interbalance Trainer, which is an app that runs on iOS devices. You download it from the Apple Store for free. Then you buy a sensor, either from us or off of Amazon for the Interbalance Trainer.

And you plug it into your iPhone or your iPad, and now you've got the ability to look at your heart rate variability on the app. You can measure it for the degree of coherence, and it teaches you how to increase your coherence. So the app is a training tool that allows a person to learn how to increase their level of coherence. Now, we have that version. We have a desktop version for people that want to use it on their computers. We have a handheld device called M-Wave 2 that people use that don't have iOS devices. And there have been hundreds and hundreds of thousands of these sold all around the world. They're being used everywhere. And they're being used because people want to help with things. They want to learn how to better manage their emotions.

They want to sleep better. They want to perform better. They want to have better relationships. Heart rate variability, learning to increase your coherence, learning to use technology like this can benefit you in all those ways and more. And so they're used in everything from academic institutions to business people to ordinary folks on trying to get a handle on life to people involved in spiritual pursuits. There's a lot of applications for it. So I think it's one of the coolest things we did is we were able to take something that was looked at the only scientific terms and turn it into something that we can all use and turn

technology into something that doesn't take away anything from us. It actually helps us and improves us as human beings. Yeah, it's very interesting, those tools. I haven't had a chance to use them yet, but I'm definitely interested. So let's talk about how we move ourselves to coherence, because that's a big part of what you guys do. You've certainly done this research. You're explaining the importance of the heart, the way these things work. You've given tools to measure and monitor it. But what are some techniques that we could talk about here that people can use to move themselves towards coherence or to get better heart rate variability? You know, I'm glad you asked that question because sometimes people sort of stop at the

heart mass science and technology, and that's only a small part of what we do. As I mentioned earlier in our conversation, we were trying to create a system that people could use anywhere in life, in all societal segments, to help add more heart to everything that they do. in all societal segments to help add more heart to everything that they do. So to support that, we developed tools and techniques. You find them in our training programs, in our books. As you know, I think you've read both the books that I've co-authored, and there are tools and techniques in those books.

Things like quick coherence, a very simple three-step process that people can use anytime, anywhere to sort of reboot their system and reconnect with their heart's intelligence. We have a technique called the freeze frame technique, very powerful technique for accessing more intuition used for making decisions, clarity about anything we need to gain more understanding about from an intuitive perspective. We have communication tools. We have project planning tools like heart mapping, heart hologramming. All these are a skill set that people can learn through basically heart math courses that allow

them to really cultivate their heart's intelligence and then apply it in different aspects of their life. That's why we have different tools for different applications. So they can be used in different ways. You can add heart to everything that you do. So can you walk us through one of those techniques, like maybe the heart lock or the freeze frame, about how people do that so we give listeners something they can do now? Yeah, I'd be glad to. I didn't know that was appropriate or what we want to do on our conversation day, but I'd be happy to do that. Excellent. The best one to do on a program like this is to use the quick coherence technique. It's a technique that has a high utility value, meaning you can do it anytime, anywhere,

and it's going to put you in touch with your heart's intelligence. It's going to improve your heart rate variability, and it's going to create more coherence in your system. So it's great for rebooting your system, especially after you feel stressed. It's great for giving yourself a boost of energy when you feel a little bit tired, a little bit down. To be honest with you, it's a little late for me right now. And I did that technique before we started our show, just to get back to a certain solid place in myself before I went public here. So let me take everybody through it. It's a simple three-step process. You can do the technique with your eyes open or your eyes closed. So either way is fine. But the first step is called heart focus. And I'd

like everyone right now to focus your tension right in the area in the center of your chest, the area of your heart. Just feel your tension go right there. If you want to, you can put your hand there. But just feel the energy coming from up in the head, up in the brain and the mind. Feel it like taking an elevator maybe, like down into the area of the heart in the center of your chest. Now step two is called heart-focused breathing. I'd like you to breathe naturally and normally, but go ahead and breathe deeper than you normally

would. Nice deep breaths. And as you breathe, I want you to imagine that your breath is flowing in and out, right through the area of the heart, the center of your chest, right where you have your attention. Deep breaths. Imagine your breath is going in and out through the center of your chest. What's happening right now in your body is your autonomic nervous system is synchronizing. Hormones are being released into your body that are regenerative for you, and signals are beginning to change between heart and brain and the rest of the body.

But now let's take it to the third and most important step. It's called heart feeling. Continue with your heart-focused breathing, and now I'd like you to feel a positive heart-related emotion. Make it a gentle process. Don't force anything. Easy does it. Gentle process don't force anything easy does it general process maybe appreciate something appreciate some of the good things that are taking place in your life right now or again maybe feel the care and love you have

for someone could be a person, your spouse, significant other, child, grandchild, great friend, mentor. It could be your pet, your dog or your cat, someone or something that you love and appreciate and care for. And just feel that feeling

as you do your heart-focused breathing. As you're doing this step, heart-brain communication is improving dramatically. Signals going from the heart back to the brain are opening up higher perceptual centers in your brain. Hormones that regenerate you like oxytocin, DHEA, are being released into your body. This is healthy for your nervous system and for your physical heart.

It's adding regeneration to your system. And it's patterning you in a way to allow you to feel positive emotions more easily in the future. So the three steps to do this are simply heart focus, heart focus breathing, and then activating a heart feeling. And there you have quick coherence, a technique you can do easily, anytime, anywhere, in between meetings, driving in your car, before an important phone call. High utility value for a technique like this with big benefit. Thank you. I'm Jason Alexander.

And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer.

We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Brian Cranston is with us today. How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park.

Wayne Knight, welcome to Really No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really No Really. Yeah, really. No really. Go to reallynoreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason

Bobblehead. It's called Really, No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. One of the things that I think is always important to point out about techniques like this, and you guys make the point in one of your books, is that sometimes it takes a while to learn a technique like this and to have it start to generate the results you want. You guys actually say in the book, sometimes we give up too quickly on the things that would benefit us the most. Yeah, I think we have to take a very practical approach to this. There are no quick fixes these days. I mean, I think there are faster fixes, but there are no just ones that are instantaneous.

And I think, you know, especially when you're trying to help people improve themselves, you have to be realistic and practical about things. If you make too many promises, then there's disappointment. People do give up too quickly on things. You have to give anything you try, whether it's heart math or something else, a little time for it to mature. It takes at least three weeks of practicing something to create behavior change. That's something that researchers have looked at. But you can create new baselines in yourself easier than you might think. It just takes being genuine about doing it. It takes being real about it. It takes putting heart into it, to put it in my terms. It takes adding heart to what you're trying to do and trying to accomplish.

But if you give it a little time and you exercise some patience and you stay consistent with your practice, then you're going to see a result. But I love the fact, and I think probably you're quoting some of Doc Chaudry's work in our books, the doc always puts it in that context. He never wants to overpromise. He never wants it to sound like it's just a big quick fix thing that you do this little technique and suddenly all your problems go away. It's really about learning to be more maturely self-managed as we play the game of life. I couldn't agree more. I mean, I think that's a big part of what the show is about and talks about is that, you know, there are no magic bullets. Dramatic change is possible, but it takes effort and it takes time.

So one of the things I'd like to turn towards now is you guys talk a lot about following your heart, paying attention to what your heart says. And there's a lot of quotes in popular culture around the same thing. But I thought you guys said something that was really useful and important, and I'd like you to elaborate on it a little bit more. It can be challenging to distinguish the guidance of our heart from the mental and emotional beliefs that often shape our thoughts. You may have found, as I did years ago, that following what you thought was your heart got you into trouble. So how do we start to tell that difference?

Because that one is certainly challenging. Well, the first thing is to understand it's going to be a feeling more than it's going to be thoughts. It's the sensing that you have inside. In order to look and find with the signal, to notice those signals, it requires slowing down sort of the vibratory rate of the mind and emotions a little bit. It's the little pauses that we make. It's slowing things down just a little. It doesn't mean just going into some passive, totally laid down on the ground kind of state, but it's slowing down inside. It's finding a state of ease inside yourself, a feeling of ease and flow inside. And as you do that, you can do it while you're active, but as you do that, you begin to pick up different signals and they're more feelings than they are thoughts.

You feel like you should be doing this, or you feel like you shouldn't be doing that. You get these sensings, and you begin to experiment a little bit with it. I know that a lot of people think they follow their heart and got them into trouble and got them hurt and all that. Well, to me, they followed a part of their heart. They followed the one that still had all the attachments to outcome, still had all the expectations associated with it. They put their heart into that with a bunch of expectations, and the expectations weren't met, and suddenly they were disappointed, and they blame it on heart. But deeper down inside, at that true heart, the deeper heart intelligence, there's a guidance system. It doesn't have as much attachment to outcome.

It doesn't have as much of that over-emotional investment in things. It has a more discerning quality to it. Again, it's more mature. And that discerning quality never lets you down. It never leads you astray. It may take you to places that you don't like at the time, but as you continue to follow that, you'll find that over time, things work out better than you could possibly have imagined. If I may, can I share a little story about that, Eric? Sure, absolutely. Okay, so I'll make it as brief as I can. Early in my life, I had a completely different career and role. I was a rock musician. I was a drummer.

I started when I was nine years old. By the time I was in my early 20s, I was playing with people who had records out. It's all I ever thought I wanted to do. My entire identity was wrapped up in it. I also had an interest in my personal growth. And over a period of many years, as my awareness began to increase, I began to have less, I guess you could call it attachment to or less joy coming from that world of being in the music business. But yet I was so attached to it, it was hard to get out of it. You just couldn't walk away from that. All my identity was involved in it. Everything was there. I'd never done anything else with my life other than that, really. So it was hard to walk away. But my heart kept speaking,

and I kept ignoring it, but it kept speaking. it finally led me to a place where there was a major decision I had to make to go one way or another with my life and my career in my music career and I made a choice to leave music and I had no other options I jumped off the cliff I just knew that now I had to do something different with my life I did it and about a month after I did it, I was broke. I was living in a mobile home in eastern North Carolina with no job, and the job that I finally got was working for minimum wage in a mall. And at that time in my life, I was saying to myself, I will never follow my heart again as long as I live for the rest of my life. This is amazing.

How do you go from like that to this in a period of a couple of months? How do you go from those two worlds? I will never do this again. Today, when I look back at that, I go, wow, that was a super good choice and intelligent choice for me because look at what I have today.

I'll always love music, but I don't think it would have ever fulfilled me the way that what I do today has. Today, I don't think it would have ever fulfilled me the way that what I do today has. Today, I'm a part of an organization that's amazing. I have the ability to be an author, to be a speaker, to be a contributor to this. My life feels aligned with my mission. I feel like I'm helping people, so I'm fulfilled that I'm doing something good in the world. And all of that adds up to a very fulfilling and enriched life. I don't know that I would have had that had I stayed in music. I seriously doubt that I would. But sometimes you

have to take those chances. You have to follow what you really believe your heart is saying. You have to try it and go for it. And if it doesn't reward you right away, please don't turn around and look at the heart as the bad guy in this, the one that led you astray. Give it time. Let it play out over time. That's my story, and that's what I've learned. One of the many things I've learned about heart intelligence all these years is that you have to give it time and let it play out, but I've never seen my heart let me down in any decision I've ever made that really came from that deeper place inside myself. Excellent. That's a great story. And I think that is a great point for us to go ahead and wrap up the interview. I know you wanted to mention a special promotion that you guys had for our listeners. So why don't we do that and then

we'll wrap up. Okay. You know, Eric, before I came on air today, I got a call from the HeartMath marketing people that said, you know, we saw on your calendar you're doing a podcast today with Eric Zimmer. And would you like to make an offer? And I said, sure. And they said, well, we'll be willing to, you know, between now and the end of October to offer 25% off on the Heart Intelligence book, which is our newest book, which I co-authored with Doc Shouldery, our founder, and two other HeartMath leaders, Dr. Deborah Rosman and Dr. Roland McCready. It's 25% off on the book. And if you're interested in the Interbalance Trainer or M-Wave 2 or M-Wave Pro, the technology that we talked about earlier, you can also get 25% off of that as well. And that's a really good offer there. So you would simply go to a URL, heartmath.com forward slash

heartbook. And there you get a coupon code and you can put that coupon code in the shopping cart and you get your discount. The coupon code and all that will be on the page that is associated with the interview that we're doing now. So you'll be able to see the coupon code there. Excellent. Well, thank you so much, Howard, for coming on the show. I really enjoyed our conversation and I enjoyed learning more about heart math. Eric, thank you very much for having me and thanks everyone for taking your time and to listen to this and I hope you've benefited in some way from it. Excellent podcast at oneufeed.net slash Howard. And just as a reminder, go to oneufeed.net slash Facebook or go on Facebook and search for the One You Feed discussion group and join in on the conversation.

Thanks. Bye.