HeartMath’s EmWave: A Grown Up’s Toy

  My idea of a cool “toy,” is anything that shows me how to do something I couldn’t do before and expands my thinking. Such toys are rare, which is why I’m excited about my newest purchase.  HeartMath is a heart-research and product company whose newsletters I’ve been following on-line for years. Founder Doc Childre measures two distinctive heartbeat waves. These waves both help manage stress and emotions. They also create a space to perform with high degrees of emotional intelligence and intuition.

As much as I’d wanted to post in March, with scads of ideas swirling in my head, a seemingly interminable upper respiratory infection had me barely able to get out of bed. The good news is that, unable to otherwise work, I ordered HeartMath to test drive.

The software measures the

parasympathetic and sympathetic heart waves.  According to HeartMath, the parasympathetic wave is even, balanced, and smooth on a graph-representing the heart’s natural rhythm.  On the other hand, the sympathetic wave measures the conscious mind’s chatter. When the two are in sync with one another, the waves are congruent and smooth-convergent. When not, the waves are a visual cacophony of zigs and zags. Not a pretty sight……When in harmony, though, the waves are smooth and even, and we are operating from wise heart-based intelligence. When the heart wave is all jaggy, we are up in our heads fighting ourselves-and our bodies.

HeartMath’s hardware and software teaches the user how to create the congruence. In my first session, I quickly discovered that in spite of all my meditation and calming techniques, convergence or entrainment is far from easy, at least for me. Getting to the “good” wave for 5 minutes a day is the goal. After two trys, I’ve achieved about 60 seconds. Even that small amount has produced slight positive changes I can notice…… More to come as I learn more……