#Cardiac coherence drivers

In our resilience training programs, we suggest that the ability to build and sustain resilience is related to self-management and efficient utilization of energy resources across four domains: physical, emotional, mental and spiritual (Figure 2.1). It has been suggested that resilience should be considered as a state rather than a trait and that a person’s resilience can vary over time as demands, circumstances and level of maturity change.

Therefore, it follows that a key to sustaining good health, optimal function and resilience is the ability to manage one’s emotions. We define resilience as the capacity to prepare for, recover from and adapt in the face of stress, adversity, trauma or challenge.

#Cardiac coherence drivers

Without emotions, life would lack meaning and purpose.Įmotions and resilience are closely related because emotions are the primary drivers of many key physiological processes involved in energy regulation. Emotions are also what allow us to experience the pain and grief of loss. They connect us to others and give us the courage to do what needs to be done, to appreciate our successes, to protect and support the people we love and have compassion and kindness for those who are in need of our help. Emotions determine what we care about and what motivates us. Our emotions infuse life with a rich texture and transform our conscious experience into a meaningful living experience. In other words, reexperiencing the feeling of anger provoked by the memory has a greater effect than thinking about it. Our research shows a purely mental activity such as cognitively recalling a past situation that provoked anger does not produce nearly as profound an effect on physiological processes as actually engaging the emotion associated with that memory. Recurring feelings of worry, anxiety, anger, judgment, resentment, impatience, overwhelm and self-doubt often consume a large part of our energy and dull our day-to-day life experiences.Īdditionally, emotions, much more so than thoughts alone, activate the physiological changes comprising the stress response. Stressful emotions clearly can arise in response to external challenges or events, and also from ongoing internal dialogs and attitudes. In essence, stress is emotional unease, the experience of which ranges from low-grade feelings of emotional unrest to intense inner turmoil. Whether it’s a minor inconvenience or a major life change, situations are experienced as stressful to the extent that they trigger emotions such as annoyance, irritation, anxiety and overwhelm.

It is the feelings of anxiety, irritation, frustration, lack of control, and hopelessness that are actually what we experience when we describe ourselves as stressed.

From a psychophysiological perspective, emotions are central to the experience of stress. On the other hand, positive emotions and effective emotion self-regulation skills have been shown to prolong health and significantly reduce premature mortality. Stress and negative emotions have been shown to increase disease severity and worsen prognosis for individuals suffering from a number of different pathologies. Unspecified negative emotional arousal, often described as stress, distress or upset, has been associated with a variety of pathological conditions, including hypertension, silent myocardial ischemia, sudden cardiac death, coronary disease, cardiac arrhythmia, sleep disorders, metabolic syndrome, diabetes, neurodegenerative diseases, fatigue and many other disorders. Īn early editorial on the relationships between stress and the heart accepted the proposition that in about half of patients, strong emotional upsets precipitated heart failure.

Find a Certified HeartMath ProfessionalĪs far back as the middle of the last century, it was recognized that the heart, overtaxed by constant emotional influences or excessive physical effort and thus deprived of its appropriate rest, suffers disorders of function and becomes vulnerable to disease.

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