Please note, this is an automated transcript so it is not 100% accurate.

Howard:
We are evolving very quickly as a global species. As we expand our consciousness, we begin to understand the concept of self-responsibility more. That reduces the feeling of being a victim. And when we have that sense of self-responsibility, we actually are gaining power. We’re gaining the power that say, “Well, wait a minute, if I’m responsible for this, I’m also can be responsible for changing it.” Every time we decide to appreciate rather than complain, every time we decide to have compassion rather than judge, every time we decide to have a feeling of love instead of a feeling of separation and hate, every time we do that, we’re making progress, and that progress does add up.

Guy:
Howard, welcome back to the podcast. It’s been about six.

Howard:
Guy, thank you for having me again. You’re a brave man to have me on twice. And certainly a lot has happened in life and in the world for you, for me, and for all the people who are listening to us right now, and it’s been, uh, quite a time, haven’t it, hasn’t it, since the last time we spoke?

Guy:
It’s wild. Like honestly, we’ve, like, we’ve gone through COVID, we’ve gone through different crises that seem to be happening. We’ve had the, the war breaking out again. We’ve had the, the petrol crisis. There’s, there’s a constant narrative of fear that seems to be bombarding us, and our, our poor nervous systems. If we if we don’t look after ourselves, we’re, we’re just gonna be a walking mess, which, uh … And then make very interesting choices about life from a fear-based place instead of a heart-based place, and I think that’s where this whole conversation is gonna go today, to be honest with you, Howard. You know?

With that, with that in mind, what I thought I’d open up with as well is because how do you look at the heart and the intersection between the physical, the human, the stress aspects, but also then the metaphysical and the spiritual aspects? I think we, we kind of get devoid of the spiritual aspects ’cause we get caught so, uh, so caught up in materialism. But that for me, it feels like the heart is the, is the gateway to it all if we start.

Howard:
my belief too, Guy. I mean, this is my life’s work ’cause I’ve been doing this for over 50 years now. And, uh, a simple way of saying is I see we have two hearts. You know, we have the physical heart, and we have this energetic heart. And within the context of that, there are all these heart qualities, emotional qualities, and intuition, and various aspects of, uh, who we are as, as human beings associated with this concept that’s called heart. So at HeartMath, we explore all angles, all sides of that, and have for a number of years. At the physical level, you know, we have been the people that mapped out the fact that the heart does more than pump blood, that it’s an information processing center in our body, sending important information to the brain and throughout the rest of the system.

That was our work, our pioneering work. We also identified optimal states of that heart-brain-body communication, which is called coherence, and developed technology like the HeartMath app and sensor to measure coherence, all these different things that we’ve done. Why I think that’s important right now is that there are many people, like your listeners, that would be, uh, have an understanding of the spiritual heart, but a lot of people don’t. Uh, but what they can relate to is that they need help with some of the things that they’re thinking and feeling these days. You mentioned earlier just that, uh, the stressors that the world has gone through since the last time we talked are creating many, many challenges for people, and their nervous systems are overloaded.

They are struggling to make sense out of life. Um, the stress levels are at an all-time high. And for those people, um, understanding heart at the physical level and understanding that when you improve heart-brain-body communication, and therefore increase your coherence, that there are many psychological and physiological health benefits that are associated with that. So that’s one angle of view that we’ve taken, and we think it’s of, of service. We, we, we understand that to introduce people to the deeper understandings of heart, we have to meet them where they’re suffering and try to help them with the things that they’re going through in life, and so that’s part of what we’re doing today, is, is reinforcing that approach. At the same time, wow, the heart’s so much more than that, you know? Uh

Guy:
Yeah, totally. And what, do you know what I found really fascinating? And I, I always use my own personal journey as a reference point, right? ‘Cause I used to dabble with meditation and busy mind and, and you know, it, it just felt like hard work. And the moment I started to bring my awareness into my heart and actually use that as my meditative practice, it’s almost like, let’s just let go of my thoughts. They, they can just do- my mind can do what it wants. I’m just gonna bring me inside of my heart on a daily basis. And it got to the point where I could actually feel the energy emanating out that you, you guys already speak of. And then when I sort of discovered your work, it was like, oh, this is giving me validation to what’s happening in that. And I’d love your thoughts on, on that, those aspects as well, because that ch- that changed my life, mate.

Howard:
Well, I understand, and I think, uh, when we allow our mind to surrender to the heart, the mind actually is the big winner, you know? The quality of thoughts, the quality of perceptions actually improve. You know, brain, mind, all of that logical thinking necessary as we live in the, in the world we live in. But there’s limitations to that if we only see it through that lens. And that busy, overactive mind is constantly churning, constantly taking in information, constantly dealing with stimulus, and all that goes on as we live life from the neck up blocks out a lot of the, of the, of the fulfillment that we could be experiencing. When we surrender to the heart, what I think people begin to find is that, you mentioned it in the very beginning of this conversation, is that it’s the gateway into a lot of things. To me, it’s the, it’s the doorway into a, a connection with what I’ll just generally call our higher self. You know, a self that’s larger than our personality, larger than this human, this, this Howard Martin guy that’s, you know, living on Earth.

You know? It’s, it, it opens us up to this higher consciousness that we all have within us. And when we reach places within that new consciousness, that’s when we begin to see things differently. Our perceptions widen. Our points of view have more flexibility, more open-endedness. The emotional qualities that we can experience in the course of any given day are, are more open-ended, more exciting, more hopeful. You know, we’re not as caught up in the stress rat race as we would be when we’re living life including the heart in the process. And I think that’s part of the way we experience it. When we begin to actually approach things like our spiritual practices, our meditations, and the various things we do, by adding heart to it, it enhances that whole process, and we find there’s a lot of new in, in that, uh, that we’ve been looking for all along.

Guy:
Yeah, no, beautiful. And just, it’s just coming out to me to ask you, and even if it’s your beliefs or, or what you’ve looked at heart math is because this … I’ve done, you know, over 400 podcasts, I think, over the years and chat- yeah, and spoke to a lot of great people like yourself. And the, and I never used to ponder on it until I started exploring the work, was this school of thought around, well, what is consciousness? What is our higher self and our bodies and the relationships to it? And, you know, there’s a very standard school of thought that our brain is producing our awareness and our consciousness. But then there’s another school of thought that we’re actually receiving it, and our bodies are allowing to experience the physical reality in, in these times of things. And I was wondering what your thoughts were on that kind of thought process and where the heart then hooks up into.

Howard:
Well, this is fun. I’m, I wanna talk about these things. Uh, as a matter of fact, you know, about 10 days ago, speaking at a conference, I was speaking on, uh, increasing your vibration, you know, as an important s- step in the process of, um, managing life right now. And the way I started it was asking a question, “Do you believe in consciousness?” And of course, everybody raised their hands. And I go, “Well, that’s interesting. I believe in it, too.” B- but nobody can define it. There’s no clear definition of what consciousness even is. There’s no science that measures consciousness. It’s not physical. It can’t be measured. You cannot see it. There’s no known location for it.

It does not have a postal code, you know? It’s like, it’s just, it’s this thing we know nothing about, yet if we’ve been involved in personal growth and spiritual growth, we’ve spent countless hours trying to expand it. So the irony in that is we’re trying to expand something that we can’t measure, we can’t see, we don’t even know where it is, but yet we believe in it. So I believe that we live in this vast field of information called consciousness, and I mean vast. That we only access a teeny, teeny little amount of it through the five senses that we actually have. That we are drawing that consciousness into us, but here’s where it gets interesting. We are also feeding the field of consciousness, so it’s both ways.

What we feed the field determines what the field reflects back to us. And as my friend Gregg Braden said to me one time, and he said that. He said it was reflecting back not what we think in our minds, but what we truly feel in our hearts. You know, where we’re not really faking anything, where it’s beyond what we th- what we’re pretending to think or pretending to feel, or we just don’t have awareness to even understand what we’re feeling. It’s the deeper self. That deeper self is imprinting the field. The field is reflecting back information. We are getting small amounts of information from the field, interpreting it through the five senses, and then that becomes what we see as reality, what our reality actually is. So it’s a really interesting co-creative dance we have with this infinite field of information that’s generically called consciousness. So it’s a two-way street, and I think it’s a fascinating way to, to, uh, to look at things and to try to discover newness about ourselves, about each other, and about the world.

Guy:
So with that in mind of what you say, I’m just trying to wrap my head around it a bit, and th- w- then reality is reflecting back at us how we’re feeling inside. So we’re only sort of meeting reality equal to our emotional state, and

Howard:
emotions… Go ahead. Continue. I’m sorry

Guy:
please. I was … No, that’s okay. Yeah, I’m just trying to even articulate what I’m trying to, where my, my brain is going at the moment because d- do you feel then the, the living field of consciousness is actually mirroring back our reality due to the state we’re actually being in? So if we were in a different state, we’d actually be having a different

Howard:
a good way of saying it. It’s reflecting back what we’re actually think- which w- we’re feeding it, what we’re feeding it through our thoughts and our feelings. So the reality of our thoughts and feelings is imprinting the field. The field’s reflecting that back, you know, in a certain way. And so it is important to understand the emotional component of that ’cause, you know, thoughts are one thing, but thoughts have almost no power until they’re supported with emotion, you know? Emotion is the driver of what we, how we experience life. Everything we experience in life, every moment in any given day creating some sort of emotional response.

Some of them we enjoy, some of them we don’t, but there’s emotional responses happening continuously all the time, and those emotions are where the real game of life is being played. Again, it isn’t just what we think, it’s especially what we feel inside. So if we’re imprinting that field with, let’s say, appreciation versus complaining, it opens the door for more fulfilling experiences to occur. If we’re constantly complaining about what we don’t have rather than appreciating what we do have, we get that picture. We get a continuous picture of lo- of lack that keeps reflecting back to us from the field. I’m not good enough. I don’t have enough. I don’t have enough money. I hate my job. My relationship’s not good.

All that’s coming from these com- these constant complaints that we’re feeding the field, and those re- those perceptions continually reinforce themself. When we interrupt that kind of thinking and feeling and we s- look at life through the lens of, you know, maybe I don’t like my job that much, and maybe I, you know, am not that happy in my relationship, but… And then you start adding in all the good things in your life, you know? You begin to feed the field with something different. And over time, and not a long time, life can begin to change. It will begin to change relative to what we’re, what we’re offering that field. That’s just one example of using appreciation or gratefulness as, as the example of that.

But what about care? What about compassion? You know, um, many people today feel lonely. They feel out of touch with themself, out of touch with other people, out of touch with society, out of touch with life, and they feel alone, and they feel afraid. And they often feel, I think, that life is, does n- does not have the meaning they thought it was gonna have, and they’re gonna live a whole life, and when they die, there’s gonna be a handful of people that even know they were here, you know? And I think that that often, uh, comes from, you know, a lack of heart connection, a lack of heart connection with themselves and then, of course, with the external things th- like that. So one way of looking at that with, through examples of what we feed the field would be this: What if we offered A bit more compassion instead of judgment every time we run into someone or something or some situation that doesn’t meet what we think is the way it should be.

The general tendency is we immediately judge. You know, they are not good people. They should not be doing that, this, that, and the other, rather than saying to ourselves, “You know, I don’t know this person’s life story. I don’t know why they’re the way they are and much less why they’re behaving the way they’re behaving. Maybe I should offer a bit more latitude in what I think about them, a bit more compassion and understanding of not knowing what their life may be like that’s causing, you know, behaviors I don’t condone.” So you don’t have to like what someone’s doing, but you don’t have to judge them so hard for it. As we do that, more self-love will show up

Guy:
Yeah.

Howard:
into their own existence

Guy:
How does, how does one get out of the story of their own victimhood in that, you know? Like, w- could it be as simple as, I guess you gotta want to change first, really, at the, at the base, at the basis of everything as we start to explore, explore the heart. ‘Cause it feels, like, ’cause I’m a very, um, optimistic kinda guy, you know? Everyth- glass house full, glass half full . And, and kinda go in that, that’s k- that’s kind of in me, and, and exploring this comes quite naturally in, in some ways, you know? But often I see people as well that they, this, like trying to move a rock, you know? If, if they want the change, but they, they don’t. They don’t- it’s almost like they won’t believe in this is possible or, or something behind that is, is stopping

Howard:
It’s not easy. And, you know, we’re, we live in a world where these things are normal, right? So there’s a reinforcement that’s happening all around us all the time of the way it’s… That’s the way it is, and you can only do this, and you can’t do that. And then other people doing the same thing, and you sort of gravitate towards that, and next thing you know, you’re doing it, right? So w- it’s tough to break away from that paradigm, you know, and begin to see things differently. When we look at, uh, consciousness, there are many benefits that come, of course, as we expand this thing that we don’t know what it is, right? But as we expand our consciousness, I’ll give you one, one example. We begin to understand the concept of self-responsibility more.

That reduces the feeling of being a victim. Uh, it isn’t what they have done to us. It’s, you know, our own self-responsibility, recognizing how we have contributed to the life that we have. And when we have that sense of self-responsibility in there, w- we actually are gaining power. We’re gaining the power to say, “Well, wait a minute. If I’m responsible for this, then I’m also can be responsible for changing it.” And then we begin to look at ways in which we can change. Um, and again, it’s not gonna be easy all the time, and depending on what our lives are like and what we have experienced in life to break through the old paradigms. We see people all the time doing it, don’t we?

We see people that have made massive changes in their life. You have, I’m sure, Guy. I certainly, I certainly have. Uh, I’m not the same man I was, you know, 25, 30 years ago or whatever. Um, it’s… W- we do grow. We do change. As we get more conscious, we just become more aware of our own capacity to make the changes that we really wanna make, and then we take it a step at a time. And every time we make an effort to change an attitude or behavior, every time we decide to appreciate rather than complain, every time we decide to have compassion rather than judge, every time we decide to have a, a feeling of love instead of a feeling of, of separation and hate, every time we do that, we’re making progress, and that progress does add up.

Uh, that’s where heart comes in. This is not a mind thing that’ll make that work. We’re not gonna think our way through it with the logical mind. We have to engage in intelligence. It’s faster, quicker, and more dynamic than just the mind intelligence. That is the heart’s intelligence. And through heart, through activating the qualities of the heart within ourselves, all these other things start to get easier, and then new possibilities begin to emerge. As we see success, it motivates us to do more, and the more we do, the more we get. So, uh, I see people going through this type of, of, of change progression all the time, and I see them struggle at times, and I see them break through at times. And I see people’s lives getting better as a result of just making the efforts to approach life from the heart

Guy:
No, beautiful. And I, I’m intrigued to know what your thoughts is around then the heart and connection to others, and where my mind is going with this, ’cause we’ve run, I think now 32 five-day retreats for people. You know, there’s three of us facilitators and different, different vantage points and experiences and, and we normally hold about a space for maybe between 30 and 40 people. And we’ve done, I, I’ve lost count of many one-day events we’ve done, right? This is over, like, a eight-year period now. And what’s evident is that when you bring individual people in together, there’s like, and you start to intentionally want to move forward and open your heart, there’s, it’s, it’s like there’s an amplification.

It’s almost like the power of prayer is, or intention is amplified, and it becomes tangible. F- and for me, it almost reinforces the connection of humans do need other humans. There, there’s, there’s something beautiful about that instead of trying to do all this in a, in a vacuum, if you like, as well, ’cause we live in such a isolated world. I’m just curious to know what you’ve, at The HeartMath, have looked at around those I’m actually here right now at a retreat space in Taupo, New Zealand, and it’s beautiful. And it really brings home the difference between understanding this work and actually living it, because that’s what retreats can do and why we’re so passionate about it. They give you the space to slow down, to reconnect, and truly let something deeper land.

So it’s not just an idea, but it’s a lived experience. That’s why we created Live in Flow. So if you’ve been feeling this shift in your own life and you know you’re ready to go deeper, then come back to liveinflow.co to find out more. Anyway, back to the episode

Howard:
Well, let me just say this. I think it’s probably why people are attracted to the retreats that you do, and I’ve seen them on your website, all these amazing retreats you do. So you’re taking people through a process using various modalities that have worked for you, that you teach, and ultimately, it begins to open their hearts, and they begin to feel more of a connection with the other people that are there, right? You know, and there’s an, a shared energetic environment that begins to emerge. You know, if you look at a group of people like that, everybody has their own energetic fields, and then when you bring them together, there’s a collective field, right? And as that field begins to change, people begin to, to relax more into themselves, into their hearts, into being themselves, and they begin to share more openly with each other from a heart-to-heart space. When that happens, they feel more accepted. They feel less separate,

Guy:
The…

Howard:
and that amplifies as the weekend goes on, right?

Guy:
Yeah, no, totally. And you mentioned the collective field as well, ’cause I often ponder about the, if there’s a field that’s constantly shifting over those days of a, of an event, but also then the large consciousness field of what, what

Howard:
you probably know, and I’ll share it with your, with your viewers right now, um, I mean, one of the things we, we’ve done at HeartMath is, is, and other researchers have done it too, but w- we’ve shown that the heart’s producing a magnetic field. You know, the heart is an electrical organ. Yeah, and we go to the doctor, the doctor says, “I’m gonna do your electrocardiogram now.” What did they just say? Electrocardiogram. They’re measuring electricity produced by the heart. Now, the heart produces enough bioelectricity, strongest in the body, that it creates a magnetic field. Now, measured with conservative measurement equipment, they’re called magnetometers, they measure magnetic fields, you can measure that field about three feet or one meter outside the body, and that field’s surrounding us in 360 degrees all around the body.

Everybody’s producing that, you and me right now. Now, what science says is that that field is a very finite field, in that it dissipates very quickly after it reaches its, you know, its three feet or one meter level. However, they also propose that the field is interacting at a quantum level, that it’s interacting in quantum matrix of information and other fields beyond a magnetometer measurement. So the proposed theory is that the, that the field produced by the heart is interfacing with these larger fields of, um, uh, either group fields, uh, or the field of consciousness itself. So that’s my belief. And, and so we have a, a phrase we use at HeartMath from time to time when we wanna evaluate what we’re doing at any given moment, and that’s to ask a question, “What am I feeding the field?”

What am I actually putting into it? If we’re in this collective field, what am I contributing to that field, you know? And so in group dynamics, especially ones that are based upon spiritual practice, very often the, that field effect becomes more obvious and you begin to sense it, you begin to know it. But we, we’re, we’re interfacing with all kinds of different fields. Uh, a lot of our other research has gone into what’s called, uh, energetic connectivity, which is understanding the unseen but energetic connections taking place between all living systems, you know? So a lot of our research today has gone way past heart, brain, body communication into much larger context of how we relate to these different fields. And, uh, we’re seeing some dynamic results. We’re seeing a lot of non-local effects that are happening, things that are unexplained through normal, you know, normal physics, you know, that are happening.

Guy:
Uh, can you give us an example?

Howard:
this one study where we had groups of people around the world, I think it was over 100 and some people, and they were located literally around the world in different countries and different locations, and they were wearing, um, portable heart monitors that they wore for six months. And these heart monitors are picking up what’s called the heart rate variability patterns, the changes occurring in our heart rhythms. Um, and so what we saw was in a number of cases is that we would ask those groups to do a heart meditation. We call it heart lock-in. It’s one of the heart math techniques.

Do a heart lock-in at a specific time. And what we would see is a global synchronization taking place in the heart rhythms. The heart rhythm patterns in the various groups were looking the same. They were synchronizing. And then where it even got more fun is that we saw that synchronization actually continue the next day, where at some level looking at heart rhythms, there was a synchronized heart rhythm pattern or patterns, very similar patterns happening in the groups located in different parts of the world, different societies, you know, different cultures, all that stuff. You know, Saudi Arabia and Lithuania and United States and, you know, all these places. But the heart rhythms were synchronizing and they became more synchronized when they were doing a heart meditation

Guy:
Fascinating, isn’t it? Well, I guess what questions does that open up into then that there’s, we- we’re instantly connected beyond the space and time field? Like, is it, it’s, it’s instantaneous. There’s a, there’s a synchronization, a connection at some level. Does that give then lean into how maybe a friend or a sister or a brother, you could be thinking the same thoughts and then y- you pick up the phone and they’re like, “Oh my God, I was just

Howard:
It relates to that, you know, to why these things could occur. I mean, the way- the simplest thing I got out of it, Gaia, was to say that when we begin to show energetic connectivity is real, we realize we’re not alone. We’re all in this together, that we are all ex- something- experiencing something similar, and that begins to dissolve the feelings of separation, you know? One of the greatest challenges we face in society and in the world today is separation. Um, and I think one of the antidotes to that that’s gonna advance us more quickly, uh, is learning to get along better with each other. Uh, it’s some simple statement, but learning to get along is one of the keys to the next level of consciousness unfolding on planet Earth, which will result in drawing in solutions to some of the challenges that we see today that look like they have no solution.

Uh, it will come from learning to get along better. So the more we can understand that we’re not as separate as we thought, that there’s a lot of commonality and common factors, uh, between all people, it opens the door for at least better choices about learning to get along. You know, it doesn’t solve the whole problem, but it adds a layer of scientific understanding, um, that gives us, um, more, I think, motivation to want to get along and to want to cooperate and want to accept one another, um, from an open heart

Guy:
For sure, yeah. It’s like the universal language, the heart, isn’t it? It needs no words, you know, because we, we’ve, we’ve, we feel through it. I’m curious as well to, uh, lean into this aspect ’cause people, I think, doubt themselves. They don’t trust themselves and, you know, we’ve been conditioned to outsource, uh, opinion as well. You know, like we’re always looking externally for, for solutions when there’s an internal thing and I, I th- I often ponder about, ’cause I got two young children as well, you know, and you can see they’re just very open. They they’re, they’re just in the moment and, and, and even, even to the point where I’m watching their language develop, like, uh, you’re, you’re born with no words.

We, we kind of forget that. There’s just a, there’s this, there’s a presence and then it’s, it’s learned. So I think my question is, is how do we kind of develop the, the heart intelligence of the, the, the knowing and letting the heart inform the mind, like we said at the beginning, and starting to trust if there is a interaction and connection to the field and intuition and a sense of knowing and, and surrendering into more of that, as opposed to having to control all our outcomes and live from this paradigm

Howard:
it becomes from self-experimentation, becoming our own self scientists in that regard. But one thing I can ask everyone watching right now is simply this, you know, do you remember a time in your life when you got an intuitive prompt about something and you didn’t follow it? And what was the outcome? And very often, most of the answers I get back if I ever ask that question are, “It didn’t work out well. I should have listened to what I was feeling inside,” right? And then I ask the rhetorical question of like, “Well, what about times when you did, and how did that work out?” And in most cases, it worked out much better for people.

So it’s tough to do because the mind wants to, you know, wants to figure everything out. The mind wants to know everything. The mind wants to be sure about everything, you know? And, and so it’s tough to let go sometimes and go with, you know, sort of what you feel in the flow of things. You know, there’s different forms of intuition, but one of those is called direct knowingness. That’s when you… It bypasses a lot of the thought process, and it is a feeling more than it is a thought about something. It feels right to do this, or it feels like it’s not right to do this, and we get these prompts all the time. Uh, and then when we do have those feelings, try acting on them, you know, in one way or another and see what happens, right?

See what y- see what goes on there. There’s a balance in all that too, Guy. I mean, I think we have to… You know, there’s a term that, um, someone used with me one time, uh, y- in b- in business. It was about making decisions based on informed intuition Means don’t ignore the facts, but, but don’t just, like, blindly do something because my heart said do it. You know, it’s like, don’t… Y- you don’t wanna ignore the facts, but there, there’s, there’s also s- nuance and subtlety and all that where the heart’s adding qualities to that. It’s adding information. It’s adding understanding and a breadth of understanding into things. Don’t ignore that either, you know?

Don’t ignore that either. It’s like, it’s sort of a combination between the two, and we develop those capacities as we learn to, to just, uh, put out more love. And that’s a… What a, what a squishy statement, but, you know, the more we’re actually generating and consciously putting out love, the more we’re gonna make contact with what I will call our intuitive intelligence. And that intelligence is really always there. It’s, it, it’s something we just don’t tune into much. But information that’s nonlinear, that is giving us directions for the best moves in the game of life, is constantly available. We don’t usually pick up on that information when we don’t have an open heart.

You open the heart some, you begin to love more, then that type of information becomes more readily available. And then, again, you experiment. And, you know, again, I… When I’m making decisions about things in my life, big or small, or as an executive here at HeartMath, the kind of decisions we’re having to make now, big strategic decisions on where we’re going, what we’re doing next, and forming things like our organizational structure, our brand, all those things are happening for me in real time. You know, were happening before this interview and will be happening after it, you know? In those situations, in meetings, it’s just trying to stay present, trying to stay aware, trying to understand the facts, trying to understand other people’s perspectives, and then using my own intuitive intelligence to say, “Hmm,” you know, “this actually feels like the best way to go.”

And there are many examples in business where it worked out one way and it didn’t work out another, you know? Uh, I saw a show recently where it was talking about the evolution of the car m- car business in the United States, you know? And there was a point in, right after World War II when Ford Motor Company was really struggling. They were having a hard time, so they s- decided they would try a new kind of car, and it was a big risk. If it worked, they were gonna be fine. If it didn’t, they’re out of business, right? So they developed this new-looking Ford. Well, up until that time, the other cars, if you think about them, they were big cars, and they had these big roofs that went like this, right?

You know, the roof was high, and then the car, like the big Buicks and the Oldsmobiles and all that, and the roof would be up. Ford made this kind of flatter car, you know, and didn’t have as high a roof. The other car companies didn’t get it. They looked at this car and said, “Nobody’s gonna buy it.” And you know why they said it wouldn’t? Because in those days men wore hats, and they said the men would have to go down like this to get in the car without the high roof and would knock their hats off or mess with their hats, so they won’t do it because of their hats. So they missed the whole thing that Ford was picking up on, is the world was ready for a more modern car. The world was ready for something smaller, something cooler looking, something all of that. And they eventually had to change and had to catch up, but they missed the intuitive signals because they were basing it upon a standard paradigm of men wearing hats. Certain, certain kind of hats

Guy:
No, beautiful. I get, I get it. And lead- leading onto that then, how much do we know about the Earth’s magnetic field and even the collective field that’s influencing our field at any given time, and the relationship to understanding that so we can best navigate ourselves with those influences that are happening all the

Howard:
is known about that now, and HeartMath’s making a contribution to that understanding. Um, research has been going on for a while looking at the Earth’s magnetic fields. There’s a geomagnetic field, which is what a compass measures, and, uh, it’s also the ionosphere, which is a less dense field. It operates in conjunction with the geomagnetic field. Starts just above the atmosphere and goes about 120 miles up in space. These two fields are our protective layers against what I’ll generically call space weather. Uh, they were part of the evolution of the Earth that allowed life to actually happen here.

Without those fields, we’re a rock. You know, nothing could live, so they’re b- they’re blocking out solar radiation, cosmic rays, things like that. So these magnetic fields are part of the Earth, like, let’s call it Earth ecology, for example. Now, a lot of research has been done beyond HeartMath showing a direct connection between changes in the field and human health and behavior. Correlations have been made around increases in activity in the field to health problems, for example, like, um, heart attacks and strokes and things like that. A lot of global events, societal events, have been linked to changes occurring in the field And at HeartMath, what we’ve done is, um, our scientists have, have developed the Global Coherence Monitoring System, and they are very sensitive monitors that measure changes in the ionosphere and the geomagnetic field, and there’s seven of them placed strategically around the planet.

And we’re looking at those fields constantly. That information’s coming back to our research labs, and we’re beginning to, to correlate even more, uh, global effect of changes occurring in the fields. But here’s where it gets interesting. I saw a presentation, um, a couple weeks ago about one of these scientists that works on this with us, and she laid out the fact that she showed the other side of the equation, that many good things are happening when there’s more activity in the field. She’s showing correlations to personal coherence measurements of a, I think 1.8 million samples, showing that as the solar activity’s been increasing, that the coherence scores have been increasing, for example. So the point that she made was is that it’s our choice what we do with activity in the fields.

It isn’t that the fields are creating the problem. It’s how we’re choosing to relate to that, that benefits are occurring when there’s an increase in the activity in the fields. But we know for sure, uh, through some of the same kind of research I described earlier, um, with the people wearing the heart monitors for six months, that as changes were occurring in the geomagnetic and ionospheric fields, there were global changes happening in these people, similar type changes. Uh, in addition to the measurements of their heart rate variability, they were taking randomized psychometric surveys about what they were experiencing, how they were feeling, and we saw a lot of similarities, simultaneous similarities over the same basic amount of time in these people, and then correlating that with changes occurring in the geomagnetic field.

So we could see changes in the field correlating to changes in the way people felt globally. So there’s a direct connection between us and the Earth’s energetic fields, which would be a great example of looking at energetic connectivity between all things, all living systems. So it is well known now that these fields are impacting human health and behavior. I think what we’re doing at HeartMath is being able to show that those benefits can be really good ones if we’re making the choices to align more with our own hearts

Guy:
So the, w- with that in mind, the, a question is popping in there. Does that mean we … Oh, I say we as a royal we, I mean what you mentioned. But that we can look at, uh, the, the, I guess the species as humans and the, the collective coherence that’s happening as a species, and if we’re expanding our awareness, our consciousness because of the field in- interpretation. Is that what you’re saying as well? So we could look at this and go, “Wow, we’re evolving as a

Howard:
as a species, but it’s still individual through the choices that we make, you know? Uh, what, what we do in our lifetime is up to us, really, and how much evolution we get or how much we don’t. And it still comes down to what we do. And so there’s a collective evolution that’s happening, and I think that we are evolving very quickly as a global species. Now, that doesn’t mean everybody, and it doesn’t mean all the time, but I, I remain very hopeful a- about where things are headed. I see the chaos and confusion that we have today, and I think I see it through the lens of, of, of compassion. At the same time, I see it as, as part of a necessary process that’s causing people to go a little deeper, to wake up a bit more, that is actually, uh, helping to fuel the mo- the momentum of consciousness expansion.

It’s helping us to grow. And in time, it will get better, you know, and it won’t be forever before it does. We’re going through a stormy weather right now. But, you know, sometimes when the storm comes up, it, it’s scary, it’s stormy, and then the storm quickly goes away at times. And when it does and the sun comes out, everything looks beautiful. Well, you know, I think we’re in the stormy period right now, but I think that the, the sun coming out and the beauty is not too far down the road for us in our future. It has a lot to do, though, with what we choose individually and then collectively. We’re calling the shots on that. My feeling is, is that we’re in this shift in consciousness that is inevitable.

It isn’t just about us. It’s about everything, you know, on this planet and beyond. So the shift is going on, a- and we’re gonna make that shift sooner or later. The question that I do ask is, how kind and gentle a process can it be? So what motivates me now, many, many years into this work, just 35 years with HeartMath, is that every morning I wake up and I want help, to help people make those choices that are gonna make this shift a kinder, gentler process. You know, that we go through this in a way with more poise, more grace, that we flow through it rather than being ground up by it all the time, you know? And I know that’s possible. I see people doing it. I feel like I’ve made changes in my life to where that’s the norm for me rather than the exception. Um, if I can do it, everybody can.

Nothing special about me. It’s just I put the work in, and I approached it from the heart, you know? And I said a long time ago when I was a very young man that life had to have, um, a strong aspect of heart in it. You know, HeartMath’s founder, Doc Childre, who’s been my friend and guide for all these years, was the man who introduced me to it. But once he began to introduce me and I began to self-explore, I found that, you know what? Life does work better when I’m approaching it with some of the qualities associated with the heart. Then I started to realize that life worked better for me when I was trying to give more to it than I was trying to take from it.

It was about the contribution I was trying to make. Rather than always about me, me, me and what I could get, it became about what I can give. And then the more I could get to that place where, you know, it would modulate, and there’d be plenty of times when self-centeredness would, would be there, for sure, a lot of it. But in, in time, as I began to, to, to cultivate that aspect of it, my life did get better. And so, you know, I can sit here today and say, if I hadn’t made choices like that along the way, I wouldn’t have what I have today. And what I have today I think’s pretty extraordinary, you know? Not many people are in the position in life that I’m in, uh, to have a life that, uh, where my work and my life are the same thing, you know?

To be a part of an organization like HeartMath, which has got this huge global footprint of helping people all around the world, and to have a role in that and a leadership role, then goes on into all this other stuff that, my God, who, who deserves this? Like, best-selling author and someone that can be on a show like yours and, you know, all these different things that, that add up. And to have good health late in my life, where there’s no health, major health issues for me, you know? And I’m in my mid-70s now, and I still have not had major health issues. And so I gotta add all that up and go, I’m a very fortunate human being to be in this position that I’m in. And then I have to ask myself why And I can’t just write it off as luck.

I have to say it ch- came from really trying to listen to and follow my heart, and to try to be of service to others. Those were key aspects and choices that I made a long time ago that, again, good days, bad days, you know, some days better at it than others, all of that. I have modulations up and down like anyone would, but the general theme that I’ve had for all these years has always been there. And if I can help ignite that in other people and let it manifest in whatever ways that are gonna be fulfilling to them, uh, that would be a, a goal that I would have. That’s what I want for people. That’s what I want them to experience. So at HeartMath, we’ve done a lot to facilitate that, all the tools, the techniques, the training programs, the HeartMath sensor that works with the HeartMath app that people use to train themselves to become more coherent.

We even created technology that does that for everybody. There’s lots of different things like that that we’ve done, and that’s something people can check out for themselves, the HeartMath app and sensor. But we’ve done a lot to facilitate something simple, which is to help people connect with something they already have inside, which lives right here

Guy:
Yeah, no, beautiful. Thank you for sharing that. It’s, um, you were all in heart then. I could really feel it. It, um, it just makes me, the, ’cause we often say be the change you want to see in the world. Like, it starts with us, doesn’t it, at the end of the day and coming back. And I wonder how much through our own heart opening and vibration and resonance, ’cause we, you kind of touched on that at the beginning, as we change and we become a more coherent human, how much that’s unconsciously affecting the humans around us because we’re in an emotional regulated state. Our families, our friends, our communities

Howard:
it’s the greatest service we do. I don’t think the r- I think the real service is not about me writing books or speaking or any of that stuff. It’s really about… And for me, i- i- I’m including myself in what I think is true for everybody. It’s like the b- the most service we ever do is the change that we make in ourselves. They imprint that field, and they influence the field that we’re all drawing from, and they make it easier for other people, you know, to make similar changes. And it doesn’t have to be grandiose. Again, going back to examples I used earlier, let’s just try to appreciate something rather than complaining about it.

Well, that seems so simple, and it, it is in a certain way. But boom, you’ve made a change, and that puts that into that field. Somebody else on the other part of the world might be struggling that day and suddenly decide to appreciate life instead. I mean, it’s, it’s that tied in, you know? And I think the, the service that we’re, we do in a lifetime is, is all about that. You know, what we do to change ourselves is the greatest form of service we, we have. And everybody has the capacity to do it, and it doesn’t have anything to do or very much to do with what we do externally in the world. It’s the changes that we’re go- going on inside ourselves, in the world of our feelings and our thoughts, that are the biggest contributor that we ever make to helping others

Guy:
Yeah, beautiful. Uh, but just before we wrap up the podcast, Howard, as well, I’m just curious, what, what is your daily practices? Do you have like a little routines that you do, that you work through that, that

Howard:
I do. And

Guy:
for the day?

Howard:
I use, the technology to measure my coherence while I’m doing it b- because I k- I kinda like having the empirical understanding that, you know, I can see changes in my heart rhythms, I can see my coherence scores, all those kind of things, and that’s sort of a, a nice anchor for me. I mean, you can do it without it. You don’t need all that stuff, but it’s, it makes it more fun, for one thing, and it, and it, it helps me stay more true to my practices. But what I try to do, guys, I try to, to start my, start very quickly in the morning with acknowledging a connection to my heart. And that really quickly means as I’m waking up, as I’m waking up in the morning, I’m in that place, but I’m still in the bed, right?

And I’m waking up, but I’m starting to already b- bring my attention here, focus there, you know? ‘Cause, you know, when you wake up in the morning, it’s like you don’t wanna get up. That’s when a lot of the negative thoughts can be there, all that kind of thing, you know, uh, or then projections about how the day is gonna be and all that stuff starts to show up. I try to just keep connecting to the heart. Then every morning I do a, what’s called a heart lock-in, which would be a heart meditation. I do it with the HeartMath app and sensor, and I do that for about 15 minutes And that begins to make that connection more solid and begins to set the tone for the day.

Then during the day, I regularly pause. I was leading a call earlier today, um, in a company call-in, and the question that I asked everybody was, “When in, when, when in your life do you think that it would be important to slow down?” You know, I know we’re all, we all have our goals, we all have our responsibilities, things are on the move, we need to have forward movement, but when is it better to slow down? And these slow down spots, I call them just taking a pause, is when right in the middle of the busyness, try to back off a little bit. Give yourself just three minutes, five minutes, whatever you have. Refocus. Bring that mind, slow it down, integrate it back with the heart. It doesn’t have to be some big formal thing to where you go off and close your eyes and sit cross-legged somewhere.

It can be something you’re doing in your car or something you’re doing, you know, walking from one place to another in, in your office. But it’s a consciousness to slow it all down, to pause, and I do that a lot during the day in between things, is to take those pause breaks. And then, then for me, uh, uh, and peop- many people don’t have the, the time for all of this, but for me, I do a much longer heart lock-in at night. And that’s a time when that heart lock-in is really about, a lot about radiation, about what I’m putting into the world. I begin to focus my love, my care, my compassion, my energetic contribution on various situations that are taking place in the world. You know, like the wars for example, you know. And in that context, I’ll give just another little hint, is I’m not trying to stop a war.

I don’t know the reason for the war. I don’t know what the bigger picture on all that is. What I’m trying to contribute to is more compassion for the people that are really dealing with it in a more direct way, to help make that s- somehow a bit easier for them. But there are other things that I focus on, not just wars. But the nighttime h- heart lock-in for me is about what I’m putting out. And so I, I do that for about 30 minutes, 30, sometimes longer, uh, in my day. And then I go on with the rest of what I’m doing, and I just repeat that process over and over. Get onto it early in the morning, do a short heart lock-in using my HeartMath app and sensor, taking those pauses during my busy day, and then in the evening before it’s all said and done, move away from all that, whatever about me, whatever about the business, whatever about those things, let’s give something to the world. And I do a radiational heart lock-in that’s pointed towards helping to reduce human suffering.

Guy:
Wow. Beautiful, Howard. Thank you for sharing all that. That’s,

Howard:
And for someone listening, I’ll just say, you know, everybody’s lifestyle is a little different. I don’t ever want this to feel like it’s work. You have to do these things. It’s like I th- I just encourage people to try to build something like that, whether it’s heart math or something else, you know, into your life in a way that makes sense for you and your schedule and your time and all those kind of things. It’s just, uh, because there’s no prescription for that. Everybody’s lives are just too different, you know? Um, but, but people can do things

Guy:
Absolutely. But like you said at the beginning, you have to put the work in a little bit. Like, uh, you know, I had a, a health and fitness background before I do what I do now, and I always revert back to that because you have to show up and, and there’s an entrainment, there’s a conditioning that has to happen for, for the body to respond. And for, for me, going into states of gratitude and actually feeling it is, is a clear signal and a, an entrainment that I found my body has

Howard:
I think that i- in terms of personal growth type work, um, time is not even the most important factor in that. It’s meaningfulness. A short amount of meaningfulness time can give you a lot of result. A, a whole lot of time when you don’t really have the, the meaningfulness or the authenticity about it, you know, you probably see it in exercise. I mean, what’s the, what’s the real workout about, you know? Well, I worked out for an hour a day for five days a week, but, you know, d- what, what were they really doing, you know, in that workout? You know, how come you didn’t see the result? Well, you know, versus somebody that really focuses in on that workout.

It may not take them an hour to get the same result because they really were doing it like they were supposed to do it, with the right attitudes and the right technique and the right i- intent. Same thing with our inner work. It’s about meaningfulness. It’s just getting a bit more meaningful about what we’re doing. And again, I’m just… I know the results are there, and I wanna encourage everyone who’s, who’s viewing this right now to say that, you know, you’ve got a good heart. You already have what you need inside, you know, and you probably have already accessed it many, many times. Just take it a little deeper. Make it more consistent in your life in whatever methodology that you choose to use, and then demonstrate that in the world. And it’s about the demonstration of it, not just the inner doingness of it. And that demonstration is simply, you know, how we walk in the world. What do we walk in the world?

Guy:
Beautiful. Yeah, exactly. Amen to that. I love it. Where, where can I send people? I’ll put, make sure there’s links in the show notes, Howard, if they wanna find out more and explore the world of HeartMath

Howard:
That’s the easiest way. That’s the website. And then of course, there’s, we have the social media, you know, HeartMath Facebook groups and Instagram groups. There’s like something like a half a million followers we have on our Facebook group alone. So that, but heartmath.com is your best way, and there are many things you can learn there. There are free things there. Uh, there’s a lot of information about, uh, the HeartMath app and sensor, which again, is the primary, uh, product offering that we have, and there’s millions of people around the world that use that. And so I think that just go to heartmath.com and explore and, and, um, take it from there, you know? And there’s, there’s a lot available, uh, by us and from us, just like there’s a lot of things in the world. Just search on us. You’ll find plenty to take a look at and listen to.

Guy:
No, beautiful. I, I even, um, I unintentionally put my heart T-shirt on myself today

Howard:
That’s it

Guy:
of our that I just realized as well. I got the old heart with two Ts here. But, and I, I, just before we close as well, I just… Your painting behind keeps catching my eye all the time with the heart and the, the, the flowers blooming, uh,

Howard:
Yeah, I’m not sure what painting that is actually. This is, um, a room here at the HeartMath Business Center that’s been set up for us, like myself and the others that do the podcast and things like that. And, uh, they chose that image as a background image, the, the PR team, you know, did. It’s, it’s got a nice color to it. It’s not too bright, not too gaudy. It, it does have an anatomical heart look to it, but it also got the flowers, so it’s actually covering what, what I mentioned in the beginning of our talk. There’s two hearts.

Guy:
Yeah, that’s right. Exactly, exactly. No, they’ve done a good job, mate. Uh, the studio looks great. But, uh, yeah, Howard, thank you for your time. It’s been wonderful to reconnect, mate, and, and really, uh, value what

Howard:
same to you. And let me, uh, value you for continuing to do podcasts. You’ve done, like, 400 of them. You’re putting a lot of great information out into the world. You’re helping a lot of people. I’m honored to be on your program, and I wanna applaud you for the, the, the work you’ve done for a long amount of time with so much consistency. You’ve been wonderful. You’re a gift to the world

Guy:
Ah, thank you. Much

Howard:
Be well

Guy:
Thank you. You’re welcome.