Generating Peace Through Global Coherence

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10 HeartMath Practices

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Excerpted from Heart Intelligence: Connecting with the Heart’s Intuitive Guidance for Effective Choices and Solutions; Chapter 12

GLOBAL COHERENCE THE PLANETARY POTENTIAL
by Deborah Rozman

As I was waking one morning and before I opened my eyes, these thoughts flooded into my consciousness: The world needs as much care and compassion as it can get. What if we could collectively put out enough pure radiant love into the earth’s energetic fields that it would create a multiplier effect or a quantum-coherence effect? What will it really take to shift the consciousness of humanity? These thoughts stayed with me through my morning meditation as I radiated as much pure love, care, and compassion to the planet and humanity as I could.

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Science is beginning to acknowledge that we are all part of a vast web of connections that encompass not only life on this planet but the solar system and beyond. It is through this energetic connectivity that information, heart coherence, and resonance are exchanged. Let’s look at how this energetic connectivity could potentially increase global coherence.

There are thousands of groups and organizations all around the world using various forms of meditation or prayer to energetically help make things easier for others. Many organizations conduct synchronized meditations, prayers, intention experiments, and so forth to facilitate healing or to create a more harmonious world. Numerous studies have shown that group or collective meditation, prayer, and focused intention directed towards a specific positive outcome can have increased beneficial and measurable effects.

For example, a study conducted in 1993 in Washington DC, showed a 25 percent drop in crime rate when 2,500 meditators meditated during specific periods of time with that intention, which means that a relatively small group of a few thousand was able to influence a much larger group—a million and a half.[2] 

Every individual’s energy affects the collective field environment. This means each person’s emotions and intentions produce an energy that affects the field. Therefore, a first step in diffusing societal stress in the global field is for each of us to take personal responsibility for our own energies. We can do this by increasing our personal coherence and raising our vibratory rate, which helps us become more conscious of the thoughts, feelings, and attitudes that we are “feeding the field” each day. We have a  choice  in  every  moment  to  “take  to  heart” the importance of intentionally managing our energies. This is the free will or local freedom that can create global cohesion.

Heart coherence practices help to increase our vibratory rate and coherence baseline, so our spirit, heart, brain, and nervous system operate in sync and with increased efficiency. This coherence carryover effect enables us to be more conscious and intuitive at choice points—to move in a state of ease and choose our actions and responses rather than mechanically reacting and creating stress.

Through raising our vibratory rate, we become conscious that our energetic heart is coupled to a deeper part of our self. Many call this their “higher power” or their “higher capacities,” which links us to a non-local quantum field of information and energy which physicist David Bohm called the “implicate order” and “undivided wholeness.” When we are in heart coherence, we have a tighter alignment with the heart intelligence that connects us to that source.

In 2008 the HeartMath Institute launched the Global Coherence Initiative (GCI). GCI is an international cooperative effort to help activate the heart of humanity and facilitate a shift in global consciousness.I am honored to be a member of the Global Coherence Initiative Steering Committee and to contribute to this vision. GCI has three primary focuses. The first is to invite people to participate by actively practicing heart coherence and adding more coherent love, care, and compassion into the planetary field. The second is scientific research on how we are energetically interconnected with each other and the earth; and the third is to educate people on how we can utilize this interconnectivity to more quickly raise our personal and collective vibratory rate to create a better world.

Here is a Heart Coherence technique from GCI to increase and sustain your personal coherence. Here are the six steps of this powerful tool:

  • Breathe and calm yourself in whatever ways you choose.
  • Choose something you appreciate—a person, pet, nature, etc., and radiate the feeling of appreciation to them for about two minutes. This helps open the heart more and increases your effectiveness when you start sending care to the planet or to a situation that needs it.
  • Evoke genuine feelings of compassion and care for the planet.
  • Breathe the feelings of compassion and care going out from your heart. (To help with focus, some imagine their compassion and care flowing out like a river flows out to the sea. Others imagine their compassion and care radiating as a beam of light, or they radiate it out with the rhythm of their breath. Determine what is right for you.)
  • Radiate the genuine feelings of compassion and care to the planet or to a specific area of immediate need.
  • See yourself joining with other caretakers to participate in the healing process and generate peace.

Increasing our individual heart coherence can contribute to a new world of social and global coherence, based on the proven intelligence that getting along with each other is the missing piece in our ability to thrive as a planet and draw solutions for creating a world we all want to live in.

What is Heart Coherence?

A new video explains heart coherence in simple, easy to understand language.

Heart Coherence is a high performance and healthy statephysically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually— that brings out the very best in us.

The term coherence implies harmonious order, connectedness, stability and efficient use of energy.

Coherence can be seen all around us when we observe life through the lens of the heart.  The beauty and intricate balance of nature is a magnificent demonstration of coherence.

Increased coherence happens at times within the human experience too. For example, most of us have had days where everything seemed to flow. We felt good – composed and clear; we were able to adapt quickly to whatever came our way with balance and poise. 

In the 1990’s HeartMath Institute researchers, identified a physiological state called heart coherence —  a type of coherence that occurs when our body’s systems, our breathing, heart rhythms, brain rhythms and hormonal response, are in sync with each other.

They also discovered that heart coherence not only affects physical processes, but also our mental and emotional balance and composure. Their research showed that heart coherence can be self-generated leading to less mental and emotional stress and more inner security and stability. In summary, Heart Coherence is a synchronized and empowering state, physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually, allowing us to become our best selves.

Helping Children Maintain Their Heart Connection

Excerpted from Heart Intelligence: Connecting with the Heart’s Intuitive Guidance for Effective Choices and Solutions; Chapter 8The Difference Between Care and Overcare

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At the time of this writing, according to a study out of Calgary University, one in five youth are experiencing clinically elevated anxiety symptoms and one in four adolescents globally are experiencing clinically elevated depression.

Often when small kids are distressed, unhappy, or experiencing a tantrum, we instinctively redirect their energy by giving them a toy or loving attention, and almost instantly they can totally change their frequency pitch (vibration) to calmness, joy, elation, or contentment (higher pitch emotions). A primary reason that young children often transform compressive emotions quickly is because in their early years of development they are still connected to the higher frequencies of their natural heart attributes, such as uncomplicated love, transparency, lack of prejudice, and their superpower to release and move on. Their minds are not yet entrained to the countless lower vibration societal mindsets and habits that often overshadow their heart’s higher feelings and choices.

The collective consciousness is slowly awakening to the need to educate children in the difference between their mind and heart and how to maintain their heart connection in their interactions. This usually starts by teaching younger children appreciation, kindness, sharing, compassionate care for others who are sad or feeling low, etc. It’s especially important for young children to learn how to go to their heart space for comfort and guidance when they‘re stressed and emotionally overloaded. Older children can learn to connect with their heart’s intuitive guidance amidst societal stress and society’s hard and fast entrainment to overstimulation, overcare, ambition, competition, and techno-mania.

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One of the biggest obstructions in a child’s development (but not intentional) is when parents assume that they always know best regarding what their kids should be and do as they become adults. Millions of children end up playing out the dreams of their parent’s ideal personifications. To most parents in these situations, it seems normal and motivated by care. It is care—but often care that doesn’t include the sensitivity to the way the child is natured. This unintentionally tries to force-fit a child into molds that don’t fit. Guidance is important, yet guidance occasionally needs an awareness-upgrade that’s more inclusive of the consequences it generates. Most everyone realizes that, for a long time now, children around the world are born with more awareness than previous generations. This increased awareness can cause resistance and separation in teens when they are pressured in directions that their deeper heart feels are not right for them—especially regarding vocation and relationship choices. Updated guidance models are available that can prevent much stress and emotional resistance in children from spirit repression. Guidance needs to include an awareness of their individual nature and their deeper heart’s inclinations and desires. New consciousness regarding this is on the rise, yet there’s much left to be done to change old-school guidance patterns.

With compassion, I encourage parents to be proactive in becoming more informed about effective new models and information regarding child-rearing. Most parents are doing the best they can with the time constraints they have. But it’s time for us all to upgrade our awareness because in our heart of hearts, we want our children and young adults to become who they truly are. Parents also need to have compassion for themselves, as keeping up with children’s accelerated awareness is one of the harder challenges, especially in these times. I compassionately understand the extra commitment this takes. I realize it’s even harder now for adults to stay balanced and sort out their next steps.

Our younger generation’s increasing awareness will eventually help to change society’s conflicting lower-vibrational mindsets that have cost so many lives and generated ongoing hatred, trauma, and retribution. New generations won’t tend to support the intolerance and separation that block harmonious connections and caring interactions among all people. Our younger generation is already finding its way towards becoming more effective in inspiring the need for a global change of heart.

How Coherence Technology Activates your Larger Intelligence

HeartMath founder Doc Childre created coherence technology to help people activate their larger intelligence. Here are some highlights of what occurs as you use the Inner Balance™ Coherence Plus or emWave®, to inspire your practice.

  • Regular daily practice with coherence tech will prepare you for more effective living whether your coherence scores are high or low. Practicing heart rhythm coherence with Inner Balance or emWave coherence technology for even a few minutes has a carryover effect into your next conversation or activity. The carryover effect can facilitate more flow and clarity during day-to-day communications and activities — moving in a state of ease and choosing your actions and reactions rather than mechanically responding in the same old stress-producing ways. 
  • When people have a lot of mental work to do – and most of us do – the practice of using coherence technology can give you a smoother mental ride. Heart rhythm coherence activates higher centers of the brain that enhance compassion and the desire to help others develop their higher potentials.
  • Getting into HRV coherence for five minutes or more at the start of your day accumulates higher vibrational energy, which translates into more consciousness (and effectiveness) in your interactions and intentions. Look at using coherence technology like a gas tank you are filling as you practice increasing your coherence. Heart rhythm coherence releases neurochemicals that lift your emotional system and help clear your thinking.  In higher vibrational energy we have increased capacity to manage our energies, actions, and reactions, and we experience more synchronicities and clearer choices. 
  • Studies have found that with simple regular use of coherence technology, people increase their coherence baseline (the amount of coherence naturally occurring in their heart rhythms when at rest). Raising your coherence baseline can support behavior changes you want to make. As your baseline increases, it benefits your health, wellbeing and happiness, and adds empowerment to your intentions.
  • Many people who use the emWave, Inner Balance Coherence Plus sensor with the HeartMath app, or the Global Coherence™ app during meditation say that the coherence feedback saves them time and energy because it signals them when they drift or spin out of focus (which we all do at times) and signals them when they’re back. The coherence feedback especially helps them learn to slow their thoughts and emotions into a smooth rhythm, so that their internal systems can operate more in sync. This strengthens the connection with the heart’s intuitive feelings and guidance. 
  • Increasing heart rhythm coherence during meditation helps to align and coordinate thoughts and emotions with your heart’s intuitive guidance, so that mixed agendas or mixed signals don’t scramble the mind. This translates into increased clarity and effectiveness. You can use coherence tech to set an intention then align your heart (feeling) with your visualization or affirmation (thought) to create the highest outcome. As heart energy is added to intention, it aligns you more with the power of your spirit. You add power to your intentions, visualizations, and affirmations. As you activate the coherent power of your heart, it brings your heart, mind and nervous system into alignment to magnetize the highest best to you and your facilitation of others.  
  • As you strengthen your experience of coherent heart feelings, such as love, appreciation, care, compassion, kindness, etc. and breathe them into your system while using coherence tech, you can purposefully imprint them into your intentions for better health, genuine communication, clearer thinking, creativity, anything you want to improve. Practicing this heart-coherent alignment helps clear old negative patterning stored in the cells, releasing more power for creative intention and manifestation from your true self.

To read the full booklet, Understanding Coherence Tech  to Activate Your Larger Intelligence:

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Social Coherence: Learning to Get Along

Excerpted from Heart Intelligence: Connecting with the Heart’s Intuitive Guidance for Effective Choices and Solutions; Chapter 11, Social Coherence: Learning to Get Along, by Howard Martin.

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In 1996 HeartMath researchers discovered that when an individual is in a state of heart rhythm coherence their heart radiates a more coherent electromagnetic signal into the environment that can be detected by and affect the nervous systems of other people and even animals.

The heart’s electromagnetic field provides a plausible mechanism for how we can “feel” or sense another person’s presence and emotional state independent of body language or other factors.[1]

It was confirming to me when a later study examined whether people trained in heart rhythm coherence could energetically increase coherence in other people who were in close proximity but not touching. This study found that the heart coherence of an untrained participant was indeed facilitated by others who were in a coherent state. It also provided evidence of heart rhythm synchronization between people, or what is called social coherence.[2]

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Many researchers are interested these days in under-standing energetic social dynamics.

In their paper Social Baseline Theory: The Role of Social Proximity in Emotion and Economy of Action, Drs. Lane Beckles and James A. Coan from the University of Virginia documented the benefits of emotionally-connected interactions between people.[5] I found one aspect of their work particularly fascinating with regard to the energetic influence we can have on one another’s perceptions. 

They wrote: The brain modifies sensory perception in ways that bias decision-making to manage energy use efficiently.[6] For example, wearing a heavy backpack makes distances seem further away and uphill inclines seem steeper.[7] In work by Twedt, Hawkins, and Profitt, hill slants were judged as less steep when participants stood next to a friend.[8] Moreover, this effect was moderated by the duration of the friendship—the longer the friendship, the less steep the hill.

In essence what they are describing is that our perception of walking uphill is different when we are in emotional resonance with someone. The deeper the emotional connection, the less steep the hill appears.

Social coherence enables a “collective intelligence” that helps raise the vibratory rate of the individual‘s and the group’s energetic field.

HeartMath has validated over a period of 30 years a number of effective practices for building coherent teams that we use in our training programs. We have found that the more responsible each team member is for their own energies, the better the principles of coherent teamwork have a chance to really work. 

Here are three of our key principles.

  • Use a coherence technique together at the start of meetings and as needed to reset the team energy for deeper listening and better communication.
  • Respect differences in opinions, backgrounds, cultures, genders, etc. Use a coherence technique to replace judgmental reactions with compassionate latitude for others and for yourself.
  • Establish a safe environment to encourage vulnerability, new ideas, admitting mistakes, and openness to questions.

A key practice is for members to deeply listen to each other without judging, which means temporarily setting their point of view aside as they listen. 

Creating a Socially-Coherent Society

Heart connection is on the rise because people around the world are yearning for it. They are tired of the old ways of doing things—societal systems that don’t work for everyone, belief systems that focus on separation and polarization, and a host of other paradigms that maintain the status quo.

It’s also true that there are a tremendous amount of competing agendas in today’s world, including political polarization, media misinformation, climate change, racial injustices, viruses, and wars. Human beings keep inflicting pain and trauma on each other. This is nothing new, but with our global communications systems the world’s problems are often on full display. Nevertheless, there is plenty of hopeful news to consider in the midst of the perceived chaos. Many people are sensing that today‘s collective global stir is part of a transition towards a new consciousness based on care, cooperation, and acceptance. It’s a process of a new world birthing itself in the midst of an old one. Awareness is shifting, people are changing, society is transforming, and a new collective intelligence is emerging.

Broadcasting Love

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Excerpted from Heart Intelligence: Connecting with the Heart’s Intuitive Guidance for Effective Choices and Solutions; Chapter 13, Broadcasting Love, by Doc Childre

Most of us sense that profound societal changes will continue to take place as our world becomes increasingly interconnected and interdependent. For this to achieve its potential, we need to all learn to get along. The mind without the heart hasn’t been able to pull this off. The good news is this: The dynamic shift the collective is experiencing now across the planet is creating a time-release momentum for awakening humanity to open our hearts and step our love down into kindness, compassionate care, forgiveness, cooperation, and fresh starts.

Increasing our coherence makes cooperation and compassionate care for each other come naturally. Coherence occurs at all levels in nature, from the micro to the macro and within the human experience. Coherence is a natural state that accompanies who we are at the core of our being. While in a heart-coherent state people experience a distinct quieting of the inner “noise” generated by unregulated mental and emotional activity. They have a greater sense of alignment as well as a clearer connection to their heart’s intuitive feelings and effective directions.

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Heart coherence does not disesteem the mind; it increases the mind’s potentials for balanced viewpoints which are more inclusive of the whole. Our basic systems (heart, mind, emotions, and body) create more harmony and fulfillment when working in cooperation to shape our lives for the better.

The practice of sitting in heart rhythm coherence for even a few minutes accumulates higher-vibrational energy that has a carryover effect through our day; it provides more clarity and ability to access flow. This often draws creative solutions where there seem to be none. In a coherent vibration we draw more synchronicities and clearer choices, along with heightened heart textures of love in our life’s interactions. We don’t have to be perfect without challenges to maintain a coherent life expression. It simply requires general maintenance, like any practice that helps to steer our decisions and behaviors.

Scientific research is showing that as people practice heart coherence, it generates an energetic field that makes it easier for others to connect with their heart— leading to greater understanding of each other and social coherence. It’s our individual job to become responsible for our own energy which raises the vibration of the collective energy field, making it easier for others to access their higher potentials and increased joy.

Exercises to Expand Our Capacity to Love

• Make a commitment to consciously broadcast or radiate love for a minute or two in between and during activities during the day or whenever you think of it. Realize that you are especially radiating love when you’re feeling appreciation and kindness, resonance with nature, warm-hearted care for family, friends, pets, etc.

• Practice breathing love and caring feelings into the environment wherever you are: shopping, on the phone, at the dinner table, watching the news, in  meetings, while driving or walking to work, etc. As you do this, know that it’s helping to increase your capacity for finding solutions to life’s challenges.

• Sit for a while in relaxed stillness and imagine breathing love and healthy thoughts into all your cells. This enhances your immune, hormonal, and nervous systems which can help with self-healing. Remember it’s been proven in respected studies that love energy can effect positive changes in biology.

• Practice radiating love and latitude into future meetings or interactions you’re planning. This sets a tone for deeper listening from your heart and helps you maintain or recoup emotional poise if needed.

What Do You Do When You Wake Up Grumpy?

What Do You Do When…

What do you do when you wake up and, for no apparent reason, you feel out of sorts, grumpy, low energy, anxious, and just not connected to your heart in general? 

What Is This? 

You’ve been having a good week and now feel this way. 

You start to try to figure it out. What is going wrong? What’s wrong with me? 

Why Now?

You can take a look at events, interactions, and so on that may have contributed to your low-feeling world. 

But you can also try to see it in a new  way.

You’re experiencing a “modulation day.”

Life has rhythms—highs, lows, going in and out. (Life modulates.)

Sometimes our emotions do the same thing. Our emotions modulate too, and it’s natural that you won’t feel as connected to the rejuvenating feelings of the heart on days like this. 

Here’s What You Can Do

Perhaps do a short, heart-focused exercise.

  • Just breathe a feeling of ease in and out through your heart area. 
  • Then add the feeling of self-compassion.

If you can, see yourself as a good person doing the best you can. If you can’t feel ease or self-compassion, it’s okay. Your efforts will pay off soon enough. 

During your day, take little moments in between activities and, again, just try to connect with a feeling of ease and self-compassion. 

Also, try to show some extra kindness or appreciation for others. This can help get the emotional qualities of the heart flowing more easily. 

Don’t look for immediate results. Have patience with the process. And try not to make whatever you’re feeling feel overly significant. In due time, you’ll start to feel more like your best self. 

Remember, it’s just a modulation day and no big deal.

Life has a rhythm and flow to it. With a little meaningfulness, you can learn to make peace with modulation days and use them to further your inner growth.

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The HeartMath Experience

Science is discovering the major role that the heart plays in how well our brain functions, and understanding that this connection is not only about physical health – it affects the quality of life, relationships, perceptions and mental habits and self-limitations. Research shows we can intentionally influence this connection to improve our mental, emotional and physical well-being. Get free access now to an online video program (Videos captioned in twelve languages – with 9 chapters) that explains the connection and gives you tools to strengthen and optimize this connection.

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Cultivating Inner Stillness

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Excerpted from Heart Intelligence: Connecting with the Heart’s Intuitive Guidance for Effective Choices and Solutions; Chapter 5, Raising Our Vibration to Access Our Higher Potentials, by Doc Childre

Many spiritual cultures agree that inner stillness creates an energetic environment for supporting our advancing consciousness which can unleash the transformational power of our love. That’s why from the beginning of HeartMath, many of the tools and especially the coherence technology have been designed to facilitate easier access to stillness and its connection to our natural inner wisdom and guidance. Think of inner stillness as a practical asset for deeper listening. How many times have we told children or others to get still inside and listen up, because we have something important to tell them? This is because we instinctively know that inner stillness plays a part in the quality and depth of most people’s hearing ability. So why not use it the way it can count the most— to quiet our own mental and emotional static so that we can hear the counsel and wisdom from our heart’s intuitive guidance.

When our mind quietens, inner stillness is where we land. From there we can reset and upgrade our life’s experience. We often hear ourselves and others say, “If I had more foresight, I would have handled that situation differently.” Stillness is a primary source for increasing our foresight and discernment. Inner stillness is a place where our heart can speak without the mind running it off the road. In order to “be still, and know” we first have to be still enough to listen.

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It’s highly effective to schedule times for practice of inner stillness to allow our heart, mind, and emotions to experience a relaxed time-out from competing over the choices we make. Stillness softens our determined mental and emotional traffic so that our heart-speak can be heard. This requires practice because the mind will try to occupy any available space if the door is left cracked. However, if stillness practices didn’t produce high-value results, think of all the centuries of time that meditators and spiritually conscious people would have wasted throughout history. With fine-tuning, inner stillness becomes like a personal elevator to our highest view and eliminates the weariness from climbing endless stairs. I feel that practicing inner stillness will become a most positive corner-turning step forward for humanity, not as a trend or religious motivation but as a street-sense way of life. You can try this inner stillness exercise that I found valuable for deepening my connection to my heart’s intelligent guidance. 

Inner Stillness Exercise: 

Step 1: As you breathe quietly, imagine your breath calmly slowing down the vibration of your mental and emotional energy. Stay with it and don’t care if your mind disrupts you. This will improve with patience and practice. To get benefits out of this stillness exercise, you don’t have to totally stop the mind—even reducing thoughts and calming yourself improves your capacity to sense your heart feelings and suggestions. In a short amount of time, the power to quieten your mind will increase. 

Step 2: As you feel your energy calming, genuinely radiate love to something or someone you care about. This connects you with your heart energy. 

Step 3: While maintaining your state of calmness, ask your heart for guidance, solutions, or deeper understanding regarding life issues you are experiencing. 

Step 4: Imagine stillness as a peaceful place where you are taking a time-out. As thoughts come up, don’t push against them. Casually refocus on breathing love and peace into the stillness. Our higher choices become more obvious as we increase our capacity to listen in stillness to our heart’s intelligent guidance. 

Note: When you’re listening for intuition, don’t expect a Siri or an Alexa-type attendant on the other end with a download of answers. Especially on complex issues, intuitive feeling answers often come later—through something someone says, something you read, while you’re in the shower, driving down the road, etc. 

Special Care Focus – Collective Compassion for Ukraine

Collective Compassion for Ukraine

There has been a global outpouring of collective compassion since the start of the Russia-Ukraine war for all the people who are suffering, have lost loved ones, lost their homes, and had their whole lives displaced.

Many people around the world watching the news are experiencing heightened fear, insecurity, outrage, and feelings of powerlessness. Many are calling from their minds and hearts to please Stop this War! “War is outmoded,” said the Dalai Lama, and most all of us feel that in the core of our hearts.

Across the planet, people are experiencing stress overload from their emotional responses to the atrocities. This is understandable. However, for your own wellbeing, occasionally take a time out somewhere and breathe the feeling of balance and calm from your spirit for a while. Envision this renewing your mental, emotional and physical nature. Doing this from the heart can restore resilience and help with the stress.

Let’s also keep increasing our care and compassion for each other and for ourselves. In whatever way we choose to send compassionate care, it’s important to keep the continuity of our collective compassion going out to all people affected by this war. Do this as you can, according to your life’s circumstances. All love counts, even if we can’t always see the ways that it helps.

Care Focus Collective Compassion for Ukraine

  1. Start with quiet breathing while radiating feelings of love and care for someone, a pet, nature, etc. This helps open and warm the heart which increases the effectiveness of the Care Focus.
  2. Now, let’s send our deepest care and compassion to people directly affected by the Russia-Ukraine war. This includes the people of Ukraine, soldiers and refugees, many people in Russia who are saddened with pain in their hearts regarding the invasion, and many others throughout the planet.
  3. Next, send compassion and gratitude to the people and countries taking in millions of refugees. Send heart that those who support this war might open their hearts to the pain the war is causing and realize the setback it is inflicting on nations, much less the world community.
  4. Now, see our deep heart’s care contributing to a global heart awakening of collective compassion that’s on the rise as a result of this war.
  5. Let’s close by envisioning that humanity will realize that war is a thing of the past and that we need to come together in the heart to work things out.

It is effective to continue doing this Care Focus or individual steps of it after the full moon period, if convenient. The planet is calling for continuity of collective compassion going out to all people affected by this war.


Adapted with permission. Originally published by the HeartMath Institute for the Global Coherence Initiative Care Focus.

Unconditional love and compassion are among the highest vibrations of love

Article updated February 2022, originally published, August, 2017

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With world events creating so much anxiety and uncertainty, it’s becoming clearer to many of us that people working together with kindness, compassion and acceptance are the missing pieces for resetting humanity’s fast and furious trajectory into separation and division.

It’s also becoming obvious that we cannot create solutions from the same consciousness level that’s creating the problems. We can each take responsibility for raising our conscious awareness (vibration) to help draw peaceful solutions. This is an undertaking that calls for kindness, forgiveness and an inclusive love that respects our differences.

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HeartMath and many systems use the term vibration in reference to the quality of attitudes, thoughts, feelings and emotions that are generated and influenced by our beliefs, memories, choices, environmental stimuli and more.

For example, you often hear people say, “I had to leave that office, the vibes were so low it was draining my energy, or, “I felt a lift from being in her positive vibration.”

The vibration of our moods, attitudes, thoughts and feelings can rise and fall throughout the day based on our actions and reactions to others, ourselves, or to life’s issues. The vibes we put out vary based on our resilience for balancing our mind, emotions and disposition – especially in today’s dynamic emotional climate.

Part of being human means from time to time we’ll feel lower-level vibrations like being frustrated, angry, disappointed, or sad. But we can also shift out of these debilitating feelings and lift our attitudes and perceptions.

Feelings like care, compassion, kindness, inner ease, patience and gratitude lift our vibration. Anyone who experiences these qualities knows their power to shift our outlook.

Most all of us feel more self-secure when our vibes are up, yet maintaining this in the midst of challenges and stress can sometimes be tough. The good news is that we can learn to lift our vibration to meet challenges by adding more care, kindness and compassion in our interactions. Being in a lower vibration isn’t bad, it’s just that we feel better and are more effective when our spirits are lifted.

Many of us have personally experienced the benefits of compassion – and increasingly more and more people are resonating with this powerful expression of love especially in these times of robust change. Practicing compassion is something we can all do that benefits everyone.

Try these two simple exercises to lift your vibration when your feelings are down.

Find a quiet place where, for a few minutes, you can breathe easily, imagining with each breath that your mind, emotions and body are becoming still inside. In this stillness, desire the uplifting feeling you would like to have, and as you breathe, imagine breathing this new feeling into your being for a while. Imagine you are creating it with your breath.

  1. Find a quiet place where, for a few minutes, you can breathe easily, imagining with each breath that your mind, emotions and body are becoming still inside. In this stillness, desire the uplifting feeling you would like to have, and as you breathe, imagine breathing this new feeling into your being for a while. Imagine you are creating it with your breath.
  2. If you’re feeling low, try sitting quietly and imagine radiating love, compassion and stillness into your mental and emotional nature. Self-care is often allowing ourselves to have a low moment without compounding it with self-criticism.

When our light is dim, it helps to give ourselves the feeling of compassionate heart warmth. Even if it doesn’t stop the pain, we know it can help energetically.

You can soon feel a difference when doing these exercises, unless extremely challenged. If it doesn’t work the first time, be patient and simply try again later. Being genuine makes the difference. Practicing for a few days in a row strengthens your capacity to reset unwanted thoughts, feelings and attitudes.

Simple exercises such as these can lift your happiness and outlook more than you may think. Make it fun to consciously raise the vibration of your thoughts and feelings throughout the day to match who you are in your heart of hearts. Watch your spirit lift and the stress accumulation diminish.

These practices especially help to open our heart more in our interactions, which is often the missing piece in our pursuit for peace.

Love matters.

These exercises have been adapted with the author’s permission for this article. Read the full exercises and other helpful suggestions, in the book, Heart Intelligence: Connecting with the Heart’s Intuitive Guidance for Effective Choices and Solutions.


Adapted with permission from the HeartMath Institute.