How tuning into your internal rhythms can help with stress management and bring a more balanced life

ILLUSTRATIONS: WERONIKA KUC

What is the heart? For many, the answer will reflect what they were taught at school – a mechanical pump that circulates blood and oxygen around the body. While this is true, it’s only part of the story, because the heart is also a complex information-processing centre – an organ that directly affects perception, mental clarity, intuition, decision-making and emotional stability. Even more exciting, we can learn how to awaken this power, to strengthen the heart-brain connection and harness it in a way that promotes personal balance and wellbeing.

In some ways this isn’t surprising. People often have a deep-rooted sense that the heart is at the core of emotional life, providing guidance and clarity and connecting them more tightly to others and themselves. This is even reflected in language. Think of how many everyday phrases refer to this internal rhythm: ‘coming from the heart’, ‘the heart of the matter’, ‘being wholehearted’, ‘losing heart’, while the experience of love and heartbreak is felt specifically to this beating muscle. What we now know is this ‘felt’ sense isn’t only in the mind. It has a physiological basis and it underpins the way people think and talk about the heart.