Coherent Connection – Brain, Heart, Gut

Did you know that you have coherent connection neurons not just in your brain but in your heart and your gut? 40,000 in the heart and 100,000 in the gut to be exact. Science has demonstrated that there is a back and forth connection among these three systems informing not just your brain, but your body of what is going on around you. One study found that the heart learns independently from the brain, and it can feel, sense, and remember information.

Cool right? For many individuals, especially those who dedicate their life to analyzing data, this can come as a shock. Analytical people tend to be top-heavy in that they depend more on their brain’s understanding of a situation to make decisions and may neglect their heart and gut’s processing of events. Perfectionists tend to avoid trusting their intuition or tapping into deep feelings. It’s easier to get to the bottom of the To-Do List and to push towards higher levels if everything is fine and emotions aren’t taken into consideration. They may even think it’s cheesy to talk about the heart. Or think, who has time to deal with feelings, anyway? They just slow us down and being emotional leads to impulsive reactions that bring havoc to our life. Not necessarily.

You don’t need to be a hopeless romantic or The Hulk to be in touch with your feelings. Actually, tapping into your feelings helps you feel more connected, grounded, in a state of flow, and better able to trust yourself when making a choice. Does it take time away from getting things done? Yeah, but whatever you decide to do next is based on information gathered from all three areas of your body meant to inform your entire system of its well-being. It seems like more effort to stay stuck within the confines of your thoughts, which some argue aren’t great at accurate decision making.

We’re taught to only focus on what we can observe, but the sense you get when you walk into a room after two people have argued is palpable without them saying a word even when they’re cracking a forced smile. Or, the sense of whether someone likes you or not by the vibe you get is something to consider. When we’re taught to ignore these sources of data, we get confused and get on with life without really knowing how to be in our life. Being in touch with our emotions while processing our thoughts is a vulnerably brave act and one that for many takes time, practice, and new experiences.