It’s time for love to go viral

DR. ROLLIN MCCRATY shares the science of the synchronicity between the heart and mind and, when they are in sync, how the love that is created can positively connect us to each other and everything in the world.

It’s a great honor to be here. I’m not going to stand here and try to tell you anything you haven’t already heard or that you don’t already know, but I am going to tell you the same thing in a different language, the language of science. 

I have been a long-term meditator myself, and I learned about the heart. But if I’m really honest, it was more like a metaphor for emotions; for me it was all about the brain. I even got a degree in Consciousness Studies. Then I had the great fortune to meet the Founder of HeartMath, Doc Childre, and I was introduced to the real Heart, the deeper heart, which it is really all about. 

I was fortunate to help him found The HeartMath Institute, and a few years later he invited me to found The HeartMath Research Center. He said we have to do rigorous scientific research. The language of science is the new language for many people in the world, and if we’re going to introduce them to getting their hearts and brains in sync, we need that work. 

So, over the last 30 years, we made a lot of scientific discoveries that validate what we already believed to be true. We started by looking at how emotions affect the body, the physiology. We were measuring brainwaves and hearts in the lab. And what we found back when we started this (at that time, nobody was looking at what happens in our bodies when we love, when we appreciate, it was all about stress, depression, and anxiety), was that when people had heartfelt feelings of love, compassion, kindness, something magical happened. Their heartbeats, the rhythms of the heart, dramatically changed.

Today we know this as an optimal state, a state where the mind, emotions, the heart all come into synchronization. We call it heart coherence. There are over 500 studies that show when people are in a heart coherent state, it lifts and benefits almost everything: our health, our performance in sports, etc., but especially our ability to access our inner intuitive guidance. 

The beautiful thing about the heart and heart coherence is it’s neutral. It’s something we all have. And whenever we’re feeling love, compassion, and kindness, we shift into a heart coherent state. It doesn’t matter how we get there, what technique or practice we do. It increases the measurable synchronization between the rhythms of the brain and the rhythms of the heart. 

The big gift is access to our
intuition, our inner guidance.

The big gift is access to our intuition, our inner guidance. This is something we have tested in the lab, and even we were surprised. The takeaway is that the heart can know the future; it all starts in the heart. The heart is the first to get the information. It sends a measurably different signal to the brain, and then there is a brain response, and only then is there a body response to felt emotion. 

The heart has access to a field of information that is not bound by time and space. I would suggest we have two hearts: the physical heart and the energetic heart, which has been called the spiritual heart in so many spiritual and religious traditions. The energetic heart is the bridge that connects the larger part of our self—our soul, our spirit. It translates that down into the physical world of our bodies. The energetic heart is how we connect with our larger self, our higher self. That’s the real us. As we learn to become more heart coherent, that pathway opens. Becoming more heart-coherent can facilitate anything we do, and any practice we want to take up. 

The next adventure in our research was to understand scientifically how the heart connects us with others. Our heart doesn’t just stop at the skin. We are broadcasting radiating fields, magnetic fields produced by the heart. We were able to show that those fields carry information about how we feel. When we’re in a coherent state, which we get into naturally when we’re loving and appreciative, it connects us with others in a measurable way. Hearts literally synchronize when we come together in the heart.

When we’re in a coherent state,
which we get into naturally when
we’re loving and appreciative, it
connects us with others in a
measurable way. 

And that opens a new type of communication where we hear each other deeply. Even when we don’t agree, we still have the heart level connection. It’s the key to how we build social coherence, how we learn to get along with others, even when our minds might not disagree. 

The heart really is what is
connecting us across dimensions,
with the higher self,
with others, and with yourself.

The next major step in the research path was understanding how our hearts not only connect us with our higher self and with others, but with the Earth itself. When we measured the heart-coherent rhythm, a rhythm of about ten seconds (we have new technologies that can measure it), we started asking questions like, “How do mothers know their children are in harm’s way when they’re on the other side of the planet?” “What’s connecting us? There has to be something making that connection.” 

We all live within the magnetic fields of the Earth, the North Pole, the South Pole, the fields of Earth. We discovered that the fields vibrate at the same frequency as the coherent human heart rhythm. When we’re in that heart coherent state, through resonance we connect with the fields of the Earth. We’re all connected too. We’re finding that the interconnected fields of the Earth not only connect us to each other, but with nature, with trees and animals. The heart really is what is connecting us across dimensions, with the higher self, with others, and with yourself. 

Once we really understood that, we said, “How can we teach this to others? How can we make coherence easy?” So we developed technologies to help us do that. They are inexpensive technologies that allow you to see your heart rhythm in real time. I’m thrilled to say they are being introduced into many schools in the US and other countries, allowing kids to learn this at an early age. I personally think there is no greater gift we can give our children than learning how to sync our hearts and brains so they have that skill for life. 

When we look at the global field, we have new technologies that can measure it. When we come together at events like this, we get into that coherent state. In other words, we add love and compassion, and we intentionally radiate that into the field environment, the Earth. Love is by far the most powerful energy or frequency bringing coherence into the planetary field. We can measure this. And I’m honored to say that the Heartfulness Institute is one of our partners on this project. We have a lot of these devices here, now, measuring what we’re doing to affect the field. 

I hope it has been useful to share some science with you. What does this all point to? My parting invitation is: it’s time for love to go viral. It’s what is going to shift the frequency of the planet, it’s what is going to lift the baseline of humanity into our next level of consciousness, where the heart and brain are truly in sync, in a joint partnership.

From a talk given at the Global Spirituality Mahotsav, March 14 to 17, 2024, at Kanha Shanti Vanam

Illustrations by JASMEE MUDGAL