Matters of the Heart

Phil Cameron  |   Sunday Feb. 2nd, 2014

February is often designated as “Heart Month”; to remind us of cardiovascular health, checking our cholesterol, blood pressure and getting out and doing aerobic activity to keep the heart pumping. February is also the month of Valentines Day with the hope of being a target for Cupids arrow, revisiting the love of your soul mate, or rebuilding relationships that may have grown apart due to busy schedules and the ever growing list of things we have to do outside of the home.
The heart is responsible for keeping us alive. It pumps precious oxygen rich blood through our bodies and delivers it to every cell along with vital nutrients responsible for keeping our body healthy. When was the last time you stopped to think of your body as a structure of tiny little pieces all perfectly put together, working in unison at all times allowing us to not only do daily routine tasks but also accomplish marvelous feats like lifting heavy objects, skiing down mountains, or catching a big beautiful native cutthroat trout on a dry fly. All of which would be impossible without a healthy heart.

However when it comes to a healthy heart there is more to it than just the mechanical rhythmic pumping over and over again. You have probably heard the heart referred to in many other contexts especially around emotions. Sayings such as: “he has a heavy heart” when referring to the loss of a loved one, or someone is “light hearted” when they are having fun. Throughout humanity and spanning multiple cultures the heart is the emotional center of the human. “He wears his heart on his sleeve”, or “she has an open heart” are sayings commonly used by people. The heart is a sign of caring, compassion, and love, and every human feels this. It is a feeling or a sensory perception that affects our nervous system and causes us to react to the stimulus, just like any other touch, or taste or smell would.

Being emotionally healthy can take a little more work than you might think. You see emotions and rational thoughts operate in different aspects of our brain. Often the emotion will supersede the rational thought because of the stimulation that occurs in the older part of our brain, the limbic system, whereas rational thoughts occur in our cortex. The limbic system goes back to reptilian development and the ability to react emotionally to pleasure or pain. It is easy for many of us to get caught up in bad habits due to the emotional reactions we have to those habits, looking for stimulation of our pleasure centers.

If you have never had the pleasure of visiting with an acupuncturist, it is often an insightful experience.  Acupuncturists evaluate the state of health of an individual by evaluating how their energy is moving though special evaluation techniques such as pulse point diagnosis and various other physical observations and measurements. There are 12 channels of energy (meridians) moving on either side of the body, and 2 meridians in the midline. There are also 7 Chakra’s or energy centers that are present within the body as well. It just so happens that the Heart Chakra is located over top of the heart, and is an energy center that is related to our emotions.
Emotional health is a work in progress, and takes constant evaluation to be kept on track. The more mindful of your emotions you become, the easier it is to be able to regulate your response to those emotions. As I stated earlier however the emotional brain and the rational brain can act separately from each other causing great distress within us.

The good news is there are many tools available to help regain emotional balance and keep our emotional heart healthy. Meditation and introspection are very useful tools to evaluate our own emotional health and keep us in tune with what we are feeling. Emotional Freedom Technique is a tool to help with the body’s physical response to emotions and is a system of tapping acupuncture points. Bach flower remedies are homeopathic remedies used to treat emotions. Each remedy is used to treat different emotional troubles a person may be having. Another technique is Heart focused Technique, which is a visualization technique that comes from research done by the Institute of Heart Math. They have scientifically studied the connections between the heart and the brain and have developed many useful techniques to regain balance and reduce stress. There are also many great books and DVD’s available to learn more about this topic. One of my favorite books, The Day Society Found Her Soul, by Dr. Eugene Charles is a story written in the form of a conversation between the soul and all the different emotions. It is truly a thought provoking, inspiring piece of work that will teach you a lot about yourself. You can learn more about all of these tools by doing a simple Internet search for them.

Having a healthy heart is very important to the overall state of health of our body: physically, physiologically, and emotionally. During this month of heart awareness consider all aspects that make a heart healthy. Spend some time working with these tools to get more in tune with your heart. It can be an exciting journey and one that opens many doors into our own human understanding. I want to leave you with one last piece of information. Being grateful is the most powerful healing emotion a human can have. The feeling of gratefulness will instantly change many physiological and psychological parameters as demonstrated in laboratories with both blood and MRI tests. Spend time daily focusing on things you are grateful for and you will have a healthier heart.

Dr. Phil Cameron DC is the owner of the Bozeman Wellness Center. He is a Chiropractic Physician and Professional Applied Kinesiologist. He treats every patient based on his or her individual health care needs and strives to help each patient Live Healthy, Live Naturally, and Live Optimally. Visit www.bozemanwellnesscenter.com for more information.

About the Author(s)

Phil Cameron

Dr. Phil Cameron DC is the owner of the Bozeman Wellness Center. He is a Chiropractic Physician and Professional Applied Kinesiologist. He treats every patient based on his or her individual health care needs and strives to help each patient Live Healthy, Live Naturally, and Live Optimally. Visit www.bozemanwellnesscenter.com for more information.

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