How many times have you had a sudden intuition out of the blue about something that is going to happen, or known without a doubt the clear direction of the path you should take without apparent cause? How many hunches have you dismissed as risky and illogical, only to realize later that they pointed in the right direction?
Do you remember the last time you felt your heart speak to you loud and clear with a delicious warmth spreading through your chest? I remember one of those times when listening to my heart changed my life.
It was an ordinary working morning, and I was in my office in the scientific and technical services laboratory that I was coordinating at the time. I was feeling nervous and stressed. I had a lot of backlog work to do and the phone kept ringing over and over again.
I was frantically pounding away at the computer keyboard trying to make progress and put out the fires that were burning, but it was clear that in the state I was in, nothing I could do would succeed. And if only it was just that day… but every day seemed to go the same way or worse.
I stopped, frustrated and indignant with myself and with life and thought, “It can’t be that everything always goes like this; there has to be another way.”
In those microseconds of pause that I allowed myself, I heard an inner voice, a quick and fleeting thought that told me, “This is not your place; this is not your path. Life has wonderful things prepared for you that are not here.”
And, of course, my rational mind came running to tell me things like: “This is a bad day, nothing more,” “This is what you imagined,” and many other things. But that day was different.
That little voice inside that had spoken to me so many times before (and that I had consciously ignored) touched me deeply. And because of it I am here with you today, and I am grateful for it each and every day of my life. Later I realized that what I had heard was the voice of my heart’s intuition, its spark.
The heart is the main organ of the circulatory system, a veritable pump that propels blood throughout the body and keeps us alive.
But did you also know that it has an electromagnetic field 5000 times more powerful than that of the brain and that it extends around your body between 2–4 meters? That it has its own nervous system independent of the central nervous system (i.e. it has its own intelligence), which changes according to your emotional state?
The heart and its importance beyond its biological functions has been recognized since ancient times in various cultures. In general, the heart is associated with the light of the spirit and the awareness of the divine presence that dwells in each of us, being the intermediary between the soul and the body, i.e. between spirit and matter.
The latest discoveries in various scientific disciplines such as neurology and neurocardiology, biochemistry, biophysics, and physiology show that the heart itself sends information to the brain and the body by different routes, so that what we perceive and feel affects our heart and vice versa. From our intention we can affect the functioning and communication of the brain.
It is still virtually unknown (surprisingly) that there is an uninterrupted two-way communication between heart and brain, in which more information is sent from the heart to the brain than from the brain to the heart.
Intuition is defined as the ability to know and understand a situation instantly and clearly without the intervention of reason or logic. It is that inner voice that in microseconds guides our daily decisions and allows us to make the right ones based on our previous experiences, essence, and values.
Because of the bi-directional communication between brain and heart, when both work together, emotion and thought are coordinated and we obtain a broader vision or perception of any situation, opening up all the possibilities that exist at that moment for us.
Best of all is that intuition is like a muscle that we can train to be able to listen to its messages more and more loudly and clearly. Do you know where you can easily start? Well, in three steps, which are as follows:
1. Stop and pay attention to your heart
Ask it mentally or out loud if it has a message for you, and open yourself to hear its response. If you don’t hear it immediately, give it time. I assure you, you will hear it.
2. Consciously cultivate positive emotions and thoughts
Empathy and kindness, unconditional love, patience, compassion and forgiveness, among other qualities of the heart are positive emotions to nurture.
3. Bring your heart into cardiac coherence
As explained by the scientists and pioneers of the HeartMath Institute:
Close your eyes and bring your attention to your heart and breathe slowly and deeply into it. Smile at your heart and remember an event that generates a positive emotion. Feel this heart-centered well-being spread throughout your body. Take a deep breath in, hold your breath for a moment, smile and exhale in a big sigh coming out of this small pause.
Only when we listen to the messages our heart has prepared for us and let it sing can we enjoy the good in life and share with others the unique gifts we have come to bring into this world.
