Introduction to Heart Math

HeartMath® Mission: To activate the heart of humanity for living more heart-based lives.

Our Shared Values

Every heart holds wisdom and intelligence that can help guide each of us through adversities. By accessing our heart’s intelligence, creative ways can be found to bring balance and rhythm to these challenges.

Every life has its challenge. Every heart has an answer.

The Heart’s Transformational Potentials

Many people are sensing there’s more to them than the person who shows up each day. They feel a prompting to unlock their higher potentials that frees up their spirit to help them rise above stress, daily challenges and pressures. Learning and practicing the HeartMath skillset is a means to unlocking our higher potentials by helping you and your clients better self-regulate emotions, experience less stress and have more ease, compassion, confidence and fulfillment. In your own life and together as you work with your clients, you’ll explore activating your heart’s intelligence and applying that to your daily life.

What is Different?

Building Personal Resilience begins with understanding HeartMath’s resilience model and the basics of the HeartMath System. It includes the HeartMath skills that can empower you and your clients to connect more deeply with the power and intelligence of the heart even as the world is experiencing a growing stress epidemic. Adding the qualities and energetics of the heart helps create the important baseline shift to change behaviors and achieve desired outcomes. Special emphasis is placed on that which is unique to HeartMath: a system of science-

based, coherence-building skills designed to use on-the-go to help people bring their physical, mental and emotional systems into balanced alignment and connect with their heart’s intuitive guidance. This process helps individuals increase their self-awareness and build and sustain resilience by enhancing their ability to self-regulate their energy more intelligently, which directly affects performance and unfolds the steps to fulfillment through becoming more of “who we truly are.”

You have an important role in helping others gain an understanding of the concepts while at the same time helping them develop an effective plan for a sustainable practice, which is the necessary foundation for effective and fundamental change to occur. With consistent use of the personal coherence techniques and technology, if available, individuals are supported to achieve their personal and professional goals.

The Building Personal Resilience™ Reference Guide

This Reference Guide is a resource for you to help you deepen your own understanding of the techniques and practices so you can more effectively teach and model them while also obtaining the benefits of practicing them in your daily life. Suggestions are offered throughout the Reference Guide to help you get the most out of using the Building Personal Resilience Program as you work with others, while also

drawing from your own experience of practicing the HeartMath System.

You will see questions throughout the Reference Guide to engage you in this learning process. The questions are also meant to model using questions as an effective means for helping individuals gain an experiential understanding of integrating the techniques and practices into daily life. Take a moment and consider each question, just as you would ask of those with whom you work.

Best Practices

Working with Others

Consider for a moment those people in your life who have supported you, whether personally or professionally. What did you learn from them? What were the qualities you admired most in them? How were they helpful? Your own personal practice and a deep understanding of the topics form a foundation from which to share your expertise, experience and knowledge of the HeartMath System. You’ll be helping others achieve their goals through a process of care, inquiry and empowering support.

Our work with others is not about fixing people or their issues. Rather, it is getting to know them and their situations through dialog and supporting them in finding their own solutions. It’s teaching them techniques and practices that encourage and challenge them to attain a higher degree of emotional self-regulation. We encourage and allow them to make their own discoveries by listening to and following their heart intelligence. In doing so, they build confidence in their abilities to handle situations with greater resilience, emotional stability and composure. Part of your role is instructional and involves helping individuals identify their sources of stress and energy drain. Another part is helping them gain greater self-awareness of how they are behaving and reacting and teaching them the resilience concepts and techniques. Your role also involves helping them integrate the techniques and practices into everyday life. One of the biggest challenges most people have, especially at first, is remembering to practice the techniques on-the-go. Your support in holding them accountable to practicing the techniques is very important. The techniques can work, but only if they are used.

The best practices include listening deeply, setting aside judgments and agendas, asking questions, offering feedback and following your intuition. The best way to do this is to Prep beforehand by using an appropriate coherence technique such as the Attitude Breathing™ Technique. Being coherent can help you gain greater access to your intuitive intelligence while enhancing your ability to listen deeply, think clearly and communicate more effectively. You also create a coherent field environment that can energetically support your client and your relationship with each other. Having an attitude of curiosity and non-judgment can help set the tone for personal exploration and discovery. Put curiosity into action by asking questions which can invite

your clients to look inward for personal reflection.

Consider what else would be helpful for you to begin each session so that you can make a genuine heart connection with your client and be present with them throughout.

Build Trust

Building trust is vital in any successful relationship. Trust is developed through assuring and maintaining confidentiality, sharing appropriate personal examples, listening without judgment, speaking authentically and reflecting back the essence what you hear them say. The relationship is nurtured by compassionate, deep listening while offering

encouragement when resistances surface. Trust is developed not only through the words we speak, but also from the deeper essence that is communicated energetically. Other ways to build trust include asking them to take one or two minutes to tell you about themselves, which is a good icebreaker, even if it’s someone you already know. You might share a personal story about yourself but be sure it is relevant and appropriate - and not too long! Your work together is about them, not you! You could also ask what they know about the program and what brought them to it. All of this can help establish the relationship and can give them a sense of connection, security and feeling they are in the hands of someone knowledgeable, experienced and who genuinely cares. You also gain valuable information about them. It doesn’t necessarily require a lot of time, but it does require sincerity. Be sure to let them know that the sessions are completely confidential.

Model

It is a good practice to model the practicing the techniques during your sessions. You might begin a session with the Attitude Breathing Technique or ask which technique people would like to do. Walk them through the steps and do it for a minute or two together. Practicing

the Coherent Communication™ Technique in your sessions models the technique and creates clear communication, which can help them feel heard. If you find you are not sure of the next best step to take or how to respond to a question, model the Freeze Frame®

Technique in that moment. If tension arises, practice Heart-Focused Breathing or Attitude Breathing together. Incorporating the techniques in the sessions demonstrates the very practical nature of the user-friendly skills. What are some other examples of how you

can model using a technique or tool during a session? How can both you and your client translate practicing a technique in a session to using it in a day-to-day situation?

Practice Coherent Communication

At the start of each session ask yourself where you are on the Depletion to Renewal™ Grid. If you’re on the left side, what coherence technique could you practice to shift to the right side? How might being coherent affect your communication? How might it affect your client or the session? Throughout, listen not only to what your client is saying, but also to what is not being said. Follow your intuition from those valuable, unspoken cues. Listen to the emotional sounds they make: the grunts and sighs, strained breathing, excitement, laughter or a change in tone. These are all clues about what they are feeling and experiencing inside. What do emotional sounds tell you? What can someone learn from the sounds they make? How do you prepare yourself for coherent listening? When do you practice coherent listening? What do you notice about yourself and the conversation when you listen from a coherent state?

Encourage Experiential Learning

The resilience concepts are intentionally simple and universally understood and because of this, people often feel they already know the material. They tend to know it conceptually, but not experientially. For instance, reading the steps of Heart-Focused Breathing™ or the Attitude Breathing Technique will make sense to most people and may sound familiar to other approaches they have learned. Guiding them through each step, however, and having them experience it, gives a very different understanding of it. You might think of it in relation to learning how to ride a bicycle. If you read a book that explains step by step how to get on the bike, from picking both feet up off the ground and putting them on the pedals while maintaining your balance as you begin pedaling, how effectively could you do that the first few times you try? What did it take for you to learn to ride steadily and confidently on your bicycle, even when you encountered obstacles or bumps in the sidewalk? As with most people, it takes practice and someone with a steady hand to help. Similarly, using the coherence techniques regularly helps them become a familiar and an automatic practice, enhancing your ability to navigate the bumps of daily life with greater composure and flow. As a HeartMath coach, you are the steady hand. And of course, encourage your clients to practice the techniques they have learned.

The most effective technique will be the one they find works best for them. Be sure to recommend that they practice the techniques with their eyes open so they find them easier to use in the moment.

Ask Questions to Promote Learning

Questions encourage self-exploration. Asking open-ended questions, ones that need more than a yes or no or other one-word answer, can draw out a meaningful and fuller response.

Open-ended questions usually begin with what, how, when and where. Also, statements that begin with verbs such as notice, explain and tell (me) can elicit more than one-word responses. If you do ask a close-ended question, follow it up with another question to encourage further self- exploration or say, for example, “Tell me more about that.”

Ask yourself, “What questions could I ask to help my client gain insight or see the situation

from a different perspective in this moment?” Here are some examples:

ï What are you experiencing as you do this exercise?

ï What are you observing right now?

ï Which quadrant would be the most helpful to be in right now? How would it be helpful to be in that quadrant?

ï What technique and/or practice would help you get there right now?

Additional Tips

Be aware of where your attention is throughout your sessions. Are you engaged with your clients or are your thoughts partly somewhere else? Where is your client’s attention? Listen for background noises that may signal they are doing something else such as preparing meals or washing dishes. Although the techniques were designed to use on-the-go, you want to have their full attention so you can teach and model the tools.

Plan ahead how you will take notes for each session and what information you would like to know about them. Also consider how will you keep notes secured to assure confidentiality.

It’s a good practice to lay out guidelines for working together such as payment, scheduling appointments and your cancellation policy. Also, be sure to assure your clients that your sessions together are confidential.

Your Practice

Consider your own experience as you seek ideas for how you can encourage those you work with to practice the techniques. What was it that made sense to you about the practices and techniques? How were you able to remember to practice? What made it “click?” What is a personal story about practicing a technique that deepened your

understanding of it? When do you apply the techniques and practices in your own life? How are they helpful? When is it more challenging to practice them?

Important Fundamentals

The following five points are important fundamentals of the HeartMath System. Keep them in mind as you work with the HeartMath System personally and with clients. Spend time to make sure you understand the importance of each and revisit them from time to time.

1. HeartMath techniques are much more than the breathing! Each technique is a coherence-building technique and should not be considered a breathing-only technique

or a relaxation technique, which basically just lowers heart rate. A lower heart rate is not practical in our busy daily lives and can actually impair performance. Having a lower heart rate doesn’t mean we are patient and compassionate with others or confident in

a conversation. We may still be worried, anxious, impatient or have judgments and not self- regulating our emotional responses. Simply having a lower heart rate also does not mean that we are connecting with a deeper part of ourselves and accessing our heart

intelligence. Coherence, on the other hand, can be a calm state, but it is also a state where we are active, engaged, alert and focused. In a heart-coherent state we can have a low or high heart rate. Practicing the coherence techniques brings about important physiological

changes and enables us to increase our ability to more intelligently self-regulate our emotions and behaviors, thus leading to more fulfillment, less stress and becoming more of who we really are.

Breathing is an important step that helps kick-start the process of increasing one’s coherence and can reduce the intensity of an emotional reaction, but breathing is only the first step.

2. One of the goals of using the HeartMath skillset is gaining increased internal awareness. This involves expanding awareness of how our response to external events affects our physiology, relationships, decisions, communications and performance. It’s important to emphasize the internal experience gained through expanding awareness and then shifting into coherence, rather than relying only on what the coherence technology indicates.

3. The key to the techniques’ effectiveness is their simplicity. Don’t complicate what is intentionally simple. When people are stressed, they are cortically inhibited and will only

be able to comprehend and remember key steps they have practiced. Keep it simple.

4. Clear and concise gets the message to the brain. Introducing more concepts, practices or teaching more techniques is often not the best approach because it becomes a lot of information, rather than grounding one’s ability to practice the techniques and begin to facilitate positive change. Keep it simple so the message to the brain is concise, targeted and effective. The HeartMath System is much more than the coherence technology. Some people know HeartMath because of the coherence technology without knowing the HeartMath System is a full skillset of effective self-empowerment techniques and practices.

Genuinely understanding and applying the techniques along with the benefits gained from using the technology makes it possible for people to achieve both their short-term and long-term goals.