all right we are live thank you everyone for being here we're really excited to um have susan newman as a guest today and jessica will introduce her in a second um so thank you for tuning in welcome to our weekly wellness sessions for musicians my name is francesca leo i'm the chair of the puerto rico food symposium wellness committee and the founder of playingwithoutpain.com and i am joined by co-host jessica kebbe who has her dma and other degrees in piano performance and she specializes in helping teachers learn how to address performance anxiety and adopt mindfulness practices into their private teaching she teaches at mid-america nazarene university and is the founder of mindful music pedagogy so our past few sessions have addressed the relationship between the brain and the body all sessions are archived on the puerto rico food symposium facebook page as well as playing without pain calm and mindful musicpedagogy.com if you're a music educator and you wish to share these videos with your students we also offer the recorded zoom sessions which you can find on dsdelmoralfoundation.org and you can also send us an email at info at pr flute symposium where we can share the files with you directly if you feel so inclined and you've been enjoying these sessions and you would like to make a donation there's a link in the bio and we also have a new feature which is live spanish translation and the login info it is run through the streamer.center website the login info is in the bio so feel free to log in for live spanish translation and i will let jessica take it away yes i'm so excited because um today's guest is especially fun for me uh susan and i are neighbors and um we are just chatting about how we have we often are out walking and usually have no set schedule for that and yet run into each other almost every time so we feel like the uh the universe is bringing us together for this so um so susan's going to be talking about heart coherence techniques to stop inner chaos and promote well-being and presence and her practice is called holofield healing and that's holofieldhealing.com h-o-l-o-f-i-e-l-d-h-e-a-l-i-n-g.com
so i'd encourage you to check that out but susan began her energy practice in 1998 and since that time she's trained extensively in various energy modalities and consciousness technologies with some of the most preeminent experts in their fields for over 22 years and through working with hundreds of clients she's developed a unique system for detecting and releasing unconscious patterns that cause barriers to a happy healthy and satisfying life for her clients she is currently finishing her phd in complementary and alternative medicine with an emphasis in energy psychology at akamai university and she attended hollows university graduate seminary and is a licensed ordained minister with all faiths church of spirituality and health her greatest desire is to make energy healing an approachable understanding and valuable tool widely accepted and accessible to the mainstream so we are so pleased to have her joining us today and susan i'm just going to turn it over to you thanks jessica and thank you both for inviting me to join you it's a real pleasure so as jessica said my work seeks to understand and address the mind body connection for well-being and there are many reasons why mel well-being might be disrupted there is a growing body of compelling scientific evidence that's demonstrating a link between mental and emotional attitudes physiological health and long-term well-being and i saw lots of research but i'm just going to share two examples so first in a groundbreaking study of 1 200 people at high risk for poor health those who learned to alter unhealthy mental and emotional attitudes through self-regulation training were over four times more likely to be alive 13 years later than in an equal sized control group also three ten-year studies concluded that emotional stress was more predictive of death from cancer and cardiovascular disease than from smoking people who were unable to effectively manage their stress had a 40 percent higher death rate than non-stressed individuals so today i want to share with you some information discovered by the heart math institute and i want to teach you three simple techniques that can dramatically help you feel calmer and clearer healthier and happier and improve your vitality and performance so first what is the heart math institute the heart math institute is an innovative non-profit research and education organization they've developed simple user-friendly mental and emotional self-regulation tools and techniques these tools work these tools and techniques work for people of all ages and from all cultures and they can be used in the moment to relieve stress and even beyond that these tools also allow people to break through to greater levels of personal balance stability creativity intuitive insight and fulfillment they've done a lot of research so i'm just going to give you a little bit of the research so for more than 25 years the heart math institute research center has explored the physiological mechanisms by which the heart and the brain communicate and how the activity of the heart influences our perceptions emotions intuition and health they've discovered some intriguing aspects of the science of the heart and they've developed a skill set known as the heart math system their research determined that stressful or depleting emotions such as frustration and overwhelm lead to increased disorder in the higher level brain centers and the autonomic nervous system these were also reflected in the heart rhythms and adversely affected the functioning of virtually every bodily system they observed that the heart seems to have a mind of its own significantly influencing how we perceive and respond in our daily interactions in essence it appeared that the heart could affect our awareness perceptions and intelligence so the heart is far more than a simple pump the heart is in fact a highly complex information processing center with its own functioning brain and this is commonly referred to as the heart brain the heart brain is able to act independently of our cranial brain to learn remember make decisions and even feel and sense we can use the techniques that tap directly into the heart to bring about what's called heart coherence and this brings about orderly and harmonious connections between all the parts of us these techniques can synchronize our heart respiratory system blood pressure rhythms heart rate variability patterns so that we feel more calm have clearer thinking more vitality and good immune system functioning so i want to move into the tools and techniques so that you can really experience it the most important skill the majority of people need to learn is how to increase their capacity to self-regulate emotions attitudes and behaviors so the following exercise is a very simple method proven to help develop a state of greater coherence at will so we can use this technique much like an energetic defibrillator to stop the inner chaos opening the height to be receptive and to receive all the goodness available so this is technique number one and we're going to use this technique within all the other techniques this is called heart focused breathing it has two steps so it's if it's comfortable comfortable for you i invite you to close your eyes step one heart focus focus your attention on the area around your heart that area in the center of your chest putting your attention on your heart area helps you become centered and coherent try to feel the energy up in your head as it is flowing down into your heart if you like place your hand over the center of your chest to help you keep your attention in the heart area connect with the heart step two heart breathing breathe deeply but normally imagine your breath is flowing in and out of your heart area as you inhale feel as if your breath is flowing in through your heart as you exhale feel it leaving through this area breathe slowly and casually a little deeper than normal continue breathing in and out of your heart with ease until you find a natural inner rhythm that feels good to you and when you feel ready you could open your eyes any questions or comments about heart breathing okay so we're going to utilize our breathing for the second technique we're going to build on that this technique is called quick coherence and it has three steps so it includes the heart focus that we just did and the heart breathing but it's going to add a third step which we'll call heart feeling so before we start the whole technique let's we're going to kind of find our heart feeling so let's find this first and then we'll incorporate that into our whole exercise so i again if it's comfortable i invite you to close your eyes one of the easiest ways to generate a positive heart based feeling is to get in touch with a positive feeling especially the feeling of love or appreciation you might want to recall a time when you have felt a feeling of love and appreciation perhaps you remember a special place that you've been [Music] or the love you feel for a close friend or a family member or treasured pet there is no need to sustain the feeling just tapping into the feeling for just a split second is all that's necessary and this is the most important step so if you thought of something and it doesn't seem to tap into your heart then move on to another thing maybe a special place that you like to be or i find it the easiest to tap into the love i feel for my dogs okay so if you've identified what that special thing is we'll add that to our exercise so we'll begin as we did before step one heart focus focus your attention on the area around your heart the area in the center of your chest and if you like you can place your hand over the center of your chest to help keep your attention in the heart area try to feel the energy up in your head flowing into your heart connect with the heart step two heart breathing breathe deeply but normally imagine your breath is flowing in and out of your heart area as you inhale feel as if your breath is flowing in through your heart and as you exhale feel it leaving through this area breathe slowly and casually a little deeper than normal step three as you maintain your heart focus and the heart breathing activate a positive feeling recall a time when you have felt a feeling of love or appreciation perhaps you remember a special place you've been or the love you feel for a loved one or a treasured pet there's no need to sustain the feeling tapping into the feeling for just a split second is all that's necessary and continue the heart breathing and when you feel ready you can open your eyes so you can create a coherent state in about a minute with these simple steps and if you practice several times each day and time this practice will profoundly deepen your state of coherence this is a really good technique to use anytime you feel a draining emotion like frustration or irritation or anxiety or stress and if you use it at the onset of a lesser negative emotion you can prevent them from escalating and bring yourself back into balance more quickly and another time that it's uh really nice to use this technique is before transitions so maybe before going to work before a meeting before you go home and it's especially important to do this before important communications so you can use this quick coherence technique anytime and anywhere and you can do it with your eyes open or eyes closed so i've even done this in the supermarket or you know waiting for just sitting around waiting bringing myself into coherence so any questions about this second technique the quick coherence technique okay all right so we're going to incorporate the heart breathing into this third technique the third technique is called attitude breathing it's important to know that uh is that coherence automatically occurs through positive feelings these include compassion caring love and gratitude and other states of appreciation in contrast we can quickly become incoherent when we experience negative attitudes and emotions and these may include anger fear and anxiety attitude breathing helps us open the heart and facilitates mental and emotional healing so we use heart focused breathing but we're going to add a little twist to this also i want to add all of these techniques come from the heart math institute i've added a little piece to this particular exercise because in my other work i have found that it's very helpful to add imagining a color so you'll see where i ask you to imagine a color so that's my add-on so if you go to the website and don't see that don't wonder why once again i if it's comfortable i invite you to close your eyes and this time i want you to tune into a situation or a problem that may cause you some discomfort observe what you're feeling recognize the negative feeling or associated attitude that you'd like to release and you can name this in your own mind if this negative feeling or attitude was a color what color would you imagine it to be it's likely not a pleasant color maybe it's a muddy color or it's electric neon or it's a color that you just might find repulsive and remember this color now imagine what you would rather feel choose an attitude or a feeling that you'd like to replace it with so for example maybe if you've been feeling stress you want to feel calm if you've been feeling overwhelmed maybe you want to replace it with ease if you've been feeling judgmental maybe replace it with kindness or compassion you could choose an attitude to replace the unhelpful one you identified or be open for a new replacement attitude to arise through your intuition and if you can name it name it in your own mind what color do you imagine represents this replacement attitude or feeling this color would be pleasant or renewing or revitalizing and remember this color and now we'll move into the heart focused breathing and you can put your heart on your your hand on your heart if you lie breathe deeply but normally and imagine your breath is flowing in and out of your heart area as you inhale feel as if your breath is flowing in through your heart and as you exhale feel it leaving through this area breathe slowly and casually a little deeper than normal as you continue breathing breathe in the color of the new attitude or feeling that pleasant vital color and breathe out the color of the negative attitude or feeling that color that you did not find attractive and as you continue breathing and breathing in imagine taking in the new feeling or attitude as that color activates your system filling it with a new feeling or attitude and as you do this breathing technique on your own stay with it until you begin to feel the shift and when you feel ready you can open your eyes so you can practice maintaining your new attitude as you move through your daily interactions and you can use attitude breathing anytime during the day or to reset your attitude if it begins to fail to fade or to not be as strong as you would like it so it is important to slow down tune into what you're feeling with daily practice eventually your heart to brain communication will help you release negative emotions stored in your amygdala and a new you will emerge being responsible for and increasing our personal coherence not only improves personal health and happiness but it also feeds into and influences the global field environment it's postulated that an increasing number of people add coherent energy to the global field it helps strengthen and stabilize mutually beneficial feedback loops between human beings and earth's magnetic fields so besides helping yourself feel better and maintaining your own heart coherence it's one of the greatest contributions that you can make toward a better world so i do highly recommend checking out the heart math uh institute there is a lot of free material on there in fact as of today they still had on their on their uh first page if you scroll all the way down there are a number of offerings they're currently offering a regularly 29 course i think for free and so and they do have plenty of other uh offerings that are super helpful so that's heartmath.org heart matheson yeah numbers dot org so any questions that was so wonderful i'm sorry jessica that was an amazing experience and i really needed the attitude breathing today earlier i was trying to practice my instrument i was just in a really bad head space feeling really down about myself so i'll just briefly share what i was thinking of um when i felt that bad feeling i labeled it as gray and as the color and um my i felt like my shoulders were really tight i felt a lot of pain when i was thinking about it and then my um alternative was instead of self-criticism my alternative was self-kindness and the color i gave it was my favorite color which i've told jessica before but it's purple which i have like all over my room so i was breathing in the purple it's all kindness breathing out that i felt my shoulders relaxing i felt like actual physical shifts in my body as as i was releasing the negatives that was amazing thank you so much great great nice feedback thanks i wanted to take a second i i have so many questions but i wanted to take a second to acknowledge the the people engaging with us on social media so um marcus martinez says hello and um and then flutist finney had a a lot of really encouraging things to say uh they said i feel relaxed these are kind of commenting live you know in real time so um and there one of their comments was um that these exercises are really great for a great tool to feel the music so they said thank you um so thank you guys for watching and for engaging with us that way and um i'm glad you spelled out the heart math because that was one of my questions is it like h-e-a-r-t-m-a-t-h yes okay started we'll check that and um and then i was just curious i guess i have my own you know interpretation of what heart coherence means but i was curious what you would how you would describe that from your standpoint yeah heart coherence is about having all when we tap into the heart having all of our systems actually being in rhythm with one another and that would include our vascular system you know our blood pressure our heart rhythms the way our immune system works it really is bringing all of the parts in sync with one another and our uh our autonomic nervous system a big one right yeah that would play into us a musician nervous so that yeah that's right right very cool um well yeah one of the things that like francesco was saying she felt so relaxed and i did too and it was so interesting because right before both times right before you said like feel the energy coming down from from your head into your heart and i had like literally felt tingling and like from the head down so that was so cool and i didn't know what what that is or just i don't know well it's uh we're we spend way too much time in our head now a really interesting fact is that there are tools that allow us to measure the electromagnetic field of the head the brain and the heart and believe it or not you can measure the brain a few a few inches outside your head you can actually measure that field out of your head a few inches it's pretty amazing guess what the electromagnetic field of the heart can be measured more than three feet beyond the body wow and so when we actually go into the heart so the heart math has some pretty profound work going on about the intelligence of the heart there are more uh connections neural connections going from the heart to the brain that there are from the brain to the heart so they believe the heart is the primary brain and that we get more information through the field of the heart than we do from the field of brain and that that it's giving the brain information more than the brain is giving the heart information so this these exercises they've developed that help us tap into the heart so that the idea of flowing down from the head is a wave to get us out of our head and into the heart and so i would say as musicians you know before doing a performance really getting to the field of the heart it's that field that we become in sync with one another so if you're playing with a group of people everybody getting in sync with that heart field could be a pretty dramatic way to really be in sync with one another that's how man that's like mind-blowing i'm so excited to dive into the more more research on that site and i i mean i would i'm sure francesca can agree like there's just something you know you feel you feel with when you interact with people like alignment or disalignment you know so you can just have that i always just thought it was like sort of some sort of chemical you know feeling but this heart coherence makes so much more sense and the times that we've had you know that i've had performances with people that i just thoroughly enjoyed working with from start to finish i i totally sense that and conversely you know times where it's been a really challenging group you know personality wise or literature wise or just people are just have going through hard times you know and it's been a really hard uh season you know that comes through that definitely does so right now well thank you susan this was just so enlightening and we would love to have you come back sometime so hey that'd be great thank you so much and for all watching this is going to be archived on our youtube channel if you want to go back and follow along with these exercises in the future you can absolutely do so it'll also be archived on our facebook page as well so thank you so much for the wonderful talk and demonstrations and i know that i will be using these in my daily life definitely and i'm excited to check out the heart math institute you'll enjoy it thank you so for anyone watching next week we will be talking about brain meditation part two we'll be guiding you through a short meditation session um so we look forward to that if you have any questions feel free to type them in the comments and we will be sure to get back to you so thank you so much susan and everyone watching and we'll see you next week
2021-03-10