..."The question, "[Daniel] Goleman says, is how can we bring intelligence to our emotions--and civility to our streets and caring to our communal life?" (Daniel Golemen, Emotional Intelligence p 47)

CultivatingHeart Intelligence

The answer lies in cultivating heart intelligence. It's our theory that heart intelligence actually transfers intelligence to the emotions and instills the power of emotional intelligence. From our research at the Institute of HeartMath, we've concluded that intelligence and intuition are heightened when we learn to listen more deeply to our own heart. It's through learning how to decipher the messages we receive from the heart that we gain the keen perception needed to effectively manage our emotions in the midst of life's situations and challenges. The more we lean to listen to and follow our heart intelligence, the more educated, balanced and coherent our emotions become.

Without the guiding influence of the heart, we easily fall prey to reactive emotions such as insecurity, anger, fear and blame, as well as other energy draining reactions and behaviors. ...

Early in the Institute's research, we observed that when negative emotions threw the nervous system out of balance, they created heart rhythms that appeared jagged and disordered....

Positive emotions, by contrast, were found to increase order and balance in the nervous system and produce smooth, harmonious heart rhythms. But these harmonious and coherent rhythms did more than reduce stress; they actually enhanced people's ability to clearly perceive the world around them.

--Doc Childre and Howard Martin with Donna Beech, The HeartMath

Solution p 13

I have stressed the importance of focusing in the region of the heart, which I call centering, because the heart is the seat of spiritual as well as physical life. We may ordinarily think that focusing implies a narrowing of attention or awareness, but the opposite is true when we center. The heart chakra is capable of almost unlimited expansion; an analogy might be the circle whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere. So focused, we experience a sense of unity with nature and with the universe as a whole. This stretches the aura and breaks down restrictive patterns and the feeling of unity can sharpen, giving a new dimension to all our relationships.

  --Dora Kunz, The Personal Aura p 188

As Dora explained: "Centering begins with a pattern you establish within yourself. You think of your energies focused in your heart for a moment or two until you feel very still.When you have within yourself the sense of quietness--which very often is a metaphor for wholeness--then you deliberately send out the sense of caring. Once you center within yourself it is easier for you to be an instrument fo healing while projecting this sense of wholeness. You gather your energies, your focus of consciousness, and just be still."

--Dolores Krieger, A Healer's Journey to Intuitive Knowing p 11

Quote from Dora Kunz with Dolores Krieger, The Spiritual Dimensions of Therapeutic Touch

The therapist is moved initially by a call of compassion to help or heal someone in need. This compassionate intention galvanizes the powers of the therapist's heart chakra at the subtle energy level , and soon thereafter at the physical level. From my observations the body systems that become involved are the central nervous, cardiovascular, and deep limbic. The first substantive action in which the TT therapist engages is an act of sustained centering of her consciousness.

--Dolores, Krieger, A Healer's Journey to Intutive Knowing, p 57