Heart Brain Coherence: The Science Behind Your Body's Magnetic Field
The Science and Physiology Behind Being "Magnetic"
It was January of 2020, and I was on a trip with a friend in Playa Del Carmen, Mexico. While we were there, we each coincidentally ran into close friends of ours who happened to be in Mexico nearby at the same time. We all met up for dinner at an incredible restaurant in Playa Del Carmen. The conversation was flowing, the food was amazing, and the people were, too. It was just about the time in my life that I was immersing myself in Gregg Braden’s work around heart-brain coherence. Prior to the trip, I had binge-watched his series on Gaia about heart-brain coherence and how it affects your body and your magnetism. While at the dinner, I was deep in discussion about how the heart actually has thousands of neurons similar to the brain with their own intelligence. In fact, the heart is essentially its own brain. And when the heart and the brain are in coherence, it creates a magnetic field around the body. Sometimes it’s in moments like that, surrounded by good people, good food, a good atmosphere, where you’re in your element and sharing from your heart, that you’re at your most magnetic. People were captivated by what I was saying, even though I was simply sharing someone else’s work. That’s the ripple effect of being in your heart-space: you share your energy with others in such a way that you are, in turn, attracting the same energy back.
What Is Heart-Brain Coherence?
Being “magnetic” is a bit of a buzzword, but there’s science behind it. So let’s dive in! The heart is not just a pump. It has its own nervous system, which is a network of approximately 40,000 neurons that function the same way neurons in the brain function. The heart isn’t just a muscle pumping blood; it has its own neural cells capable of sensing, processing, and transmitting information independently. Researchers call this the intrinsic cardiac nervous system, and the field studying it is called neurocardiology.
The cellular architecture of the heart mirrors the brain in fascinating ways. The heart contains neurons, neurotransmitters, and the same support cells found in brain tissue. It has both short-term and long-term memory. It processes information and makes functional decisions without waiting for instructions from the brain. This is why some researchers refer to it as the heart brain1.
The communication between the heart and the brain runs in both directions, and the signal traveling from the heart up to the brain is measurably stronger than the signal going the other way. This means that what your heart is doing shapes how your brain functions. Your perception, your emotional responses, and your decision-making can all be affected by and informed by your heart 2 .
Coherence occurs when these two systems are in sync. Physiologically, it shows up as a smooth, rhythmic pattern in your heart rate variability. When you are in coherence, your nervous system is regulated, your cognitive and emotional systems are working together, and your heart generates an ordered electromagnetic field that extends several feet outside the body.3
And if everything has its own frequency, could it be that we are informing our reality through this electromagnetic field?
How Heart-Brain Coherence Can Produce a State of Magnetism
Of all the organs in the body, the heart generates the largest electromagnetic field. The electrical field produced by the heart is approximately 60 times greater in amplitude than the brain waves recorded in an electroencephalogram, and the magnetic component is approximately 100 times stronger than the field produced by the brain 3.
They measured that when a person is in a coherent state, the quality of their field is affected. HeartMath Institute research has confirmed that when you are in heart coherence, your heart radiates a more ordered, coherent electromagnetic signal into the environment. And in that state, you also become more sensitive to detecting the information in the fields being radiated by the people around you 4. Which sounds a lot like a two-way signal conversation rather than a bunch of magnetic fields operating separately from one another.
HeartMath researchers describe the heart’s electromagnetic field as a central synchronizing signal within the body. This signal becomes a carrier of emotional information in the body, and also a key mediator of energetic interactions between people5. Their studies have shown that the field generated by one person’s heart can be detected in the brain waves of people nearby 4.
Think about what that means. The state you are walking around in extends beyond an internal experience into an external broadcasting signal. And coherence makes that signal cleaner, stronger, and more receptive. Could this signal be attracting the very energy from the field that informs your personal reality? i.e., is this getting us close to understanding how to create our own realities?
What Happens in Your Body During Incoherence
Many of us spend much of our days in a state of incoherence without knowing it. It has essentially become the baseline state for most people operating under chronic stress, and the nervous system is at the center of it.
When you are experiencing stress, anxiety, frustration, or anger, the heart’s rhythm becomes erratic and irregular. This incoherent rhythm sends a signal directly to the brain that inhibits access to higher cognitive function. Your capacity for clear thinking, emotional regulation, and sound decision-making is essentially a physiological state. And when the heart and brain are sending conflicting signals, that state is compromised 6.
The autonomic nervous system has two primary modes: sympathetic and parasympathetic. The sympathetic system will activate when under perceived threat, flooding the body with cortisol and adrenaline and redirecting resources toward survival. The parasympathetic system is responsible for regulation, repair, and restoration. Incoherence keeps the sympathetic system running in the background even when no actual threat is present. The body cannot distinguish between a looming deadline and a predator. It responds the same way to both.
Now bring the electromagnetic field back into this. If your heart’s field is a signal to the broader environment of what to draw in, what are you attracting when that field is incoherent? When the signal you are broadcasting is stress, threat, and contraction?
You may have heard the saying: "When you are a hammer, everything is a nail.” I will not pretend I do not know exactly what that means. Mercury conjunct Mars in my natal chart and Italian heritage will do that to a person. But the point stands beyond the humor. An incoherent field does not just affect how you feel internally. It shapes what you perceive, what you draw toward you, and what you keep recreating, sort of as a “background” program running almost without your knowledge.
What this means practically is that a nervous system stuck in incoherence is a nervous system that cannot fully integrate new information, sustain emotional shifts, or hold the changes you are trying to make. It is also why I always talk about nervous system capacity directly affecting how your reality shows up for you. And while life is full of nuanced stressors, if we were to do one thing as often as we can, it might make sense to get into coherence for a few minutes whenever we think of it.
The Physiological Effects of Heart-Brain Coherence
HeartMath Institute studies have consistently linked heart-brain coherence to measurable improvements in heart rate variability. HRV is the variation in time between each heartbeat, and it is one of the most reliable indicators of nervous system health available. Higher HRV is associated with greater resilience, better emotional regulation, and stronger cardiovascular health. Coherence produces a smooth, ordered HRV pattern in the body, which spreads across many of the body’s systems 8.
The immune system is one of them. HeartMath research has shown that positive emotional states are associated with increased production of immunoglobulin A, the body’s first line of immune defense. Negative emotional states produce the opposite effect. HeartMath studies documented that anger suppressed IgA levels for up to six hours following the emotional experience 7.
Cognitive function improves in coherence in ways that are directly measurable. HeartMath research confirms that coherence facilitates access to higher cognitive function with clear thinking, decision-making, and emotional regulation. By changing the quality of the signal the heart sends upward to the brain 8.
Cortisol levels drop. DHEA, the vitality hormone that counteracts the aging effects of chronic stress, increases. HeartMath researchers documented a 100 percent average increase in DHEA in participants who practiced coherence techniques consistently over 30 days, alongside significant reductions in cortisol. A finding that has since been independently replicated 9.
The Ripple Continues
One of the reasons I waited as long as I did to open my coaching practice is that I knew, based on years of my own research, trial and error, and personal experience, that there was no single modality that could do what I was looking for. My own journey was essentially about using these practices on myself, one by one, over many years. And what I kept coming back to, the thing that sits underneath everything else I do, is nervous system regulation and heart-brain coherence. It is the foundation, and everything else is built on top of it.
This is why it is part of my coaching methodology alongside somatic practices, neuroscience techniques, and Jungian psychology frameworks. And it is why I teach my clients how to get themselves into a coherent state rather than just telling them what it is. If coherence is the body’s naturally occurring state, then the outside world is largely a distraction from it. That is just part of being human.
Do we have to be “perfect” every day and always be in coherence? No. That is so uncharacteristically human in so many ways. We are here to grow and learn, and that comes with challenges in life that help get us there. Do I do my coherence practice every single day without exception? No. There are weeks I do it consecutively. There are weeks I do not. I have had days where I knew it would help me feel better and chose not to do it anyway. I have had stretches where I showed up for it consistently and stretches where I did not. I am not telling you this to lower the bar. I am telling you this because being a coach does not mean being perfect, and pretending otherwise would be a lie, and I am not that kind of coach. I always like to put these disclaimers in my posts because the goal isn’t to be perfect, it’s to be the best version of you that you can be as much as possible, while also allowing yourself to have days where you are not.
What I want for every person I work with is to leave them in a state where they can take this forward without me, so they can carry it themselves, share it with someone they know, and let the ripple continue at a dinner in a random city somewhere in the world.
There are a plethora of free resources that help you learn how to get into coherence. I recommend Dr. Joe Dispenza or Gregg Braden on YouTube. If you want to dive deeper into the science whilst also watching television, they both have a series on Gaia that is extremely informative on the subject.
If you’d like to work with a coach who uses astrology and works with these concepts, check out my services under the references.
REFERENCES
1 HeartMath Institute — The Science of HeartMath: Intrinsic Cardiac Nervous System and Neurocardiology
https://www.heartmath.com/science/
2 HeartMath Institute — Science of the Heart, Chapter 1: Heart-Brain Communication
https://www.heartmath.org/research/science-of-the-heart/heart-brain-communication/
3 HeartMath Institute — The Energetic Heart Is Unfolding (Dr. Rollin McCraty)
https://www.heartmath.org/articles-of-the-heart/science-of-the-heart/the-energetic-heart-is-unfolding/
4 HeartMath Institute — Global Coherence Research
https://www.heartmath.org/research/science-of-the-heart/global-coherence-research/
5 HeartMath Institute — The Energetic Heart: Bioelectromagnetic Interactions Within and Between People (Dr. Rollin McCraty)
https://www.heartmath.org/resources/downloads/energetic-heart/
6 HeartMath Institute — The Science of HeartMath: Coherence and Cognitive Function
https://www.heartmath.com/science/
7 HeartMath Institute — The Physiological and Psychological Effects of Compassion and Anger (Rein, Atkinson and McCraty, 1995)
https://www.heartmath.org/research/research-library/basic/physiological-and-psychological-effects-of-compassion-and-anger/
8 HeartMath Institute — Science of the Heart: HRV and Coherence
https://www.heartmath.org/research/science-of-the-heart/
9 HeartMath Institute — Science of the Heart, Chapter 8: Health Outcome Studies (DHEA and Cortisol, McCraty et al., 1998)
https://www.heartmath.org/research/science-of-the-heart/health-outcome-studies/
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Remember: this post is for informational purposes only and may not be the best fit for you and your personal situation. It shall not be construed as medical advice. The information and education provided here is not intended or implied to supplement or replace professional medical treatment, advice, and/or diagnosis. Always check with your own physician or mental health professional before trying or implementing any information read here.