How to Transform Anger With Two HeartMath Techniques

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According to HeartMath, the heart is always communicating its state of being to the brain and the rest of the body. The heart communicates through hormonal, neurological, vascular, and electromagnetic pathways. The heart helps guide the entire system towards increased coherence, awareness, and order. When we can learn to pause and listen to our heart, we have access to our heart intelligence.

HeartMath has demonstrated that it takes courage to listen to your heart especially since its wisdom can seem too simple or too easy. Your heart intuition might say things like “ ''it’s really not that big of a deal,” or “let it go.” It takes strength to follow what your heart says and to determine whether its advice is effective or not. HeartMath believes that in-between moments when your heart rhythm is more coherent, you have a window of opportunity to let go of your insecurities and listen to the wisdom of the heart.

Learning to choose a heart-intelligent response helps to put you in charge of your life. By letting go of our unhealthy ways of thinking and behaving, you can retrain your neural circuits so that coherence becomes the norm. Remember that when you’re in a state of coherence, it allows you to gain more insights. HeartMath techniques help you change old repetitive responses that usually are based on your all or none thinking and inflexible attitudes. Your deeper self resides in the heart when you focus on feelings of appreciation and care.

2 HeartMath techniques that can help you better deal with anger:

1. Go to Neutral Tool

  • Take a time-out so that you can temporarily disengage from your stressful thoughts and feelings. When emotional triggers come up, recognize them as best as you can. When you feel the trigger, tell yourself “time out” and step aside from the reaction.

  • Shift your focus to the area around your heart. Feel your breath coming in through your heart and going out through your solar plexus. Practice breathing this way a couple of times to ease into a time-out in your heart.

  • Tell yourself, “go to neutral” and try not to go one way or another with your thoughts and feelings about the issue. Hold onto a space of being neutral in the heart until your emotions ease up and your perception relaxes.

  • Being in a place of neutrality allows you more options. You can ask yourself questions like “what if it’s not really like I’m thinking it is…” “what if I really don’t know…” Just the practice of asking your heart “what if” allows for possible insights. The attitude of “I don’t know” helps the mind access the intelligence of your heart.

2. Heart Lock-In Technique

  • Gently shift your attention to the area around your heart.

  • Shift your breathing so that you are breathing in through the heart and out through the solar plexus.

  • Activate a genuine feeling of appreciation or care for someone or something in your life.

  • Make a sincere effort to sustain feelings of care or appreciation while directing these feelings toward yourself and others.

  • When you catch your mind wandering, gently focus your breathing back through your heart and solar plexus and reconnect with feelings of care and appreciation. Try to sincerely sustain your feelings of care and appreciation as long as you can.

Accessing your heart is really about transformation. When you replace anger or anxiety with care, you choose a more effective emotion. Care transforms perception. Care is also a key to intelligence that causes your body to work more harmoniously. Self-generated care enables you to move through inconveniences and setbacks with less emotional reactivity and more intelligence. With practice, you can learn how to respond rather than react.

For more information about HeartMath or anger management, please call me at 858-243-2684.

Source: Transforming Anger by Doc Childre and Deborah Rozman