Your Heart Has Its Own Brain (and the evidence is compelling)
Your heart contains a small nervous system of its own. It signals your brain more often than the reverse. What we call intuition is the body doing what it's built for. This is Aligned #2.
TL;DR
Your heart contains roughly 40,000 neurons, a small intrinsic nervous system, and sends more signals up to your brain than your brain sends down. What we call intuition isn’t mystical. It’s anatomy most of us were never taught.
What we weren’t taught
Your heart has its own nervous system. Roughly 40,000 neurons sitting inside it, communicating in patterns of their own. And here’s the part that’s hard to absorb the first time you hear it: your heart sends more signals up to your brain than your brain sends down.
In Aligned #1 I wrote about why mind-heart-body alignment is the inner work that matters most. Today: the anatomy of why the heart isn’t a metaphor.
The heart is not a passive pump that responds to the brain’s instructions. It’s an active sensing organ with its own intelligence. The implications change how you approach decisions, emotions, and inner work.
Heart Intelligence (aka intuition)
You know that feeling you cant explain, however you know its there it can be anything something feels off, or you know you need to do something, you need to be somewhere, the text you almost didn’t send. the street you turned down for no reason. the person you shook hands with while something in you quietly said no, there is no logical explanation for any of those, you just knew it.
Did you ever feel that? I’m quite sure you did, and let me tell you, its not any mystic force, its your intuition kicking in, it kicks in quicker than your brain, and its is pretty much linked to your heart brain, your heart intelligence, those are your 40k heart neurons communicating with you.
Maybe you are not feeling it for a while, maybe it has been long ago, it doesn’t mean its not there anymore, it just means you are not listening to it.
Sit with this
When was the last time you had a strong gut sense about something, and what happened when you ignored it?
Where in your body do you usually feel something is wrong before you can explain why?
If your heart actually had information your brain didn’t, how would you treat it differently than you do now?
When was the last time you took a logical decision using your brain and it went wrong?
When was the last time you heard and took action on your intuition listening to what it was telling you and it went wrong?
My learnings
If there is one thing that I’ve learned with time, it is that nearly every time I made use of my intuition and acted on it, I was right, and a lot of times I decided to ignore it and instead go with my logical thinking, it went wrong.
Yet we decide to not listen to our intuition, no wonder we feel it less and less these days. As a transpersonal coach, I know that my job does not start when a coachee arrives to a session, but long before, making sure I’m in an aligned state, in a state that allows me to listen to my intuition, and allows me to act on it.
Coaching is an art, no good coach goes to a session with the questions prepared, thats not optimal because the coachee is the one driving the session, and the coach needs to connect in a deep way to be able to make the right questions, a lot of times the best questions will come from intuition, and when you make the right question, the magic happens and transformation starts.
So listen more to what your heart tells you and less to what your brain might tell you.
A practice you can try: Heart-Focused Breathing
This is going to sound almost too simple, but it works. 30 seconds, anywhere, anytime.
The 3 steps
Do this for at least 30 to 60 seconds (or more if you like it)
Focus your attention in the area of the heart.
Imagine your breath is flowing in and out of your heart or chest area, breathing a little slower and deeper than usual.
Find an easy rhythm that’s comfortable.
For a better experience press play and I will guide you through it.
When to use it
Before a difficult conversation
During traffic
Between meetings
Before sleep
Any moment of overwhelm
Any moment when you want to be present
What to notice
Within 30 seconds, the shoulders drop a little. The breath gets a little smoother on its own.
The mind quiets. Not silent, just less reactive. That’s your parasympathetic nervous system coming online.
Do it regularly and the effect deepens: HeartMath research links consistent practice to lower cortisol and higher DHEA, your body’s anti-stress hormone.
Try this today
Try Heart-Focused Breathing once today, even just 30 seconds.
Then hit reply and tell me one thing: what did your body do when you settled your attention on your chest?
Coming next on Aligned
Aligned #3: The Beliefs You Don’t Know You’re Holding (and how to find one in 5 minutes). Why the thing blocking most people isn’t circumstance, it’s a story they don’t know they’re carrying.
Want to go deeper?
Book a free Discovery Call at deepbeing.life/schedule
George
Studies and sources
Anatomy of the heart-brain:
Armour, J.A. (2008). “Potential clinical relevance of the ‘little brain’ on the mammalian heart.” Experimental Physiology, 93(2), 165–176.
Armour, J.A. & Ardell, J.L. (eds.) (2004). Basic and Clinical Neurocardiology. Oxford University Press.
Heart-to-brain afferent dominance:
Cameron, O.G. (2002). Visceral Sensory Neuroscience: Interoception. Oxford University Press.
Lacey, J.I. & Lacey, B.C. (1978). “Two-way communication between the heart and the brain: Significance of time within the cardiac cycle.” American Psychologist, 33(2), 99–113.
Intuition / pre-cognitive heart timings:
McCraty, R., Atkinson, M., & Bradley, R.T. (2004). “Electrophysiological evidence of intuition: Part 1. The surprising role of the heart.” Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, 10(1), 133–143.
McCraty, R., Atkinson, M., & Bradley, R.T. (2004). “Electrophysiological evidence of intuition: Part 2. A system-wide process?” JACM, 10(2), 325–336.
Heart as endocrine organ:
de Bold, A.J., Borenstein, H.B., Veress, A.T., & Sonnenberg, H. (1981). “A rapid and potent natriuretic response to intravenous injection of atrial myocardial extract in rats.” Life Sciences, 28(1), 89–94.
Mainstream neuroscience on heart-emotion coupling:
Thayer, J.F. & Lane, R.D. (2000). “A model of neurovisceral integration in emotion regulation and dysregulation.” Journal of Affective Disorders, 61(3), 201–216.
Porges, S.W. (2007). “The polyvagal perspective.” Biological Psychology, 74(2), 116–143.