“Your true power comes from your ability to listen to your heart.”

Has anyone ever told you, “Listen to your heart? It always knows!”

All these years, I have used this phrase myself loosely and lightly, never realizing, how truly significant and real this phrase actually is.

As a little girl, my dad, who was a cardiologist, used to tell me about the intricacies of the heart. My dad would always say, “Healthy heart, healthy life,” and that is pretty much where my physiological understanding of the heart ended.

Later in school, I was taught the science of the heart — the heart is a pumping machine and nothing else. Consequently, I’ve spent the latter part of my life unaware and indifferent to my heart.

All this changed one morning when I renewed my driver’s license. When I was submitting the form, the clerk checked it over to make sure no information was missing and asked me if I wanted to donate my organs in the event I die.

Up to that point, I had never thought of donating my organs. I considered it for a moment, and thought, “I can give the gift of life through my death” I agreed to donate them and felt good about my decision.

That night, I kept thinking about the organ donation and wondered what it would be like to have parts of one person transferred to someone else. It seemed creepy in a Frankenstein sort of way and yet wonderful at the same time.

So I decided to research the subject. What I found shocked me. I read stories of heart transplant recipients that reported complete personality changes after receiving a heart. Recipients reported changes in food preferences, tastes, smells, fears, emotions, allergies, handwriting, and even memories in their dreams of previous lives.  At first, doctors dismissed the allegations as purely coincidental, but as organ transplant receivers from all over the world continue to claim that they seemed to have inherited the memory, experiences and emotions of their deceased donors, the scientific community began to reconsider.

I was fascinated.

Could it be that our indigenous and spiritual cultures were right about the heart being the container of our soul? Is it possible that the heart transplanted into someone else carries with it the memories of the donor? That’s the question that baffles the scientific community.

So I kept researching. Dr. Pearsall and Dr. Bunzel from the University of Vienna have collected many accounts of transplant recipients and studied this phenomenon of ‘cellular memory transfer’ in great detail and found that out of all organ recipients, it was the heart transplant ones who were more likely to report a transfer of memory and personality from their donors.

This would imply that the heart is so much more than what science had previously alleged. The stories are endless and they are all amazing.  All you need to do is google them and you can read for yourself.

The one story that I was most intrigued by was about an 8-year-old girl from a small town in the Midwest who received the heart of a 10-year-old girl. The transplant was successful, but almost immediately the little girl began having a reoccurring dream frequently enough that her doctor recognized it was out of his realm of expertise and recommended that she see a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist recognized immediately that this wasn’t a typical dream and it had the characteristics of a memory.

The question is, whose memory was this little girl having night after night? A forensic artist was called and the little girl began recounting her dream, of how, alone, running through the woods, she was assaulted by a man who at the moment of killing her, whispered some words to her.

Based on the girl’s details, the forensic artist drew a sketch that was circulated to the authorities. Shortly after, the authorities found a man that matched the description. When the suspect was brought in, under questioning, he quickly broke down admitting that he had indeed killed the girl.

And here is the key. When questioned about the details, the killer recounted the very words to them that the young girl had previously told the police that was revealed to her in her dream.  Based on this evidence the man was convicted, sentenced and he is now serving time for the murder of the ten-year-old young girl.

This case was only possible because the memory of the girl who was killed was preserved in the cells of her heart that are now in the body of the new recipient.

As I read, I realized how precious and powerful the heart is to have such an impact on the recipient. I was so overtaken by the stories I read that I wrote a note to my eldest daughter as a testament of my last will and desire. In the event my heart gets donated, I asked that she insist on obtaining the information of the recipient. If what these discoveries say are real, I know the powerful love I have for my two girls will stay and my heart will remember them. Hence the reason why I want my two beloved girls to visit my heart’s recipient.

I felt guilty that I had, for so long, taken for granted that my heart so miraculously pumps two gallons of blood a minute, over 100,000 gallons a day through 60,000 miles of blood vessels, three billion times in a lifetime, no repairs, no checks needed from me and it does this, in spite of my lack of gratitude, for what it does for me. Yet, this miraculous organ keeps giving me life.  I took for granted that my heart holds all my emotions, memories and soul. Suddenly I was imbued with such love and gratitude.

I later attended a conference on bridging science and spirituality in Sedona, Arizona where Gregg Braden spoke.

An astonishing discovery by a group of scientists lead by Dr. J. Andrews Armour of McGill University in Montreal, Canada, shook the skeptic scientific community, forcing them to reconsider their previous views about the heart and its ability for cellular memory transfer.

In 1991, Dr. Armour discovered that the heart has an intrinsic nervous system of its own, containing a concentration of 40,000 specialized cells in a precise way in the heart that are called sensory neurites.

What is special about these cells you may be wondering?

These cells are identical to the cells found in our brain, but they are in our heart.  According to Braden, these cells learn, think, feel and behave independently of our brain. The scientific community is now referring to this discovery as “the little brain in the heart.” Scientists are now able to measure the energy produced in our brains vs our heart and they found that the heart is the strongest biological generator of electrical and magnetic fields. Stronger than any other organ in our bodies. In fact, those brain-like-cells in our heart, are 5,000 times stronger magnetically than our brain.

Not bad for a simple blood pump, don’t you think?

Now it makes sense to me why the heart starts beating in an unborn fetus before the brain has actually formed. This new discovery of an independent source of intelligence in our hearts, is probably what is responsible for the memory transfer from one heart recipient to the next, while this has not been 100 percent scientifically-validated, its probability is high.

I think it’s interesting that common expressions used for hundreds of years actually acknowledge what science has just begun to consider. The expression, “ To know by heart,” for example, refers to ‘memorize or knowing well,’ which points to the heart and NOT the brain as the one responsible for performing such action. This implies that it is in the heart where intelligence is developed and not our brain. “Cross my heart,” refers to ‘telling the truth’ which implies that the heart is the place where the act of discerning is created. “A change of heart” to refer to ‘changing one’s mind’ again indicates what science is just realizing — that it’s the heart that sends the instructions to the brain and not the other way around.  “Thank you from the bottom of my heart” “Take to heart,” “Near to my heart, ”all these expressions imply that the heart is the center of our bodies and not the brain. Unlike previously thought, it is the heart and not our brain that stores our deepest emotions.

I now share the same belief that our ancestors have known for thousands of years — that the heart is the root of all human intuition, the source of all human wisdom, emotion, memory and the soul itself.

I believe that our hearts connect us to a higher source of intelligence that lives within us, an intelligence that loves us enough to give us life. This source is greater than ourselves and it is in constant communication with us.

So when you need to make a life changing decision, ask and listen to your heart!

It may take you a while to open yourself up and hear the directions of your heart. It can be confusing and frustrating at the beginning to discern when it is your brain telling you something vs your heart.

It takes practice to learn to listen to your heart. Any time I need to make a critical decision, I take a couple of deep breaths, I close my eyes, I put my hand on my heart (energy or awareness goes where your attention goes) and I ask my question. The answer that comes out in a speed of light, is the one I go with.

The heart knows instantly the answer because it has no filters. According to Braden, “When the heart speaks, it does it briefly, concisely and usually in a phrase or a single sentence. It often gives you the answer even before you finish asking the question. Rarely will your heart begin to tell you a story and preamble to justify the answer that it’s about to give you.”

The heart does not need justification.  So if you start to hear a story —most likely you are in your brain. The first answer you hear instantly after asking is the one coming from your heart. Remember, our heart feels the things our eyes cannot see and knows what our mind cannot understand.

So the next time someone says, “listen to your heart,” believe it!

THE HEART KNOWS BEST!

With Gratitude,