HeartMath®: Transform your stress into resilience E73
December 20, 2022
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In this episode, I interview my dear friend and NCS colleague Lori Ives-Godwin about transforming your stress into resilience using both HeartMath® and NeuroChangeSolutions.
These two transformational programs changed Lori in profound ways that empowered her to live more fully and more awake in her days, in actions, in interactions, and just flat out in her life. So now, Lori is unfolding in her new calling, to share these teachings with our world.
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Get to know Lori Ives-Godwin
Lori knows that life unfolds in ways we least expect, at least that has been her experience. And for her, therein lies the fun, the challenge and the journey. Lori is a certified trainer and consultant in both HeartMath® and NeuroChangeSolutions, a company created by Dr Joe Dispenza. These two separate transformational curriculums; one focusing on the heart and the other on the brain; when interwoven together, go deep into the possibilities we all have within us to allow us to grow, transform, and change.
Connect with Lori Ives-Godwin
Website: Click here
HeartMath® Exercise Number One
This is the exercise I did with Lori during the interview. Feel free to do it as you read the blog.
Please get comfortable. You can keep your eyes open during this exercise.
Then, I want you to focus on one word you’re feeling right now (you don’t have to write it down or anything).
After that, you’re going to place your hand on your heart. Please keep your focus and attention on the chest area of your heart.
Then you’ll want to start breathing slower and deeper than normal. The suggestion would be to inhale for four or five and exhale for four or five. Or whatever rhythm is comfortable for you.
As you inhale and exhale, keep your attention on your heart.
Do it just two or three more times while focusing on your heart.
Welcome to HeartMath®, you just did your first technique. Good job!
Could you share a bit of your life experience and what has gotten you to be the person you are today?
Like so many people, as we walk our journey here on this planet called Earth. If someone would’ve told me in my twenties what I would be doing now. I would have A) laughed hysterically and then B) recommended they stop drinking or something. I started out as this corporate American person who just thought that life was about working hard.
Life was about doing everything you could at work and at home, just to make you continue to go up some ladder that you’re not even sure what that ladder was. But it was about the pursuit of more and more and more, whether it was more financial abundance or more security, or having the family and the kids.
Then the curve ball happened.
I did that very successfully for about 20 years. And then sometimes life throws us all a curve ball and sometimes it comes in the form of an emotional, mental, or physical situation. And that happened to me, so you reassess and reexamine the things you thought to be true sometimes come out not to be so true.
You realign your priorities. You understand that some of the institutions that you thought were infallible are in fact fallible. And so I started another chapter of my life where I understood that there was more out there than I had thought before. Then the pandemic hit 10 years into that journey.
And that journey had taken me to run holistic and alternative and integrative events, consulting, business support, and working with my local community to make it stronger in those areas. And when the pandemic hit, I realized that that too was a chapter that could close.
I was very happy with it and I was satisfied and content, but I was ready for my next adventure.
The Two Teachings that found me.
I found two teachings and I like to say they found me cause I honestly pretty much accidentally signed up for one of them. And the second one was something I had considered for a long time. That’s the NCS course that we both share.
And so those teachings have unfolded and changed my life yet again in such powerful ways. And so now I spend my days, teaching this new work. There are two different courses I teach that come together so beautifully, and I love sharing what I’ve learned as I’ve walked these years on the planet, and I love allowing others to have access to these simple tools and techniques that really can change your days. So that’s who I am and that’s where I am.
Can you tell us more about HeartMath® and why it is important?
Sure. So in that middle era that I was talking about earlier, I recognize that the integrative, alternative and holistic community had so much to offer us but in that same period of time, because I’m an engineer by background, I’m a corporate American by background.
Data & Science are important to me.
I look for data and I look for science, and I look for the understanding, the think box of why these things work and how you explain them to people in a way that people can understand.
And so when I say HeartMath® found me, I mean that because HeartMath® is a science-researched based, set of tools and techniques that have been researched for over 25 years at this point that allow you to access the parts of our body that help us, like you were talking right at the beginning, achieve calm, peace, and balance.
It allows you to recognize when you are starting down a path or are already on the path of things that are depleting your energy.
Things that are sucking the life out of you. But then if you were to truly check in with yourself and say how you were feeling, you would realize that at best, you were neutral and maybe you weren’t even that good.
What is HeartMath®?
And so what HeartMath® is, is a researched based protocol and set of tools and techniques that allow you to understand your own body.
And how to use your own body to achieve different types of goals during your day, like being able to stop and reset, like being able to understand maybe why my brain’s so foggy right now, and it’s because I’m under stress and it’s understanding what happens in your body when you’re under stress.
So it’s this beautiful combination of the science of why it works with some proven tools and techniques that you can do to achieve the end result, which is more energy, more coherence, more resilience, the ability to navigate your own life in a more balanced and calm sort of, and that’s HeartMath®.
And it takes a minute as it did at the beginning. I think like one of the biggest tools takes Five whole minutes. So it’s not breath work, it’s not meditation, although it might look like that to the outside observer.
HeartMath® is actively being used right now with the military, with nurses, with first responders, and I certainly don’t want my nurse as she’s walking down the hall to the ICU to be zen and meditative.
What HeartMath® does is makes us calm and coherent and able to handle with resilience what is actually happening in our days and that is why I love the tool so much.
Why this tool will be needed in 2023
So, the interesting part of this is that when you work for the Red Cross, you’re gonna be offered this course. When I think about the types of people that are using it, whether it’s the government or the hospital systems, or the school systems, I mean, come on in 2022 and 2023, I don’t really care what industry you pick. You can just add the word “stressful” to the end.
And so, this tool is meeting people at a place and a time now that is so needed because it’s not that pills are wrong or bad, but there are other things we can do and why not try?
What is your number one tip or advice you can give the listeners?
HeartMath®, because it’s been around and because it’s so research-based, if you Googled it or YouTube it or looked on social media, you’re gonna find a vast array of information and tools and techniques. That being said, like anything, if you have more understanding of why you’re doing something, the meaning will allow you to give it more power, and that understanding will make the tools more effective.
So, doesn’t cost any money at all if you want to just go look for all the content and, understand it. HeartMath® is readily accessible. However, the people that actually take workshops in it and people that go to the trouble of doing the research on the why have better results. It’s worth doing the research to make sure you understand why you’re doing it.
The impact of HeartMath® on my students.
People that have taken my course and the courses, that are super near and dear to my heart actually happened after I taught it the very first time.
So the first time I taught, we did a follow-up a month later. I won’t say the people’s names, but I asked everyone just to share how the month had been, had they been doing the tool, you know, what questions they had.
So the first person out of the gate was a cancer patient who was currently in treatment and after 10 hours, her medication would wear off, but she couldn’t take the medication again till the 12th hour.
So for two hours, every 12-hour cycle, she was in pain and she was the first one on the call and she’s like me and I’m like, go.
And she shared that she had the idea to start using HeartMath®, the tools and techniques she had been taught in the class when the 10th-hour hit and she started being in pain, and she reported back that it helped her bridge the gap in those two hours so that she wasn’t in pain anymore until she could take the pill again.
And that’s when I realized that I just wanna keep teaching this when you have a story like that.
Helps get out of a panic attack.
The second person told me that they had gone home and their husband has anxiety attacks and so they whipped out their handy dandy pamphlet I had given them and they walked him through the exercise cuz the steps are in the pamphlet and they actually walked their husband out of the panic attack, out of his anxiety.
HeartMath® is it’s deceptively simple.
It’s not just doing the breathing, everyone has a lot of breath work practices. It’s not meditation, exactly, because it’s not a meditative practice. Truly, it’s understanding how to bring coherence into our body, and it’s practising it so much that we raise our resilience.
We can raise our baseline so we react to the world differently and in ways that don’t deplete our energy, and that allow us to heal better. It allows us to sleep better. It allows our brain to work at a higher optimal level because we’re not putting these chemicals that make our body go, wait, am I in fight or flight? Or am I in like rest and digest? Am I in healing or am I running away from a predator?
And so HeartMath® has these sets of tools that don’t have us pushing the brake and the gas pedal at the same time, and it just works.
How would you describe coherence to somebody?
So think of coherence as everything working together in tandem to produce a result that’s optimal or easier.
I want everyone to picture a dragon boat where you have 10 people rowing and you have somebody at the front going row, row, row, row. And so if everyone in that long boat were to row at the same pace at the same time. The boat’s gonna pretty much go in a straight line and get where it’s going fairly fast.
That same boat where everyone’s rowing at a different cadence. Some are on the right, some are on the left, and some are doing nothing, some are going really fast. Some are going really slow.
Well, It goes in circles. That’s another really pleasant way it could fall over. I mean, certainly not gonna get where you’re going. And if you were gonna get where you’re going would you get there quickly? No.
A coherent body working as a team
Could you get there more optimally? Yes, So now picture coherence in your body.
Where you have a hormone system and you have a cardiac system, you have a neurological system, and you have all of these systems in your body, and when I was talking before about putting on the brake and the gas pedal at the same time, it’s the same concept.
What if you could get all of your systems to align and work together as a team? Now all of a sudden you have the energy to heal. You have the energy to digest, you have the energy to work on that program or that deliverable you have for your company. So when your body is in coherence, all of your systems are working together towards the same end goal.
How would you describe resilience?
Resilience, let’s call it your battery.
So when you wake up in the morning, your battery’s green, and it’s charged because when your body is resting, you are actually giving it energy so that it has energy for the day.
Now the problem is most Americans don’t sleep particularly well. I don’t know about you over in Europe, but sleep is an issue that I only have the statistics for the United States, so I’m not gonna quote other places on the planet. But probably 40% of Americans, give or take, have issues with sleep, and that’s the thing that restores us overnight.
Now you wake up with your battery, maybe not as green as it needs to be. It might already be green-yellow, but as the day goes on, If you’re not paying attention, what’s happening to your battery is it starts to get lower and lower and eventually ends up in red, and then hopefully it’s time to go to bed at that point because you need sleep to bring yourself back.
So resilience is basically your ability to deal with things and your ability to deal with things is largely dependent on that battery and where you are in the green, yellow, and red.
The more green you are, the more resilient you are.
What they now know, and this is the most important term about HeartMath®, I can’t believe I’ve taken this long to share, is it’s based on the concepts of heart rate variability, not heart rate and the reason it’s called HeartMath® is that it does relate to heart and heart rate variability.
It is the time between beats. Heart rate variability is the time between beat one and beat two and beat two and beat three, all of which can be electrically measured.
That’s why an electrical device can measure it and make those little graphs that we all so love.
And now if you have a Garmin watch, you’re actually having your heart rate variability measured. It’s something that over the last few years has really become known in science, and it’s gone from fringe science to mainstream science.
Sidenote from Linda: Or you just use your mobile phone together with the SORCE App and you get your HRV measured every morning.
HeartMath® would say that your heart rate variability is the number one sign of how resilient you are.
I have a device that I can put on my ear and connect either Bluetooth to my phone or directly to my computer so that I can show you my heart rate variability and this is known exact and real.
It doesn’t change based on how I’m thinking. It changes based on how I’m feeling, and I can make an incoherent graph change by feeling anger, hatred, rage, deep sadness, all of these really big emotions. I can make a chaotic, incoherent signature show up on that graph, and then if I shift towards joy, gratitude, appreciation, calm care, and compassion, all of a sudden that biofeedback device will show a coherent signature on the graph because it’s measuring my heart rate variability.
That’s how we know this works and that’s where the science permit comes from. You can actually prove everything I’ve said and everything that’s gonna show up when you Google all those things. We actually have a device that’s readily available to show it and do it regularly. (Link to Lori’s Shop Website: https://www.easeyourenergy.org/shop.html)
We are both NCS Consultants and teach the Change Your Mind…Create New Results Program where people learn how to change based on the concepts of neuroscience. What is the difference between these 2 teachings?
Avoidance is the number one thing that people do when they have a negative emotion. However, it doesn’t stop the emotion. And if the emotions are already created by the chemicals in your body and the chemicals are still in your body, your avoidance does work maybe not to feed it anymore but it doesn’t actually do anything about what’s already happened in your body physiologically as a result of that.
If I’m stressed out, I’m going to do something about the stress so that the stress will stop. But again, it doesn’t do anything about the feeling.
It is taking care of it for the future. For example, calling the boss to say, I’m running late. Now I don’t have to be worried that they’re looking for me in a meeting. But I still got that agitation in me because I was late and the call didn’t actually decrease the agitation. It just dealt with the future.
So what HeartMath® does, and this is why it goes together with the NCS program, is HeartMath®’s tools and techniques will basically be able to be done in the elevator with your eyes open.
It can be done when you’re walking down the hall or when you’re in the car at the light aggravated at the people in front of you.
It could be done right before you get on your computer, like when you’re about to type that note that you shouldn’t be typing.
It’s a reset, but it’s a reset that comes with the undoing, and we’ll do the technique at the end, but by placing your attention on a different feeling, you actually short-circuit the feeling you were having.
Change Your Mind…Create New Results
Now, what NCS does for us in the Neuro Change Solutions curriculum and the Change Your Mind…Create New Results program is about your thinking and the understanding of why all of those things are happening for you.
And one of the tools in the NCS curriculum is a breath tool that’s similar to HeartMath® because they are linked.
And they have other tools in that curriculum that also are amazing tools and techniques. Those tend to do a little bit more for the thought process because that starts the cycle of this program.
The feeling starts the cycle of the heart program. But ultimately, if you really think about it, it’s really a wheel. And on that wheel, you can get on that wheel just about anywhere.
The feeling can start the wheel or the thought can start the wheel.
Let’s say you’re angry, Okay? What happens is your brain’s communicating constantly with your heart, and as the brain’s communicating with the heart, it starts to produce the chemicals of anger.
let’s say now the brain’s paying attention. The heart and parts of the brain are helping to produce the chemicals. It’s the cycle of thinking and feeling and feeling and thinking where you’re gonna get angrier and angrier and angrier, right?
Things like the refractory period, which we teach in the Change Your Mind…Create New Results class where you don’t really wanna react right away to a stimulus, because while you’re in that reaction mode, you’re probably gonna send an email you regret sending, or you’re gonna say something you regret sending.
But what if you can then hop over to HeartMath®, lower your energy on that subject, become coherent, where your heart and brain are getting into coherence on something that is okay, and now all of a sudden you’re out of that refractory period even faster because it’s a different set of tools and techniques.
They both work so beautifully together because they are both based on science.
They’re both based on research. They’re both based on how our body works. But one’s kind of coming at it more from the point of thinking, and HeartMath® is coming at it more from the point of feeling. And their research is tremendously complimentary and many of us do practice both because it’s just this sweet, beautiful and juicy spot where depending on where our audience is coming from, both sets of tools can be super helpful.
To me, they were both blessings that came to me and I could see how the puzzle pieces fit in so beautifully. Because of HeartMath®, I walk through my day now with awareness.
And so literally when I’m making my coffee or tea in the morning, I do this habit stack. Where to start my day. I do a two-minute HeartMath® while the coffee is brewing. I know to do it every day. And then once I start as things then unfold, it reminds me during the day, oh, I could probably use HeartMath® right now before I get on that tech support phone call.
Or before I get on a podcast that I’m gonna be interviewed about.
And it works every time I feel my shoulders go down almost every time, which means they were up and I’m like.
And all of a sudden, I’m just thinking clearer because my brain and heart go into coherence,
Can you share with us how you personally benefit from the content of these 2 programs?
Oh God, I could equally probably scare off half your audience and attract the other half with some of it. So first of all, I was an engineer. I don’t know that I felt a lot. I didn’t necessarily have deep feelings about anything I think. Feeling back through that, knowing what I feel now, I’m just capable of this deeper level of feeling about everything.
The world just feels brighter, and I don’t mean to make that like, you know, a silly slogan or song. I’m more engaged in my own life, participating more in my own life, and making choices that are conscious and aware that drive what works for me.
The two practices changed the way I exist now.
I’ve made more progress in the last three years of my life as I’ve unfolded in these two programs because so many of the things that I was being taught or I was attending workshops or I figured out for myself, all came together in a sudden when I learned these two things.
I can’t recognize the old Lori.
There’s so much about these two disciplines that have fundamentally changed who I am. To the point, I can’t even go 10, 15, or 20 years back. It would just be so ludicrous cause I don’t even understand that person anymore.
My husband attended the NCS course and somebody asked him about something and he goes, I can barely recognize Lori now from two to three years ago because she’s changed so much. And he said it right in the course.
So I like to believe that the people in my life like me better now. But, you know what the best part is, I like myself better.
You can rewrite your script.
There are times for all of us when I wanna just sit down. Like I kind of wanna be the toddler throwing the tantrum. Like, no more life, please. I’ve had enough. Can you give me a little break? And then you start to think about it.
Wait a minute, it’s my life. There’s no life happening to me. I can sit down and rest for a minute. Yes, of course. But we go to an amusement park to ride the rollercoaster. We don’t go to an amusement park to sit on the bench. That would be kind of boring for really long periods of time.
I like roller coasters, I like rides, I like shows, and so sometimes I look at that movie script called Lori’s Life and I go, that character, Lori, does she not see what’s going on?
Like whoever wrote that script, first of all, that’s a crappy script. I don’t really like it. And does she not realise that she could rewrite that script?
Does she not realize that those people are not the people that she maybe needs in her life anymore? Doesn’t she see that every time she’s with them she feels worse when she’s done?
And I look at it up on the screen and sometimes I’m just like, that could be really exhausting Lori (Lori, up on that screen). How could you like make that less exhausting for you?
What movie do you wanna pay to go to?
And so I just look at these tools as my journey towards understanding that movie. I definitely know there are different ways to get there. And when I look around now at the sea of people that are coming to these types of practices, because we’re living in 2023 and it’s not gonna look like a less stressful year.
So why not give yourself the gift of these types of things as opposed to the gifts to a concert or the gifts to a sporting event or the gift of a big juicy meal, or the gift of, you know, whatever, right? These are things that allow us to live our life happier.
There are things that I know for a fact that I have no doubts or no disbelief that if people do this type of work, whatever it is, it doesn’t have to be HeartMath®. It doesn’t have to be NCS. I’m just saying, do something that allows you to live more fully in your days.
Do something that allows you to live more fully in those days with joy, gratitude, care, and compassion. And if we all could start doing that, I think we would all change the world.
Sometimes your movie script needs a major rewrite. Sometimes you really want the sequel to start already because that other one was just like, I don’t know why we paid for that movie, but I’m ready for the sequel. We all can do the sequel.
What has been your most important change or improvement since embodying these 2 teachings?
I’ll share a hilarious story that’s very personal. Last week I was hacked. Now I’m an engineer by background, so the embarrassing part of this is that I actually let myself get hacked. Here we go, another one of these HeartMath® moments, right? I could literally watch my physiological response knowing from the science of the two courses I watch the sympathetic nervous system turn on. Now, I’m not a biology major in high school. I stayed as far away from biology as I could, but now because I understand so much more, I could tell you all the things that my body was doing and I watched it happen. I watched my cortical inhibition turn on because my fight or flight was getting turned on.
They were brilliant in how they hacked me, of course, or at least that’s my story and I’ll stick to that at the moment. But I literally watched as they were able to get me out more and more out of my logical thinking brain and into my reaction brain where I’m starting to produce all these chemicals and I’m just watching myself getting more and more and more and more and more agitated. I couldn’t hear my husband talking to me, maybe giving me some better advice than what I was doing.
Now what?
Then I realized I do have tools and techniques, like now what? So it was literally then allowing myself to then unfold. And get me back into understanding, be compassionate with myself that these chemicals were in my body and they weren’t going away shortly.
And the next day when I woke up, it was like, okay, my brain’s functioning. I’m gonna start out my day with intent. I’m gonna use these tools and techniques from both the NCS and HeartMath®.
I could sit there all day that next day and just get myself nothing but agitation, anxiety, frustration, and anger.
Who am I hurting when I do that? Me.
I’m not hurting the people that did what they did. I’m only hurting myself. And so I just had to make it more playful. I had to make it more of a game- Let’s just go. What can you do to make this better?
You might as well do that. So you can make up some stories like, oh, well, at least now I won’t ever get hacked again because I’ve locked down everything so, so dreadfully, carefully that nobody is gonna be able to steal my identity.
Hey, if you ask me did I really wanna do any of this? Oh, come on. Of course not, right? I mean, like, Let’s be real. I mean, that was not a lot of fun.
However, I’ve not let myself fall into this emotional rollercoaster. Anyone listening to me knows that I’m really pretty much okay, cuz you all have enough intuitive capability and you have the hardware and software to read other people.
It’s just something I have to get done now, just like anything else on my to-do list, tackle, all the major things already, just tackle a little bit more every day and I’m just not worried about it.
I can be pretty chill and I’m only sharing it here because it’s a hilarious story as far as I’m concerned at this point.
How the old Lori would have reacted to that…
But the old Lori, you asked how the old Lori would’ve handled it. I probably would’ve carried guilt and unworthiness and all sorts of emotions that were pointed at me for how I let that happen.
And I might have carried those for a really long time. I’m not even just talking about doing the work. You know, like all the to-dos and the tasks that came out of it, but the actual, like how I viewed myself and how I would give myself permission and beat myself up. I would’ve called everybody to tell ’em all about it, not because it’s a hilarious story, but because it was something that I was gonna justify that I did it okay.
Or something about it, how I fell for the scam and everyone should know about it cause clearly, it was the best scam ever. Or I wouldn’t have fallen for it. Oh my God. That Lori would’ve had some stories.
It’s not informing who I am. So if I really get to the core now. I don’t look for stories and the outward world to reinforce things about myself that I don’t like about myself.
I allow the outward world to come for me to see that those are things I still have in me, but then allow me to work through them so that they no longer inform my decisions moving forward and they don’t inform how I feel about myself. And to me that is such a huge win At this point in my process, I can’t overemphasize that enough.
EXERCISE Number two – Think Box.
Get comfortable, and place your hand on your heart mostly to keep your attention there. We’re gonna think about it first.
And if your attention drifts, no problem. You’re not used to doing it. Just come back and sometimes putting your hand there just helps you keep that attention.
Then inhale and exhale for four or five or whatever rhythm is comfortable. The important part here is to keep them in the same cadence.
It does do something physiologically, and so you wanna do four in and four out, or five in, five out.
Then what you wanna do is we’re gonna breathe just for a couple of minutes together, and I’m gonna then ask you to breathe in gratitude. And what I want you to do is feel the feeling of gratitude in your heart as you’re doing that, don’t think it.
If you’re starting to come up with gratitude in your brain, then you’re in the wrong spot. Come back to your hand and I want you to feel gratitude in your heart as you inhale and exhale.
Interrupt the negative emotion
And what this tool does is when you’re in the middle of a stressful moment, or you’re going into that meeting or you’re late for that meeting, or you’re stuck in whatever situation that you’re in, you don’t have to use your hand here, but you could be in the middle of a meeting and just kind of start bringing up gratitude.
It will interrupt the emotion you are having and stop your body from making the chemicals about that emotion because your body does not actually know the difference between a real experience and something it’s thinking about.
And so do the interrupt and now all of a sudden, you’re gonna be in a different place as the meeting unfolds, as the difficult conversation unfolds, as the thing that was causing you stress, you’re gonna look at it differently. You can do the exercise at 52:37.
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