WIRED FOR BLISS

Q. Is the joy of children or the disciplined acquisition of knowledge more important?

The American neuroscientist and pharmacologist, Candace Pert, author of Molecules of Emotion, made a ground-breaking discovery about a secret located in the prefrontal lobes of humans. The prefrontals, the latest-to-evolve brain lobes, are the seat of the profound intelligence that is equal to our greatest challenges. Some examples of the kind of thinking done by this most human part of the brain are self-reflection, the pondering of deep meanings, the envisioning of new possibilities; the flashes of insight that offer a new solution, design or invention; empathy (understanding + compassion) for the plight of another.

So what’s the groundbreaking knowledge? Candace Pert discovered that located in the prefrontal lobes is the largest, densest abundance of neural receptors and transmitters of bliss inducing chemicals, such as endorphins, found anywhere in the body. Could it be that we have been hard-wired to experience spiritual highs when we are doing our best thinking?

So, what might ecstatic flashes of sheer genius look like? Is the trigger the laborious plodding of the rational mind, or is it something else?

Nichola Tesla was genius of rare stature, who had spent his childhood contriving experiments that confounded, amazed and alarmed his elders. As an adult his discoveries were ahead of his time. When Tesla was a young man, scientists were discussing the possibility of an AC motor and the rotational effects associated with alternating currents. Tesla’s musings about the possibility led to a profound experience:

One afternoon … I was enjoying a walk with my friend in the city park and reciting poetry. At that age I knew entire books by heart, word for word. One of these was Goethe’s Faust. The sun was just setting and reminded me of a glorious passage:

The glow retreats, alone is the day of toil;

It yonder hastes, new fields of life exploring;

Ah, that no wing can lift me from the soil

Upon its track to follow, follow soaring!

As I uttered these inspiring words, the idea came like a flash of lightning and in an instant the truth was revealed. I drew with a stick on the sand the diagram shown six years later in my address before the American Institute of Electrical Engineers. The images were wonderfully sharp and clear and had the solidity of metal. “See my motor here; watch me reverse it.”

Pygmalion, on seeing his statue come to life could not have been more deeply moved.

Significantly, Tesla accessed the heart through poetry, even as he engaged the brain in an elusive design project. You may recall that in a past blog, we discussed the ongoing heart/brain dialogue. The heart, the organ of elevated feelings, is also the source of intuitive flashes. The Institute of HeartMath found that people’s heart beats would either achieve coherence or become erratic according to whether a scene that was disturbing or inviting would appear seconds later on a screen.

The heart intuits future events and energetic blueprints that elude the rational mind.

In Testla’s case, when the heart and brain communication were open and flowing, while reciting poetry in a beautiful park, the elevated feelings served as a conduit for an astonishing breakthrough. Nor did the solution come as a laborious sequence of logic, but as an instantaneous single picture and a simple phrase, “See my motor here; watch me reverse it.”

The accounts of the break-throughs of countless geniuses echo Tesla’s experience. Yet another genius, Albert Einstein made the following two statements that point to the cultivation of such brilliance:

Imagination is more important than knowledge.  

And …

The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.

Poetry! Imagination! Inspiration! What have these to do with genius? EVERYTHING!

What have these to do with the education of our children? EVERYTHING!

Apparently nature has hardwired human children to engage in pursuits that activate human brilliance. Children, who are free to do so, spend their time initiating activities that sync with the body/heart/mind flow. Our role as inspirers, i.e. suppliers of evocative stories, compassionate relationships and compelling indoor and outdoor environments, is to step aside for the experiments and expressions of genius.  When we whole-heartedly nurture each child’s will to imagine, explore, experiment, design, create and construct, we can slip in academics in service to the project. Then academics mean something to a child. 

Schooling that has lost sight of the gift, oppresses the spirit of childhood by confining its offspring to a mass monoculture of memorizers and rational thinkers. This force-feeding of the intellect, bypasses the most human part of the brain (the prefrontals); silences the heart/brain communication; and plods forward with the endorphin transmitters and receptors switched off.

When at last we give credence to avant-garde science and the wisdom of the world’s geniuses, we will delight in young faces that reflect the bliss of firing endorphins. Rather than mass-producing rational intellects propped by megabytes of ROM and RAM, we will free innate geniuses with as many unique modes of expression as there are children in the world.

THE INVITING REAL WORLD

Q. You discourage parents from purchasing electronic devices and games for their children. Yet, according to some studies they build in intelligence. Why not a comfortable balance?

A. If you have young children, the day may be approaching or has already come, when your seven or eight year old asks for the latest electronic devices and/or games. If you resist, they are likely to insist that everyone else they know has one already. In desperation, your child may try every wile to wear you down, until you succumb.

The defeated parent, not wanting to be the “only” denying parent, has probably read about the challenges that devices and games bring to families.

“Okay,” the parent says, “but we have to agree on some rules.” “Okay,” says the jubilant child.

One of the most overlooked essentials in relationships with children in homes and learning environments is respect for the individual will. However, when we bring into the child's world something that is addictive in it's hold on the child's attention, another level of consideration arises.

Imagine putting an addictive drug within a child’s daily reach and saying, “Okay, you can have a little of this, on the condition you agree to use only such and such an amount.” Absurd as this analogy is, it is about something we all understand. Far from fostering independent volition, drugs cripple initiative and the creative/constructive will, as well as the will to resist the drug.

Electronics games act noticeably like drugs. Many children need increasing hits. They lose interest in entertainment through their own imagination, creativity and play. When they come off of the drug they are irritable and even belligerent. Some start to live in that cyber world even when away from it, even in a school where children are happily engaged and often in nature.

When denied a hit they often beg, cry, and even become enraged, because they so badly “need” another fix.

I am privileged to know parents who have taken a firm stand that can take weeks of exhausting persistence to “wean” the child from the electronic drug.

Nina persisted until Sasha began to pick up chapter books, instead of engaging in a futile push on his mother. Now, he is a voracious reader, having read multiple book series in their entirety. Currently, he is reading the eighth book of the Harry Potter Series for the second time.

The following e-mail exchange poignantly shares the challenging undertaking and devotion expressed by Alaina’s parents. Alaina is an extraordinarily independent and gifted child. She had been an endless fount of creativity at school until the first semester of this year, when there was a noticeable waning.

Then, suddenly, in recent weeks, her whole disposition switched from morose to happy. Her attitude became kinder and more magnanimous. Eyes shining with inspiration, she began a fantasy story, writing pages and pages for several days in a row. In addition, drawing on her forte, sculpturing paper animals, this fifth grader set up a little shop to demonstrate how to make them. Then she gifted the products of her labors to the eager attendees.

Alaina's parents inquired by e-mail about the next presentation night. The following exchange begins with my reply.

Vicki: Presentation night is scheduled for Thursday, February 26.

I so admire your precious daughter. She is definitely a leader among the other children. However, you should see how kind, respectful, and fair she is with them! Also, I'm enthused about the story she has been writing, with talent, I might add. Never has she alone and without any prompting taken off on a story like this to continue for several days. Whether or not she ends up finishing it, it's wonderful to see! This is exactly the spirit we are after, whether it comes to noticeable fruition in one, ten or twenty years!!

Jen: Awe...I'm so glad to hear this! We've had some similarly wonderful developments here at home as well! Just after Christmas, and FED UP, I took away Alaina's iPad...and game play...indefinitely. I was tired of fighting, the bad attitude when "time was up", the top of my daughter's head as she stared at that thing, and so on. And man, within just a day or two...the creative energies just took off! She was drawing all the time, and crafting all the time, and schematic drawing, and playing piano...you name it, she was doing it. And it's not like she didn't do those things before, but not very much. Like an hour here or there. But this? It was ALL DAY. Her mind just firing as she thought of the next thing she was going to do. So after much discussion and pressure to Lou, we're keeping it up for good. Now and for good she only gets her iPad OR game play for 1 hour on Saturday, and 1 hour on Sunday. And if she "complains" when time is up, she forfeits it for the next time. Because of this, it's simply so far OFF her radar now, she doesn't even think about it, talk about it, OR complain when time is up...at all. This seems to be the magic formula for her and we are thrilled. God help me come Summertime..but after what I've seen this time around, I'm determined!

Vicki: Thank you for sharing! This sort of example fortifies other beleaguered parents struggling against the tide of technology! You know, I have heard other 'testimonials' about the changed, pleasant, happy, creative child that emerges after being unplugged from electronics. This is such an important issue today. Do you mind if in my blog I refer to the info in your email, without saying who the family is?

Jen: Absolutely not! You may say, or not say, who we are. We believe in this so wholeheartedly we'd be proud either way. Alaina is such a good example of this. She is EXCEPTIONALLY "creative & imaginative" (she got "most imaginative back in pre-school). You know this about her. BUT, that said, we could have absolutely been guilty of "snuffing that out of her" if we'd been the kind of parents to let her spend too much time on these games and devices up to now, because their "worlds" really engage her imagination. Problem is, they don't INSPIRE it...AT ALL! It does all the work FOR HER, and shuts down her OWN creativity. Period. And it's a progressive issue...and it's not over until she's a full blown adult. If we ease off, even now, she would ease back in to more and more device time, and again, her creativity would wane. So it has to be CONSTANTLY on our minds. A constant battle. But it's one that I am more dedicated to than ANYTHING else in my life raising my daughter...because I will not live with the guilt of robbing the world of this precious child's creativity! Instead we are going to nurture, nurture, nurture it...until it's all she is and all she does! And RMCLE? God Bless you Vicki and your beautiful school. Alaina would simply NOT be who she is today, regardless of our efforts at home, were it not for her day to day, year to year experiences at the lovely "home away from home" ,,,

Children addicted to technology become easily bored. Without it, they easily become children.

BORN GENIUSES

 

Q: Many of the children at your school spend one and a half hours per week knitting, crocheting or engaged in other handwork. Wouldn’t this time be better spent on academics?

A. The following example is from Magical Child, by Joseph Chilton Pearce, a beloved teacher about the birthing, nurturance and education of children. This is part one of our discussion of this study.

In 1956 Marcelle Geber was sent to Uganda under a United Nations Research Grant to study the infants of Uganda and Kenya. Geber made a momentous discovery. Raised naturally according to what we today would call “attachment parenting”, these were the most precocious, brilliant and advanced infants ever observed anywhere. These babies smiled rapturously and continuously from soon after birth. The sensorimotor learning and general development were phenomenal, indeed miraculous.

These infants were born in the home and generally delivered by the mother herself. The child was never separated from the mother, who massaged, sang to, caressed, and fondled her infant continually. The mother carried her unswaddled infant in a sling, next to her bare breasts continually. She slept with her infant. The infant fed continuously according to its own schedule. These infants were wide awake a surprising amount of the time—alert, happy, watchful, calm. They virtually never cried. The mothers were bonded to them …  and sensed their every need. … At two days of age these infants sat bolt upright, held only by the forearms, with a beautifully straight back and perfect head balance, their finely focused eyes staring intently intelligently at their mothers. And they smiled and smiled.

 Observations by others (Jean Leidloff, Carla Hanaford, Charles Eastman) of tribal life on various continents have confirmed the benefits of the continuity of the afore mentioned natural processes. From a young age these children participate in the dynamic life of the village, including the handwork (jewelry-making, weaving, pottage, cooking, tool-making). In healthy tribes bright and happy children enjoy this natural continuum of interwoven living, working, playing, creating from birth to childhood.

In notable contrast, modern children birthed in hospitals, exhibit increasing numbers of syndromes, with growing numbers diagnosed with learning disabilities. Hospital practices that override nature’s timing and protocols often birth babies in whom the two hemispheres of the brain are not communicating across the corpus callosum.  Yet continuous dialogue between the two hemispheres is a fundamental and essential element of high intelligence.

In 1987 Brain Gym® International developed therapeutic exercises designed to help children think better, and be more fully and joyfully engaged with learning. The founders, Paul and Gail Dennison, discovered that movements that cross the midline help switch on the left-right hemispheric dialogue, which is essential for focus, concentration and memorization.

What does this have to do with handwork such as knitting, weaving or jewelry-making?  It turns out that many life-skills are actually “mini-brain gym”, facilitating the same cross-hemispheric exchange. Our children often sit and knit for half an hour happily engaged in a pleasurable activity that simultaneously stimulates neurological pathways between the hemispheres of the corpus callosum.  We do not have official studies of these children to prove that we are encouraging a beneficial process. We simply enjoy their general state of relaxed, friendly happiness as they work. We marvel at the cross-hemispheric play of intelligence as the happy,  focused 7 to 12 year olds engage in handwork.

It is difficult for modern parents and educators to appreciate knitting as forging pathways for high intelligence. Many are more impressed when a child accomplishes borrowing in a four-digit subtraction equation. Yet, this is generally only the monkey mind mimicking procedures that the child does not yet fully grasp. In societies many generations removed from natural processes, this premature forcing of intellect is frequently mistaken for evidence of real intelligence. (Math for intelligent comprehension includes manipulatives for the hands, imagination, art and happy engagement synced with the brain maturity of the child.)

 Now back to the Ungandans and Kenyans. Marcelle Geber noted that the adults conspicuously lacked the precocious spark of their infants and toddlers. But why? This leads us to the clincher of today’s blog. In an echo of some unknown calamity, perhaps in a superstitious response to it, there was an unquestioned tribal taboo. The four-year-old suddenly and traumatically found himself bereft of his mother’s love. All four-year-olds were taken from their mothers and switched to another woman. Each mother immediately withdrew all acknowledgement and affection from her shocked and grief-stricken child. From this point on, the prodigious brain development ceased, as the number one goal of the depressed child was bonding with the tribe and unquestioning observance of tribal taboos, so as not to risk abandonment again.

This is an extreme example of severing the child from a process designed to promote optimal intelligence and joy in living. Yet, some see echoes of this abrupt severance in modern civilization. At ever-earlier ages, modern society is severing children from maternal tenderness and hands-on work/play, as we thrust them into authoritarian academic settings. Training of the ‘monkey mind’ to memorize formulas for abstractions the child hardly grasps has replaced the ‘play of intelligence’.

According to Buckminster Fuller, “Every child is born a genius, “ The question is, is this merely a nice saying? Or, for the astute reader and observer, is there is a trail of clues in this blog regarding either the preservation of brilliance or its suppression? According to Dr. Lim Kok Wing, the Founding President of Limkokwing University of Creative Technology:

Children start life as geniuses, until schools make them average. http://founder.limkokwing.net/blog/

I quote Dr. Lim Kok Wing’s blog below, because of his exquisite eloquence and deep wisdom:

Every child is born brilliant. If we just figure out how to create an education system that recognizes that as the start point, we won’t have to worry about innovative solutions to some of the world’s most pressing problems.

If we figure this out, we won’t have to worry about war because peace will be the default solution.

If we figure this out, I have every faith that the future of the world will be in great hands.

AUTHORITY AND EMPATHY

Q. You don't emphasize the obedience of children. Yet, how can children possibly learn to get along in the world as adults, if they haven’t learned to obey authority figures as children?

A. Two evenings ago an ex-student and beloved young friend, now about 10 yrs. old, called. She was weeping as I picked up the phone. Her intense dislike and avoidance of homework had resulted a failing grade on her report card. Was my most helpful role to empathize with her woeful dilemma or to authoritatively admonish her to bring up her grade?

Two contrasting examples offer clues as to how we can best support children.

Recently we discussed two heart cells beating in unison and keeping one another alive on slides. Along similar lines, Cleve Backster (Primary Perception), shares remarkable discoveries of the energetic exchanges between plants and other life forms in his lab. On a whim, he decided to connect a dracaena cane plant to the polygraph machine, of which he is the designer. Noting that the machine recorded a somewhat irregular and alive electrical pattern, he decided to test it for a human-like reaction. After only minor reactions when he dipped a leaf in hot coffee and tapped it with a pen, he sat back to contemplate the plant.

Several minutes later, Backster’s musings led to an unvoiced speculation. “What if I get a match and burn the plant’s electroded leaf?”

At this mere thought, he noted that the polygraph pattern moved to the extreme, recording dramatic excitation. The plant was 15 feet away.

 Backster continued his experiments, recording the plants’ sympathetic excitation in response to endangered creatures from other kingdoms, including brine shrimp, yogurt bacteria and chicken eggs. Meanwhile, the plants continued to track Backster’s thoughts and feelings.

Of interest here is the quantum level sympathetic responsiveness between living beings. If this is the natural state of all living entities, in line with heart-to-heart resonance, it bears close consideration—and nowhere more than in our relationships with children.

By way of contrast, Stanley Milgram (Obedience to Authority) designed an experiment carried out at several universities to explore obedience to authority figures. The purpose was to see to what extent adults, schooled in authoritarian institutions, would override an inherent sympathetic impulse, and continue to obey an authority figure while causing someone pain.

For the experiment Milgram hired two actors: The authority figure wearing a white lab coat, and the ‘learner’, to enact reactions to escalating levels of shock treatment for wrong answers to a test.

Over a 4-year period, more than a thousand people came to a psychological lab to participate in this experiment. Each was designated the ‘teacher’, whose job was to administer a ‘test’ to the ‘learner’ and punish him with increasing volts of painful shocks each time he answered wrongly. The following is the scenario:

The ‘teacher’ observes as the ‘learner’ is conducted into a room and seated in a chair, his arms strapped down with an electrode attached to his wrist. In the presence of the ‘teacher’ he is told to learn a list of word pairs for a test.

The authority figure in the white coat guides the ‘teacher’ to an adjoining room to be seated in front of a shock generator. In 15-volt increments, the horizontal line of switches ranges from 15 to 450 volts. Verbal designations range from Slight Shock, to Danger, to Severe Shock.

The authority figure directs the ‘teacher’ to push the switch to deliver intensifying shock punishment each time the ‘learner’ answers incorrectly. The ‘teacher’ experiences growing internal conflict as the ‘learner’ receiving the shock begins to grunt in discomfort, then moan, then cries out and finally screams in agony.

In the first experiment, of the 40 subjects, 14 ‘teachers’ refused at some point to proceed further, while 26 obeyed the orders of the authority to the end, proceeding to punish the victim to the most potent, 450- volt shock of the generator, accompanied by agonized screams.

Can it be that empathy for the plight of another, as in the resonant heart cells and plants, is an inborn trait, which authoritarian discipline tends to suppress in its participants? During the past 47 years, my child teachers have taught me there is a hardening of the spiritual arteries when, in obeisance to authoritarian hierarchies, we judge the suffering of others, including children strapped to academic strictures. Our imposed curricula and scores are equivalent to punishments to children who long to be free.

In the dialogue with my young friend, the heart indicated the highest path – to help her listen to her interior authority – the soul. “Spread a healing salve on her sense of failure induced by the report card score of ‘63’. Share her pain with your own recall of homework miseries. Help her access the interior voice that asserts, ‘I can overcome anything, even by degree, the ability of homework to make me miserable.’ Find the words for her to hang up and fall asleep comforted by the sense of ‘I am loved for who I am’.”

In obedience to the inner authority, she decided that a realistic goal that she could stick to was to raise her score by 5 points each six weeks. That way, by the end of the year her score would be a passing 78.

This blog is dedicated to all the weeping, suffering children who have come to my notice for the past 50 years.

THE HEART-BRAIN ALLIANCE

 Q. I accept that the heart communicates with other internal organs. Nonetheless, shouldn’t it take back seat, when compared to the significance of brain development?

A. In 1991 the work of Dr. J. Andrew Armour introduced the startling concept of the brain in the heart. His research revealed the heart has a nervous system that is a complex network of around 40,000 neurons and neurotransmitters just like those in the brain.

Even more intriguing, this ‘heart brain’ is in dialogue with the ‘head brain.’ The heart to head information flows by way of the vagus nerve, to the medulla, through the amygdala, to the cortical areas.

There’s still more. The heart produces hormones that travel through appropriate arteries to all the organs in the body, including the brain. These hormones include neopinephrine, dopamine, and the ‘bonding hormone’ oxytocin. Oxytocin, present in parents as they cuddle their babies, also significantly affects pair bonding, levels of tolerance and cognition.

Cognition? Yes, cognition, as in learning and thinking. The brain in the heart helps the brain in the head think better. There are many advantages of an open channel of communication between the heart and head.

Now imagine a child learning while enveloped in the heart fields (12 ft in diameter) of elders who listen to the voice of their hearts and, likewise, cherish the child’s open channel. This opens a tantalizing new way to look at learning.

When the parents/teachers listen to the voice of the heart brain (their own, as well as the child’s), the child feels cherished, trusted and stimulated by engaging curricula, caring relationships and inviting surroundings. The child’s gaze is clear, the intelligence switched on, the hands and feet productively engaged. In this fresh envisioning of education, communities of elders and children actively create, work toward meaningful goals and harvest the fruits of their labors together.

Does this mean throwing out academics? No. It means the academics ride more naturally and easily into receptacles for scintillating intelligence, ie. beneficiaries of an open, flowing heart/head dialogue.

By contrast, have you ever been in a conversation in which another speaks so loud and long that you can hardly get in a word? In humankind’s current experiment with education that’s how the rational voice speaks over the quiet voice of the heart. The loud voice of the intellect concerns itself with how much, how fast, how much more, and how much faster the child absorbs and stores data. Adults anxiously measure this progress against norms.

Many child brains freeze up and/or seek escape from such a barrage.

The voice of the heart quietly confers about the quality, ie. the joyful, meaningful, compelling and creative self-expression inherent in  the learning experience.

Einstein said, “Creativity is intelligence having fun.”

In the past our society has not known that regimented schools, excessive paperwork and red X’s on papers obstruct the heart brain/head brain communication channel. Now we do. Now is the time to design systems that promote an open, healthful, intelligence-optimizing flow. In the wake of the rule of autocracy, let the reign of the heart/brain synchronicity begin.

GUARDIANSHIP

Q. I think you emphasize the importance of the feminine influence at the expense of the masculine. Don't you agree that children need the balance of both influences?

A. In the above photo, the clear, intelligent gaze of the child shines through a beautiful countenance.  Heart to heart, in the strong, protective arms of the loving father, the little one sits poised to take on the world. The Designer whispers to the child to explore endlessly; to touch and manipulate everything; to fearlessly connect with the surroundings. The child feels safe in the embrace of a valorous love that that would give its life for the child’s. This moving expression of masculine guardianship energizes the toddler’s full throttle venture into an inviting world. Who can effectively challenge such a formula for each child’s highest achievement of a unique destiny?

 Yet, for over a century, humankind has attempted to supersede this Design for childhood’s most brilliant expression.  At the beginning of the nineteenth century business tycoons and prominent persons in the U.S. sought a suitable model to educate the future workforce. A delegate to Prussia saw that the school children sat still and silent in rows, obediently tending to tasks assigned by the stern-faced teacher, speaking only when prodded by the militaristic presence at the front of the room. Once adopted, this authoritarian model severed academics from livingness in forced confinement. A systemic inversion of masculine power banished feminine influence at the expense of a child’s natural growth in intelligence. Future generations learned to distrust and authoritatively subdue childhood’s persistent drive to engage the world, to break through the walls of restraint.

Some of us remember special teachers that did tear down the walls. My 7^th grade teacher, Mrs. Trader, shines as a sterling model and mentor.  During world history I remember the joy of designing a Greek house with scrounged tiles from a construction site. What fun it was to divide into groups for lively discussions of the stories in the basal reader. To this day, I recall well the Civil War period, because the Abraham Lincoln Play served as our review and ‘test’. Writing the play, memorizing lines and making props and costumes required hard work directed by collaborative enthusiasm. In Mrs. Trader’s class I discovered I loved to write.

The contrast between the lusterless eyes of the cowed children across the hall, that moved about in straight, silent lines—and the bright, intelligent expressions of the children in Mrs. Trader’s class made a lasting impression. As the audience for the Abe Lincoln play, was the other group’s enjoyment tinged with yearning?

At the end of the day, the teacher across the hall stood sedately by the door as her subdued group filed out. Yet, I often noted that as our lively group exited, Mrs. Trader wearily cradled her head in her arms folded on the desk.

I now appreciate that the success of each day pivoted on Mrs. Trader’s exhaustive creative expression that sparked our own. She offered her whole heart to orchestrate, rather than subdue, our exuberance.

Mrs. Trader, I am deeply grateful to have flourished that year in a heart field charged with such intelligent, compassionate, valorous love. May the Spirit that expanded your heart, energize education today, and free the brilliance of childhood.

May the balanced presence of Feminine Intuition and Masculine Guardianship revere the deep pools of intelligence that shine through each child’s eyes. May the example of a single teacher’s bold departure from the norm in the ‘50’s become the norm of today. In school and out, may the Valorous Masculine empower the endlessly, restlessly exploring hands and feet – the Designer’s Tools of Potential gifted to children for the stimulation of genius – imminent and transcendent.

HEART TO HEART

Q. Why do you emphasize the heart so much in children's learning? Shouldn't this aspect of childhood be focused more on their brains?

A. We are accustomed to the heart’s power being referred to metaphorically in poetry and song.  On the other hand, science has designated the heart as merely a mechanical pump. Yet, recent research led by the Institute of HeartMath has revealed the astounding power of the heart to impact physical and emotional health as well as intuitive and rational intelligence.

In his book Biology of Transcendence Joseph Chilton Pearce describes an experiment with live rodent heart cells in biology lab. After some time on a slide, the pulsing cells would fibrillate until death. Pearce recalls the next stage of the experiment:

“We could take two live heart cells, keep them separated on the slide, and, when fibrillation began, bring them closer together. At some magical point of spatial proximity they would stop fibrillating and resume their regular pulsing in synchrony with each other—a microscopic heart … The two cells didn’t have to touch for this magical bonding to occur, and could in fact be separated by a tiny barrier.”

But the question was, how did those cells communicate across a spatial and even physical barrier?

 Science has confirmed that all living cells produce an electrical field, but a heart cell’s output is exceptionally strong. In the words of Pearce, “ That congregation within us, billions of little generators working in unison, produces two and a half watts of electrical energy with each heartbeat at an amplitude forty to sixty times greater than that of brain waves—enough to light a small electric bulb.”

There’s more to the story. This electromagnetic heart field radiates some 12 to 15 feet from the body.

This and a series of blogs to follow concerning the role of the heart suggest deep reflection on such a powerful organism. Consider this question: If two heart cells can save each other’s lives, what are the implications for two hearts beating in close proximity?

Can it be coincidental that the same entrainment that occurs between heart cells on a slide occurs between mother and infant as the baby nurses? The brilliant Architect of Love has placed the mother’s breasts at the level of the heart. Heart to heart, as the infant nurses, the mother’s heart strengthens her baby’s. As the hormones of bonding secrete, and the hearts pulse with synchronous beats, the two become as one unified field of love. Logic is not sufficient to capture the beauty of such attention to design. Only the sense of awe and wonder that arises from the heart can capture such magnificence.

The deeper we peer into the powerful energetics of the heart, the more wonderful the discoveries. That is why even a thousand blogs would barely lift the veil on this organ, this conduit of the soul for empowered love and intelligence in each human being.

But let us touch the hem of truth’s garment as we continue to discuss the centrality of the heart, for this has profound implications, not only for our relationships with children, but the learning institutions where we place them several hours a day.

We are at a crossroads in history, in which nothing could be more important than expanded realization of the power and intelligence of the heart to bring healing, peace, and Whole Being Intelligence to our children and the world.