You Have Neurons in Your Heart! Heart-Centric Menopause with Kimberly Snyder

Dr. Mindy On this episode of The Resetter Podcast, I bring you Kimberly Snyder. She is a three time New York Times best selling author, lots of books, lots of thoughts, and she is here to share her latest book, which is the hidden power of the five hearts, and this conversation is going to center you. So get ready, because we really start off talking about this incredible, mind blowing idea that we have a brain in our heart. As somebody who has studied neurology for over 25 years, this fact has blown my mind. There are so many times that we think we have to think our way out of a situation, or we have to use our mind to create something, but what you're about to hear is research is actually showing us the opposite, that everything we are trying to create in our world begins in our heart and then moves to the mind. This will blow you away if you have never heard about heart coherence, if you have never thought about thinking from your heart, if you're not a feeling intuitive based human, but you are curious what that might be like. This is an incredible conversation. So what we're going to go through is we're going to talk in the beginning about science so we break down that there are 40,000 neurons in the heart. She talks about some of the clinical studies about how the heart coherence can improve immunity and it can prove DHEA, which is a huge important steroid for hormone production. And then in the middle, she's going to go through what she calls her five stages, or the five hidden powers of the heart. And it's really beautiful. You'll you'll hear me really emphasize how I really feel. Like these five stages are very much like what we go through in the perimenopause and menopause journey. And she and I kind of had a geek out moment there between her work and my work, and it was really a beautiful lens in which I had hadn't really thought about the frequency or the heart coherence changes that happen as we move from a perimenopause to a post menopause state. So we bring it into that lens, and then at the end we she actually leads us through a heart coherence meditation. And it's it's phenomenal. This is one that you're going to want to sit and listen to. This is one where, I hope you don't click off when she does the meditation. I will tell you a little interesting fact that birds started singing outside my window as I was doing the meditation, they were not singing there. They're not singing now, my Podcast Producer sent me a message afterwards and said that his cat came and sat at his feet while the meditation was going. So there's really something to this getting into the heart, especially at a time when there's a lot of chaos in the world. And one of the things you'll hear from both Kimberly and I, we both evacuated from the fires in LA a couple of weeks ago, and so we share our stories there, but I will tell you an hour after doing this conversation with this beautiful soul and doing the meditation at the end, I feel a lot more grounded. And so if you are in a place where you are feeling turbulent, I really encourage you to listen all the way through. I encourage you to get her new book and to learn the power of your heart. It will blow your mind, literally. So I'm so excited to bring Kimberly Snyder to you all, and I hope that this conversation and her work and her book touches you as deeply as it has touched me. Enjoy. Welcome to the resetter podcast. This podcast is all about empowering you to believe in yourself again, if you have a passion for learning, if you're looking to be in control of your health and take your power back, this is the podcast for you. So Kimberly, let me just start off by welcoming you to the resetter podcast. I appreciate you being here and having this conversation with me. So welcome. Kimberly Snyder Oh, thank you so much. Dr Mindy, I'm so excited to chat with you. Yeah. And Dr. Mindy as I was telling you, we'll fill my, my our listeners in on this, your book had been sent to me. And there were, there was many things I loved about it before I even got into it. The first was the color yellow is one of my favorite and so I was like, ooh. Oh, I don't I'm a total judge the book by a cover kind of gal, just so we're clear. So that was neat. And then when I got into the book, the first thing that just grabbed me was this, 40,000 neurons in the heart, and I want to tell you that I have spent a lot of time trying to understand the neurons of the brain, and my brain, when I read that in the beginning, was like, what Wait, we have neurons in the heart, and there's 40,000 of them, and they talk to the brain. What have I been doing studying the brain? I should probably be studying the heart. Yeah. So that was a big aha. I just have to share that with you. Well, Kimberly Snyder thank you so much for first of all sharing that you love the cover, I have to say. Dr Mindy, this is my eighth book. This is my favorite cover. My first three books. My fourth one was written, co written with Deepak Chopra. It's always our faces. It always felt a little bit different to have my face right on the book cover. And it just started to feel, you know, this universality of what I wanted to share. And so just having these swaths of color and talking about these stages felt like it really represented this material. Because we all do have these power centers inside of us. And when I came across this knowledge, Dr Mindy, I too, was blown away. I've been in wellness now for over 15 years. I've been studying nutrition and wellness and Yoga and Ayurveda and all these different aspects. And sometimes something's right in front of us, and we gloss over it. And I remember these moments. I have two boys, two young children, and I remember when you go in to get an ultrasound, and the doctor is you hear the heartbeat, right? And the doctor says, the heart is has, is here. The brain isn't formed yet. And I remember hearing that and sort of just being like, Oh, cool. And then kind of going about, but then, as we start to get deeper into the science, we realize that the heart is actually this brain similar to our gut, the type of a brain, and then there's a brain up here. And the heart actually sends more messages to the brain than vice versa. So you get into more of the material in the book, but it has absolutely changed my life in so many ways, terms of feeling more calm, more centered, having more vitality. I've gotten my D, H, E, A, measured, subsequently to writing the book and just everything from a measurable standpoint, my heart coherence, numbers and just how I feel more peaceful and grounded every day, as well as those that I have led through these programs. Now my clients I've introduced this to, so I really just want to share with everyone this miracle, which is Power Center, which is right inside of us. Yeah. Dr. Mindy And so can we start a little bit off with just sort of the like, when we look at neurons in the brain, like this is the lens in which I see it? Yes. When we look at neurons in the brain, those neurons in the brain are fueled by our hormones, a lot of them for women, and so when estrogen specifically goes away, those neurons don't have the same kind of reaction. They don't this is why we forget. This is why stress is so acute. And so the conversation in the collective right now has been, well, let's keep your estrogen up. So these neurons work well, but I have been saying, but menopause is a natural process, so why should we keep it the hormones up too high? Isn't there something that's supposed to happen? And this has led me to understand from a hormonal level how important the heart and the brain are, and how they change with estrogen. So I'm just kind of curious, and I want to start off by just like, how do neurons in the heart work? And then my next question is, are they? Are they fueled by estrogen? I don't know if you know the answer to that, so Kimberly Snyder maybe we could step back for a moment, Mindy even first talk about what heart coherence is, because it relates to your question, perfect. First of all, this idea that the heart is a brain, that there's neurons in the heart, that the heart sends more messages than vice versa, is again, just a surprise, a shock to many of us, because we don't learn this in school, and even those of us that have been in wellness for many years, I know I speak for myself and saying that I didn't know this. So when I started at all like I started learning research, for me, it's twofold, right? I love the science, I love learning all the research and the papers, but I also am a student of spiritual teachings, and the Vedic philosophy and the Vedas are the oldest teachings in the on the planet. So the reason that the book is called the hidden power of the five hearts is that a monk from India called Swami Sri Yukteswar talked about in his book The Holy science, he was a scholar of the Vedas, that there's five stages that we go through to awake. In into this potential of open heartedness, which also means, you know, from our standpoint, just feeling, you know, really high health, high vitality. Let me talk about a study with DHEA in a moment, and just this ability to be fulfilled and loving and peaceful and content. So I was going really deep into these Vedic teachings on the heart. At the same time, I came in contact with the Heart Math Institute, and I found some of their work when I was writing my last Hay House book actually called, you are more than you think you are. So anyways, not to go on a long tangent, but I ended up doing a research study with them and learning a lot about these neurons in the heart and so basically, to sum it up, what heart coherence is is when you start to improve the communication and you create alignment between your heart, your brain, and your nervous system. So you think of it like a like a triad. And as Dr Roland McCrady, the research scientist that we did the study with, says, emotions run the show, right? So let's see, when you're looking at these patterns, a lot of people are wearing, you know, Apple watches, and they're looking at their HR V numbers. But what research on heart coherent shows it's not just the pattern, it's not just the numbers, but it's the actual patterns. And I'll show you a graph in the book right here, right? So this is when you're experiencing an emotion of anger, which is really jagged, and this is what appreciation is, right, simple practice to go in. It's these smooth sine waves. So what their research is showing is when we start to become more coherent, entrainment happens. So all these other systems like digestion and hormones and immunity start to become more efficient. You're spinning less energy. You become that's what coherence feels like. The example I use in the book is you swim from one shore to the next, right, and coherence is like you you hit a rock, you scrape your knee, you you get annoyed, you get angry. You're taking the fog out of your goggles. So my understanding is when we shift our energy and attention to these simple practices into the heart, we start to wake up these neurons, and it starts to change our perceptions, our thoughts. It starts to take us out of fight or flight. Rebalance the nervous system so there's this overall hormonal balance versus, let's work with the hormones to try to support the neurons in the heart, right? What I've it's actually the reverse, like get coherent from within, and then you have a positive effect on the neurons. Dr. Mindy You know what it that fits into something that I've written about in all my books, called the hormonal hierarchy. And the hierarchy is that sex hormones sit at the bottom of the pyramid, and above that is insulin, so fast, like a girl was all about let's get your insulin in check so that your sex hormones can be in check. And then above insulin is cortisol. So if your cortisol is off, then insulin you'll be more insulin resistant. If you're more insulin resistant, your hormones will be off. But at the top, at the top of the hierarchy that like calms the whole system is oxytocin. And one of the unique qualities of a female's body and brain is that we have a massive amount of oxytocin receptors in our amygdala and we have a massive amount of oxytocin receptors in our heart. Yes, so and we also have a massive amount of oxytocin receptors in bones, which is fascinating to me, because I wonder if that's why we get a little bit like I feel it in my bones, but oxytocin runs the hormonal show. So when you're talking about heart coherence, I think the way I think about it correct me, if I'm wrong, is, I think what you're saying is from a frequency place, and what I'm hearing and interpreting is, yeah, that makes sense from even a neurochemical place, like you're neurochemically changing yourself when you're thinking from your heart along with your frequency, is that, would you see it Kimberly Snyder that way? So when we think about what I call in the book The Wild Horse mind, right? When we think about what the stress response is, which is resistance upset to what is, you start to get caught up in thoughts, right? It's not the traffic that causes the stress or the bad weather, or whatever it is. It's the thoughts, or in our case, the fire that we just went through, but it's all the thoughts like, oh my gosh, you know, this is overwhelming, or the traffic, like, why does it have to be this way? So it's the mind sort of spinning, and then it starts to then create this cascade effect and the nervous system and the cortisol gets secreted and all that. So through these practices, which I can't say enough, how much they helped me get through this fire, how much they helped me just in my life. Dr Mindy, something as simple, for example, right now, while we're speaking, is if we and if you guys listening to this, if you place some of your attention on your heart. Right now, for some people, it could mean even just touching your heart, but for many people, it's just putting some of your attention here. And what research published in the American Journal of Cardiology shows that this alone starts to rewire your nervous system, just moving attention. This is how powerful we are. So what it means is calming, groundedness means that we aren't so over identified in the thoughts which create the stress which makes us feel very ungrounded, this very grounded place which the science, again, is showing. There is this epicenter of it entrains everything else. When we come here and spiritually, Dr Mindy, we think about these ancient texts, Vedas, but also the Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Greeks, they all assigned special significance to the heart. Pretty much all world religions as well. You think about this Sacred Heart of Jesus Christ, the Buddhist Heart Sutra, the Anahata Chakra, right? The Lev and the Torah, the word Kalb is, which translates to heart, is mentioned 132 times in the Quran. So when we look at modern society, which is so thinking like heady, confused fear based right all up in the thought. I get so excited about sharing this work, because there's this place where there's clarity and groundedness. And then, of course, the modern research, there's over 500 papers. Again, it's like, why don't we know about this stuff that talks about the heart, brain and its profound implications, again, on digestion, on immunity, on energy, on vitality, on hormones, on all of these different aspects of wellbeing. What does Dr. Mindy it look like to think from your heart like? Again, the way I know neurons is I know them to carry information? Yes, and so if I'm thinking from my heart as opposed to thinking from my brain, is there a way that I would know the difference? Kimberly Snyder So there was a team of a husband wife, team of researchers back in the 70s known as the lacys that discovered that the heart has its own intelligent language. So when we think about thinking, we think from a mental standpoint in terms of, you know, sentences, thought patterns, but what the heart speaking to us is a completely different language that centers around intuition, right, which is knowing this guidance, this sort of I don't know what it is, but I don't want to go on a second date with that person, or I just feel guided to email that person. It's a deeper knowing, Dr Mindy, and it doesn't speak the same language as we're used to. So one of the things about coherence as we center the heart, brain, nervous system, there's this calming effect. Another analogy I use in the book is like a lake, right? When you calm the lake, you can see the rocks on the bottom, but when you're chaotic, when you're in coherence, it's very disordered. You don't really that's where confusion comes. You don't know what's left or right. So as we become coherent, one of the most powerful things that arises is clarity, right? I've been working with clients for so many years on their lifestyle and their diets. People say to me all the time, I don't know when I'm hungry, I don't know what my body's telling me to eat, I don't know when I'm really tired, right? Because we've lost that clarity. So we don't get there from a mental place, Doctor, you know? We get there from this this powerful here I am just true self, right? Not the thoughts. But then we get to this place of this real stillness that, you know, the Tao Te Ching talks about, that Eckhart Tolle is talking about, because I used to listen to his lectures and say, but how do we go beyond thought? How do we actually do that as well? So this great presence is, you know, meditating for so many years, and then the thoughts come in. But as you learn these simple tools and techniques and the heart aligned meditation, which we did the research paper on, which is featured in the book, you actually come into this heart brain, and you start turning on these neurons, and it starts to get everything in alignment. And I can just say experientially, you know, the last few years since I've come into this work doctor, just the calmness, the more fulfillment. And yes, the numbers have gone great, but just enjoying my life, feeling more deeply connected to my husband and my kids and the day, I used to be a perfectionist. I used to be so wrapped up in achievement and always on that hamster wheel, which is actually known as the propelled heart stage two, where we're always going, going, going. There's a major, incredible antidote to stress, comparison and judgment, all these things I hear about in our community, people are always asking about from the heart. Dr. Mindy You know, it's interesting, because for a good portion of the back half of my clinical career, I helped really sick people get well, and part of my job was to recreate their lifestyle. Part of my job was to put a team around them that like supported. And help them find their own path to healing. I was always like, you're gonna do the healing. I'm not doing it. I'm just here to create the container and to guide you. And we all the time. I would like, when I would get a test result back, I would say, here's what the test results are are. Here are options of what we can do. Now tell me what feels right to you, give me what your and so I would bring the intuition, their intuition, into their own healing journey. And now you just are, you are making me think that I get why that works so well, because the patient needs to have a buy in, an intuitive buy in to their own healing experience because of exactly what you're saying. Yeah, so have they? Have they done anything like we have a real you know, our traditional healthcare system would call this conversation quite Woo. Woo. So do, do we have examples? I know we have the old Norman Cousins, he laughed himself out of cancer. And those kind of stories? Do we have any like stories or evidence that you can heal yourself by starting with heart coherence? Well, Kimberly Snyder I guess it would depend how we talk about healing, right? There are many measurables in terms of, again, over 500 research papers when I was putting the studies into the book. There were so many to choose from Dr Mindy. And again, the only reason we might call this woo woo was because people are like, wow, there's a brain in the heart. I don't actually know this, but one thing we know for sure is, precursor to so many different illnesses is inflammation, and there's a lot of research around how heart coherence, again, is just bringing your body back into that entrainment and reduces inflammation. There's another incredible research paper here, which I reference in the book around here it is. It's on page 35 of the hard copy, and this was measuring immunity, and this is really interesting study where these they brought people into the lab, and they asked them to recall Dr Mindy, not actually be in anger, but recall something that made them angry for five minutes. So, oh, remember when she said that to me? Or my mother in law did this? And then also to recall care, right? Like, oh, you remember when I cared for my sick mother or whatever it was. So in both cases, the IGA, the Secretary, antibody for immunity spiked. It's like that, good stress bad stress hormone, yeah. But then for six hours, those that recalled anger, their IG was down for six hours. Wow, this is five minutes, right? So one of the things, and it was elevated for five minutes with care. So back to what Dr Roland McCrady says, which is emotions were on the show when they were doing all these research papers. One of the things he said was two minutes of irritation puts into motion over 1500 different biochemical processes which ultimately drain your energy, which, of course, is the antithesis of, you know, the opposite of healing and bringing efficiency and vitality back in. It's it's leaking it in so many ways. And the other recent newspapers showing one. Maybe we could even do a practice on the show. Dr Mindy, yeah, no, Dr. Mindy I'm gonna snap, but, but I would, but let's do it at the end. Yes, I'd love to have you sort of walk through the five stages. Oh, yes, I found that interesting too, yes. Kimberly Snyder But what I was saying was, in one month, they found that people doing these practices, so not, you know, having to go and, you know, buy all these contraptions and buy a kingdom, right, right? Thank you. One month, cortisol, on average, went down 23% and DHEA, the precursor hormone, basically measuring vitality and other incredible fertility, went up 100% so I get so excited about this, Dr Mindy, because again, back to this universality of we all have this heart. We're under utilizing it. We're not even connected to it, but it is something that we can learn to turn on. So yeah, the stages do you want to get into them? Yes, Dr. Mindy please. Yeah, go through No. And I love what I just want. I hope everybody listening catches that. And I hope, what I'm really hoping in this kind of conversation, that what people are grabbing is there's so much more to healing than we have been taught. And that's what you know when you quote these studies and you talk about the immune response, you talk about DHEA, this is, this has been one of my real complaints about the menopause conversation, is we're just talking about lathering creams and patches. And I'm like, No, there's something we're missing. We're missing something here. There's a bigger transformation. There's a bigger healing. So Kimberly Snyder I just wanted to point that out. I just got goosebumps when you said that, and it reminds me of something that's said in certain teachings. We were talking about this fire, right, which is so much death and destruction, but there's also a rebirth. That can happen. There's healing that happens afterwards. There's transformation. So in some teachings, they call the heart the organ of fire, meaning Wow, organ of transformation. So one of the ways that we can keep ourselves in this state of fight or flight and incoherence is anger and an ability to forgive. So there's a six part forgiveness practice that's based on research in the book about how we don't forgive for to the head, right? We have to forgive through the heart and through doing this and letting go of the energies that can keep us in pain, in inflammation, that keep us from really healing, right? There's so much I believe in healing that's just beyond the physical. We can still eat the right food, we can do all the things, but there's so much emotionally, spiritually, mentally that plays a role. Dr. Mindy Yeah, I think, again, I just think that's that is the the wave in which we should be moving in with healing in humanity that we have, we have hit we have all the technological health care that we can possibly dream up, and it's been incredible, but we have people sicker physically and mentally than ever before, so we've missed something. Oh yeah, this is why I like to have these different conversations. So walk me through the five stages, because I found that fascinating as well. Yes. Kimberly Snyder So the five the the five hearts, so to speak. Again, these came directly from the Vedic teachings around Swami Sri Yukteswar, but they also correspond to the science of heart coherence. There's five stages that we could divide them into. So the first is known as the dark heart. And when I say dark, Dr Mindy, I don't mean as in bad or evil. I mean dark like you can't see, right? So imagine you walk across a dark room and you could hit your arm into the wall, or you trip over a cord, and you could really hurt yourself or someone else. Dark means the dark heart stage in is incoherence. Means your heart and your brain aren't communicating well at all. Right? So if we were to look at HRV patterns, it would be the jagged, chaotic pattern. This is, these are the times in life where you feel a lot of fear, separation, dark thoughts, low thoughts, low energy. It's hard for you to get off the couch. Maybe you're just numbing all the time. You're watching Netflix all day, or drinking or smoking weed or whatever it is, there's this disconnection from the heart. I also want to say these stages, we can move in and out, even in a day or even in an hour, right? We can have a dark heart moment, like sometimes I would yeah in the night and like an old fear will come up like a nightmare. But we tend to be in one heart stage more at a certain period in our life. So it's a lot of low energy. And then we start to, let's say, we make some lifestyle changes. We start to exercise more. We, you know, start to cut out the junk food or the sugars or whatever it is. We start to get a little bit more in CO more coherence. That means the heart brain start to communicate more. The HRV path looks a little bit more smooth, so we have more energy, and now we move into the propelled heart. So there's more energy, there's more vitality, but we're still up in our head. So this is the stage where we're always on, always trying to achieve, working harder on our phones all day and all night, overwhelm, burnout, stress, right? This is the overachieving. This is the, you know, not feeling enough. This is the rigid life plans. I'm supposed to be married and have two kids by 32 and I haven't met my partner yet. I'm should have be making this much money by a certain age. It's very rigid and worried and external validation. What do people think of me? What do I look like on social media? Right? So it's still disconnected from the heart. And the third stage is a big jumping point known as the steady heart, and this is where we start to see more coherence grow. Dr Mindy, if you were to look again at the HRV patterns, and this is the stage of Swami Sri Yukteswar says, where we realize that what we need is inside and it has nothing to do with anything on the outside. This is where, and again, going back to the personal experience of the fires, it's like staring at the fire maps and like, oh my gosh, this is really scary. We don't control the outside world, so we have to find this safe haven, this place, inside of us, and we can't outsource it to anyone else. So this is where we start to see a lot more stress resilience. This is where we don't feel like we're being tossed in the waves, but we're actually able to increase our DHEA. We're able to reduce our cortisol. We have much more heart coherence, so we're able to flow through life much more state and the fourth start heart stage is where coherence, High Heart awakening, we say, spiritually, high coherence. And this is known as the devoted heart. So this is where we become more devoted to these inner heart qualities, love, care, compassion, peace. Right now, instead of just rushing through so we don't let that person into the intersection, or we don't treat that person checking us out at Target like a real human. We're just looking down at our phone. We're present. But because we're so coherent, and one of the things we didn't talk about is that there is an actual heart field around that's measurable by magnetometers, it looks like this coherent. Dr. Mindy Saw that I love Yeah. I love those, yeah. And so Kimberly Snyder there's graphs we'll go on. I don't want to go down that tangent, but there's something called the Global Heart Initiative, and they have these magnetometers set up in Saudi Arabia, New Zealand, South Africa, and they can see how global events affect the overall magnetic frequency. We're talking about frequency. So anyways, at the devoted heart, we're so much more coherent that people can actually sense, you know, when you around someone and you can sense they're kind of in chaos or drama, they don't have to say anything. So even though we're more devoted to these inner qualities, things tend to work out more, right? People want to, I don't know what it is I want to work with you. I'm drawn to you. You know, I'm going to ask you about on date, right? Whatever it is, yeah, and I'll, I have an amazing story to share about that stage later. Dr Mindy, and then the clear heart is where we're more transparent, right? This is where we we still we have these moments you when you're washing the dishes or you're taking a shower, you're not really thinking. By out of the silence comes these amazing, intuitive ideas, or you're just in flow. You're not up in your head, you're just present. You're in full acceptance, in high levels of peace and just love and connection and unity, right? The wholeness that we're all seeking is in our heart, in our head. We're never going to be enough. There's always going to be some type of lack, but as we've had this these clear heart moments, we really feel the truth of our nature, which is wholeness and deep connection. I love that you don't have to feel fragmented and competitive. We can actually feel that others are an enhancement and that we are sharing this oneness experience. Yeah, Dr. Mindy so I you just described the process of menopause, and I can tell you, as a 55 year old post menopausal woman, that's what going through menopause felt like, to me, is going from a place of that dark heart of feeling like there was no head and heart connection, and then moving into a place you do, you know, and this is what I've been studying through neuroscience, looking at the menopausal journey, and seeing that they're actually the neurochemical change that's happening is actually working towards giving you that last clear heart that You talked about. Because if you hang out with any 60 year old, seven year old, 80 year old, they'll tell you like it is, they're clear, they're passionate, they're not competitive. And I really believe that that is the journey that you just explained, is the Heart Journey of the menopausal woman. You just explained it through a different lens. So I just wanted to let you know that, because beautiful, well, Kimberly Snyder even in that the dark heart stage, it's like, ooh. Like, this doesn't feel good. I'm scared of menopause even maybe leading up yeah to the heart is like, what do I do? Like reading everything, or just trying, Yeah, or like doing, doing, into more steadiness of like, okay, I'm going through this, and it's happening, so I'm going to steady myself, and then this blossoming of, Wow, this whole other phase can be so beautiful. And you know, there's this like an unfolding garden the wisdom and the peace that comes. So that's really beautiful analogy. Dr. Mindy Yeah, no, it was, it was, I'm starting to see the pattern of menopause in a lot of different teachings. Wow. And you just gave the heart coherence pattern, which is, is, it really is a moment of like you're going along, and then you kind of get thrown on your bum, and you're like, wait a second, I can't sleep, and I'm depressed, and I'm have hot flashes, and I'm gaining weight, and then there's just a you feel like you've your body's been hijacked, and your brain's been hijacked, and you, as you wrestle with that, then most people go and they start finding all the information, like you talked about. But the more you wrestle with it, the more you come to realize that the only solution is to go back within, and then there's clarity. And that's, I mean, that's exactly what you described Kimberly Snyder well. So one of the things Dr Mindy, as you go towards the clear heart is you start to let go of all these attachments to identities and labels. Yeah, there's so many stories are told as women about, you know, just sexuality and being this and this. And then you you know, things are shifting. But as you start to move towards this deeper connection to the wisdom and the beauty and wellness inside of you. You realize this can actually come forward more as I, as I go into this and I, I stopped to be so attached to all these stories. It's it's the personal experience shows that it's not true all these myths, right? And these ideas that. Actually, it's the ideas that cause the stress and suffering. Yeah. Dr. Mindy So is there a way, if we know that journey, is there? How do you move from each stage? Because I now that you've given me some language to it, you know, I assume, like you said, you can move in an amount of them, in a day. You can move them, you know, probably within an hour. But if you're stuck in one of the most darker spots. Like, how do we move? Because I think we all hear what you just said and we're like, yeah, I just like to all, let's go to the fifth stage. I want to be there in the clear stage all the time, Kimberly Snyder right? So it's interesting. It's a non linear journey, right? Because that well said, where you feel like, oh wow, like I feel so much lighter, and then there's some sticky moments, right? You can call them dark nights of the soul, or just kind of ego deaths, where you're kind of like processing and going through something. So everybody's heart journey is different, and sometimes you feel like you're going backwards, but you're actually just shedding more of who you're not, right? So a lot of times I'm in that devoted heart stage I've gone through. You know, a lot of, lot of my life was in the propelled heart stage and the overachieving. But you know, through this work, you realize, okay, I can be here, and then when I'm in a dark home moment, I have the tools to get out. So to answer your question, the book is full of, first of all, the knowledge to understand what it is to be in the power of your heart what heart intelligence is. It dives far more deeply into heart coherence. And then there's tools in every chapter. So for instance, the heart aligned meditation. What we did with the 30 participants in our study, we took them in we measure their HRV patterns with the Evan wave pro equipment from Heart Math, and we use their technicians. And all we did was give them this eight minute track, Dr Mindy, and we said, Do this at least five times a week, and we practice it together as a group once a week. And then we took within 30 days, on average, there was an increase of 29% of getting into a coherent state. So one of the things that we know is, as you practice these techniques, which are very simple, we'll do one later on in the show you increase your baseline so you're starting to turn on those neurons. It's like neuroplasticity is not just up in the brain, but it's between the heart brain connection. You're rewiring. It's like you're you're watering the the plant, the wires, you're bringing it back online. Even if you you're listening to this and you're like, wow, I'm really in a dark heart phase or moment, you can bring back the heart. You bring it back. And then the other thing is, a lot of the practices in the book Dr Mindy are not where you have to go and isolate yourself, and the meditation is eight minutes, but the heart aligned study in life is a practice you do while you're driving your car. I do it while I'm washing the dishes and my kids are going bananas in the middle of life to steady big emotions. And there's a practice in the propelled heart chapter called The harmonizing life. And this is where you break patterns of the mind, where you keep living out the same patterns, and you go into the heart, you get coherent, and you go a different way. So one of the things the research shows you know, it's kind of like certain types of therapy or trying to rewire can take a really long time. It's up in the mind. You're just talking about things over and over again, but the heart, and specifically when we do the practice, focusing on the heart and taking heart focused breaths, so there's a coherence breath pattern that changes the input signal to your brain giving you different thoughts, different perceptions, which lead to different thoughts. So what like I say in the book, if you're up in your head and you're battling the thoughts, that's why a lot of people can't meditate. They're like thoughts, battling thoughts. We're going to a different place to find a solution than where the problem is, which in this case, is the overthinking mind. We're going to the heart brain, and we're changing the thoughts so over time, like this incredible rewiring. Dr Mindy, and as someone who is so anxious me and lifelong recovering perfectionist, I can't tell you how much this work has changed my life, personally, Dr. Mindy and I assume, since it's a practice like I'm an overthinker, no doubt, in fact, any of my friends listening to this right now would be like, Oh, that was an understatement. But, and so I also, you know, resonated with that part of your book of how you moved yourself from an over thinker into a more peaceful, coherent place. All of the tools in there. Is it something you should do every day, couple times a day, like, how do you what's the door into these tools so that people can just sort of step by step, decide what to do. Kimberly Snyder So in our research, if you practice the hard aligned meditation again, the participants, it was four to five times a week. Eight minutes each time, increased 29% but the other tools, which you can just practice in the middle of your life. Of Your Life, it's, it's really experiential, it starts to become more second nature, right? So, yeah, that's when I freak out. I'm like, You were gonna say, like, what is it? Amy, this fire happened a few years ago. Before I had these tools, I would be a rack, and then I was watching. It. And I just said it would come to come into your heart. Do the coherence breath, the breathing, you know, it just becomes more of your life. And even just doing the meditation again, your baseline grows and grows. So all of a sudden you're like, wow, I usually would have gotten really frustrated or angry with this person or that person to bother me so much. You don't bother me so much anymore. I'm sort of in my own way, you know, yes, and so I would also say for you, Dr Mindy, you know, you're a scientist, you're thinking a lot, but you're also naturally very heart based. You're very caring, you're very passionate. So there is this, you know, big part there that so many of us say, you know, no, I'm, you know, deep down, I am a I am a good person. I am a loving person, but sometimes I can be sharp, sometimes I can be a bit harsh, or, you know, it's like not me, it isn't us. It's just that we need to rewire and come back to this true self that the Yogis and the Vedas had always talked about, this gateway in the heart that connects us to the love and the kindness, and also our creativity and our intuition that creates real success and abundance. Yeah, Dr. Mindy so well said, so well said, I had a prior to the fire. I had a really, I've had a rough couple of months, and a really good friend die in October, sorry. And he was, he was like a brother to me. And he was 54 and he just died like just healthy guy, vibrant guy, larger than life, just, you know, at the end of the day, laid down on the ground in his office and died. And I was in Turkey when I found out with a friend on the very first vacation I had really officially taken in, like, 25 years, because I wasn't in my clinic anymore, and when I found out I was I was just, I could not pick myself up off the ground. And my agent, believe it or not, my beautiful agent, said, I'm I know grief well. And what I want to tell you is that grief has a very interesting aspect to it, and that's that it gives you access to all emotions. There is a weird like you, and I think it goes it puts you in your heart. And I'm thinking about, like the fires. I'm thinking about just, you know when you go through the menopausal journey, yeah, grieving an old version of you as a new version. And yet we live in a culture that doesn't really want women specifically to be too messy and too emotional. So these five hearts are so make me so curious, but they also I wonder if there are different emotions that open us up to more of these neurons open us up to more coherence. And maybe these emotions aren't all positive. Oh, maybe there are some of Yeah and like so I'm curious about grief. I'm curious about anger. Oh, a lot of women are showing up with rage right now. And so what is there are different emotions stimulating different intensities of these neurons in your heart? Kimberly Snyder Yeah? Great. Great questions. Dr Mindy, and there is a lot of research and studies they've done around emotional intelligence and emotion specifically. So one of the things we see in the propelled heart, so dark heart, is you're really low, right? Just feeling a lot of that fear, chronic anger all the time. And the propelled heart is that, like, I can identify with that, like perfectionism, so you actually cut off from a lot of feelings, and you don't know that you just kind of feel numb, or you feel like you can't show anything, and then it comes out, it bubbles out later, in rage. So with the steady heart, when you become open heart, remember the heart is the organ of transformation. This is the heart of line. Study in life, practice, you get really coherent, and then you actually allow the big feelings to come up. It's like holding on to the shore to like a really tight rope while the waves come whether it's anger or or grief. Being open hearted means you have you're allowing your heart to process really hard things and not push them down so that they pop up later in inflammation or constipation or whatever it is, right? You don't pretend they're not there. You actually do feel your emotions, but, but Dr Mindy, and this is the really important part you you go through this process like a wave, where they come up. And the research shows the really big peak of the emotion can last two to 10 minutes. And then you stay in the coherence breath. Then it comes down. What you don't want to do is while you're in an emotional wave, to act out, to speak, to email to take action when you're in the anger, right? Because then you're just projecting it out. And there's a research study in the book from Dr Andrew siegman, and he's from, I believe, Maryland or Boston University in the book, and their research showed that when you act out anger, you just reinforce the pathways, right? So you keep that pattern inside of you versus you feel it through it's like digestion, right? The 40,000 like trauma stored in the body. You want to feel the grief. When my mom passed away, it was like, I don't like this wave, but we're in it. And I remember just feeling such intense, dark night of the soul, grief, and then you start to digest it. So there's a lot more research and tools, but you don't want to be in the emotion. You don't want to be the anger. You don't want to be it. Right? You may say, like depression is all this repressed anger you have to let yourself feel and then digest. And the heart coherence, tools allow you to do that in a healthy way. And then come back to center. Does that make sense? And you know, yeah, Dr. Mindy I had a lot of friends when I closed my clinic, I closed my clinic and became an empty nester all at the same time. And wow, some of my real wise elder women in my life said, lean in, lean in and feel it. And a friend of mine, who's about 10 years older than me, said, If you lean in and feel it, you will actually move through it, yeah, much quicker. That's what I'm hearing you Kimberly Snyder say. That is exactly it. Dr Mindy, and this is why sometimes you meet people that are still grieving their lost wife 20 years later, because they're still holding on and sort of this armor around the heart, instead of actually allowing that, you know, fire, the transformation of the heart, to allow you to transmute. Because what are emotions? Energy in motion? So they're meant to move through you. If you kind of suspend the emotion, it stays as stuck, resentment, anger, back to why forgiveness is such an important practice. In the devoted heart chapter, there's lots of things that many of us could forgive, including things about ourselves. So you actually get the motion going through like we're meant to move right. Our bodies are meant to be fluid. Our veins move fluids. Our food is meant to digest. It's not to be meant to be stagnant. We're not meant to have this stagnant energy inside of us, and so it's very powerful. I Dr. Mindy love that. Yeah, so, okay, take us through an exercise or one of the what you had mentioned, there was a tool that. And if people are listening, I guess if you're, yeah, yeah, if you're driving, I assume you don't, all right, let's, you know, do this while driving. I don't know, you tell me which one you're picking. Kimberly Snyder All right. So we'll do an abbreviated version of the heart alive meditation, and I'll say also Dr Mindy on our website, which is mycelina.com there are free tracks that everyone can access with coherence, music that we used in the research study. If anyone's interested, they're available for everyone. Please. Please pass them to anyone I you know, anyone that feels like they could use them, especially during this pie. Okay, so, but I just want to show this chart really quick, and I'll describe it to anyone listening to this. This was some of the research that we incorporated it into the study, which is showing that these heart based emotions aren't just feeling good, they're actually creating smooth sine wave patterns in the HRV. And so the emotion that we're going to work with in this particular practice is appreciation, and appreciation is easier to access for many people in the busyness of life, rather than, Oh, feel peace or compassion. So we're going to be working with appreciation. So we'll do this for just a few moments. Okay? So everyone who can, please, close your eyes, take a comfy seat if you're not already sitting down, and straight away, we're going to shift our awareness to our hearts. So for some that can help, if you place your hand on your heart, it's not entirely necessary. I'm talking about your physical heart, also your energetic heart, so right here in the middle of your chest. And now we're going to start to take some nice deep breaths in and out, while focusing on your heart. So here's the key. Sometimes we're not used to focusing on the heart. You can just keep training yourself bring it back to the heart. This was the research published in the American Journal of Cardiology, showing that this changes your nervous system, changes the input signals to the brain. So we're going to focus on the heart, and we're going to do a breath pattern of five in, five out, point 0.1, hertz. This was shown to help coherence. So I'll do the counts once again, focusing on your heart. Imagine your heart is your lungs as we breathe into the heart for 12345 and you're going to exhale out of your heart for 12345, once again, inhaling into your heart or one. 12345, and exhaling out of your heart, 412345, now keep breathing nice and deeply in and out. You don't have to count anymore. And while we continue to focus on our hearts, I'd like you to recall someone or something that makes you feel appreciation, which is a mix of gratitude, thankfulness and awe. Could be a loved one, could be a pet or a beautiful sunset that you saw and for just a few moments, while we keep our attention on our hearts to to feel into this coherence, promoting emotion of appreciation, I and if a thought comes in, if you got distracted for a moment, just come right back. Just another few moments. Really go there in your heart feeling this deep, expansive feel tingly and warm, feeling of appreciation. You. Last moment I now taking another deep breath into your heart, breathing appreciation in, and then exhaling out appreciation. And now we'll breathe into our hearts, appreciation, good, naturally start to shift into other heart based emotions like love, peace and we'll exhale them out to each other. Dr Mindy, everyone listening or watching this, to our community, to our loved ones. One of the things that the heart research also shows is that our hearts are like broadcast stations to this giant heart field challenge or sex, and last time, breathing in love, peace, appreciation, sending out all this love and peace to everyone, especially across LA and affected by these fires, all the Firefighters been working tirelessly and across our greater world community, and then taking another moment to thank your amazing heart for its incredible wisdom. And when you're ready, you can open your eyes you Dr. Mindy Yeah, do you share the birds outside going crazy in my house? You're crazy. Kimberly Snyder So I did this. I'm getting goosebumps. We did this meditation on another I did it in person, another podcast, and the lights went down, up, the magnetism of the electricity shift. We turn them down. There's a, yeah, I Dr. Mindy there's a bird outside my window that started going crazy the minute we did this. I Kimberly Snyder heard it. And so even if, when you start a practice, doctor, when either for a moment, did you start to it feels like to me, tingling, right? Yeah. So that is and warmth, yeah, rewiring happening. So the research shows when we sustain a coherence emotion, specifically in our case, appreciation, and what the tracks on my website are two minutes. So we stay in that for two minutes, that's what ultimately leads to the 29% in. Increase in coherence of her to break it Dr. Mindy down in science, of course, yeah, yeah. No, I love it. I love it. Thank you. So we did this little Kimberly Snyder snippet, and you're like, oh, so one of the things that we realized this power we have, again, back to this idea of non attachment. We don't need an outside, outside object to be the love, to be what it is. We can self generate these amazing emotions inside. So we start to learn that, and that increases our our power, our strength, right? So we become so coherent. And again, the baseline just grows and grows. So in 20 29% increase in one month, they said, What if we kept doing this research study for another two months? What would it be at? Yeah, right. So it's just that we just start to feel again, this clarity, this intuition rising up, and all these amazing physical effects, including hormonal balance, feeling so much more peaceful and fulfilled. Dr. Mindy Yeah. And then it makes me wonder, like, you know, if one person does it, what if 1000s of people exactly, and like, how do we start to change specifically where we are right now on the planet? And, yeah, and I think that's really, I mean, I see the the, if it's energetic like that, the benefit to humanity, it's, you know, I used to have in my clinic, I had, above the wall Gandhi's quote, be the change you want to see in the world. Because I was like, always like, if you you know, if it's all begins with yourself when it comes to healing. But what I'm now thinking through this lens is, gosh, when you make yourself coherent, you're actually contributing greater to the coherence of the planet, exactly your community and Kimberly Snyder the people around you, ultimately, there's this oneness, this field, where we're all intersected. So imagine you become coherent, and you bring that energy when you're dropping your kids off at school or to your right place, or you go to Starbucks to get a coffee, you're actually spreading this power of being in the heart, which in everyday life looks like more kindness and presence and being from here, not the rushing mind. That's not who we are. We don't mean to be a bit snippy or harsh or judgy, right? We just become disconnected. So we drop back in and we actually start this is where real confidence is to Dr Mindy, not just in these, like societal ways of how we're supposed to look, but actually, I feel so good about myself because I'm who I you know, I'm home and meant to be. I'm a really kind person, right? Yeah, so we feel so cool and good, yeah. Well, Dr. Mindy this was incredible. How do people find you? So they and go get the book. I mean, it was so good. I got two. Well, Kimberly Snyder the hidden power of the five hearts is available. We say everywhere books are sold. And then my central hub is my saluna.com which is S o, l, l, u, N, a.com which means the sun and the moon. It's the wholeness. That's where we have our horses and our digestion products and our feel good podcast as well, which I'm excited for you to be a guest on Dr Mindy next week. Thank you. Then social at underscore. Kimberly Snyder, great. Thank you, Dr. Mindy Kimberly. And you know, I from one author to another. Thank you for taking what is passionate to you and putting it in such a beautiful book. So thank you. That is not an easy endeavor. So thank you for doing that, and this has just been incredible. So I can't wait to squeeze you in a couple of weeks, I'll see you, and I can't wait to get a big a big heart coherent hug from you. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for joining me in today's episode. I love bringing thoughtful discussions about all things health to you. If you enjoyed it, we'd love to know about it, so please leave us a review, share it with your friends and let me know what your biggest takeaway is. You.