Outworker
Stories of healing, personal development, and inner work. Founded on the idea that the relationship with self is the most important to develop, but the easiest to neglect, Outworker shares conversations aimed at helping you develop that relationship.
Outworker
#083 - Howard Martin - Your Heart Is Smarter Than Your Brain
Howard Martin explains why “follow your heart” isn’t poetic advice — it’s biological truth. We get into the science of heart intelligence, how the heart influences the brain, and why coherence is the missing link in modern life. From broadcasting emotion to guiding intuition, the heart is a powerful command center we’ve been taught to ignore. Howard’s journey from rock drummer to HeartMath co-founder shows what happens when you finally listen to it.
Timestamps:
00:00 Misinformed On The Heart
10:09 Howard's Past Life
17:46 Living From The Heart
20:01 Doc Childre's Impact On Howard
27:00 What We Aren't Told About The Heart
36:25 Heart Coherence
42:41 Tapping Into Your Mind Through Your Heart
49:49 Introducing Soul
55:19 Connect With Howard Martin
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Howard Martin explains why “follow your heart” isn’t poetic advice — it’s biological truth. We get into the science of heart intelligence, how the heart influences the brain, and why coherence is the missing link in modern life. From broadcasting emotion to guiding intuition, the heart is a powerful command center we’ve been taught to ignore. Howard’s journey from rock drummer to HeartMath co-founder shows what happens when you finally listen to it.
Tim Doyle (00:06.87)
Is the heart the most misunderstood part of the body?
Howard Martin (00:10.5)
Well, I don't know. think the heart we understand is the cardiovascular organ, but what we don't know is all the other things that it does. Most people have no idea about that. So not misunderstood, but maybe misinformed.
Tim Doyle (00:27.598)
I mean, I feel like we also have such a metaphorical and artistic understanding and view of the heart that it can kind of blind us or lead to that misinformed view of it. I mean, where do you think that metaphorical and artistic view of the heart really comes from?
Howard Martin (00:49.904)
Well, I think first of all, you the heart has been romanticized, you know, in a way. But if you go back historically and look all the way back for thousands and thousands of years, all the ancient writings referred to the heart as a source of intelligence and they revered the heart. I mean, this goes back in the ancient cultures. The earliest writings I've ever seen about it were 4,500 years ago. Ancient Chinese medicine referring it to it as an intelligence pumping its vital rhythmic messages, you know, through the veins and arteries. You know, that was like
4500 years ago. In the late 1600s, a physician in the UK, Dr. William Harvey came along and he was the first guy to really like do us all the great service. He figured out that the heart was this four chambered organ pumping blood and he mapped it out. And so that was very important for medical reasons. But as people have reported on his work, they have said that when he introduced that understanding that heart lost its thought and that thought lost its heart.
And so we began to look at the heart through the process of medical reductionism and began to see it as a four chamber organ pumping blood, but it had nothing to do with intelligence. But Tim, what I find interesting about that is even with that understanding, there's all these references that have continued for a really long time about the heart being more than that. People say things all the time like that team plays with so much heart. Let's put your heart into that and you'll probably get some results, that kind of thing.
when we point to ourselves, where do we point? We point right here. You we point up here. So are these just societal programs that we all sort of operate in or is there something else going on that's more intuitive than that? I think the latter is what's true. We sense something more about the heart than it being simply an organ that pumps blood.
Tim Doyle (02:20.334)
Mm.
Tim Doyle (02:38.626)
Yeah, I find that really interesting. But I feel like we still to a degree, we put more focus onto the mind as like we detach from the mind or see it as its own entity as like separate than us. I think maybe we do that with our heart to a degree, but on a more like what you were saying, romanticized sort of poetic view. I mean, why is it so important getting into the pragmatic
Why is it so important to put that same type of appreciation onto the heart that we do the mind?
Howard Martin (03:13.968)
Because the is really helping us to access the field of information that goes beyond the limits of our logic linear intelligence. In today's world, as complex as it is, as many challenges as we face personally, societally and globally, we have to have a new way of looking at things, a new intelligence. What I've learned in my many years of experience with this is that the heart provides a bigger bandwidth, so to speak, of understanding.
Allows me to see into things differently. It offers new perspectives, hopeful ones, you know, it doesn't just lock me into the problems that I see. It offers, you know, some suggestions around what to do. it's something you tune into. It's there. most people don't slow down the mind enough to listen to anything the heart would have to say, right? People live from the roar of ambition and survival, you know, the speed of everything going so fast and just the mind's going like this all the time, you know, and.
Heart what heart? know, it's not even considered. But when we find ourselves, everyone really, in these moments when we do slow down, and that happens sometimes when we are faced with a challenge that we don't have an answer for. Something that's really big and we can't figure out what to do. In those situations, what I find is that most people, including me, will slow things down and go a little deeper. For some people, it's something like praying, prayer. For others, it could be meditation.
somebody else that could be a walk on the beach or in the woods or just getting in the car and driving off in the middle of the night going, I got to figure this out, but I don't know how. And what they're doing really is digging a little deeper, slowing down the racing mind and emotions and looking for something inside themselves that they might not call it hard, but they know there's something there and they're looking for a contact with that place within themselves so they can find some kind of answer to something. Right.
And very often the answer doesn't just show up in this big epiphany because the problem is huge, right? It's something big. But what I do find is that the sort of inner dialogue can start to shift. We begin to say things to ourselves like, I've been through tough situations before and I got through them. I don't know how I'm going to get through this one, but if I've done it before, I can do it again. Right? That's a difference in perspective. It's offering at least hopeful possibilities, even though it's not saying, well, do this and do that and do this and it's all going to go away.
Howard Martin (05:39.861)
That would be unrealistic. But it can offer that moment of insight that gives us the resilience that we need to begin to find solutions.
Tim Doyle (05:49.998)
So do you think that thoughts, and I don't know if you've done research on this, so it's like partly me asking in a real physical way, but it's also in a rhetorical way. I mean, do you think thoughts can start in the heart rather than starting in the mind?
Howard Martin (06:06.447)
Well, that's pretty big question, It is one of those which came first, the chicken or the eggs kind of thing. It's interesting and I don't have a definitive answer. What I do think though is that we assign all intelligence to the brain and the mind and the brain and the mind are absolutely amazing. So naturally we assign significance to that as where all thought comes from.
Tim Doyle (06:13.603)
Yeah.
Howard Martin (06:33.099)
Non-scientifically, what I found in my own life's experience is that the entry point for some of this, I would just call it higher intelligence capacity that we have, actually happens in the heart. It's transmitted at super high speed to the brain where it correlates itself into the thoughts and the feelings and all that that we experience. So the brain's getting credit for it. But where did it come in? Where did it enter us as a being, as a person?
I think it's the heart. the thoughts in the heart, whether it's from the head first and then the heart or the heart first and then the mind, I don't know. I just think that the impetus for some of that higher intelligence that the heart gives us access to is what's most important.
Tim Doyle (07:18.104)
Yeah, I mean the term mind body connection has played a big role within my life. And I think that term mind body is gaining a lot of traction within the world and our culture today. But by understanding your work and being exposed to your work, what I've realized is I feel like there also needs to be a great appreciation for the terminology of heart mind connection.
because I don't think we have any type of understanding or appreciation for that.
Howard Martin (07:46.957)
Yeah.
Howard Martin (07:52.42)
Well, that's where our science came into play. know, many years ago when we started HeartMath, we recognized, you know, okay, we're trying to introduce a heart-based system into a relatively heartless world. And that had been talked about before, plenty for thousands of years, but mostly philosophically or spiritually, you know. And so we wanted to take heart out of the confines of like philosophy, which is respected and put it into daily practice. Into right in the street, so to speak, where we live.
And to do that, we recognize we need to do it differently. And so what we chose is to go through a scientific methodology to build a bridge between these sort of natural intuitive understandings that people have and something that was solid and understandable. And what I find with science is that when something is proven through science, empirical science, it increases the power of belief. Science says, therefore I can believe, you know.
So it increases the power of belief. So we chose a scientific route to begin to look at proving out, starting with the physical heart, that it was doing more than pumping blood, giving credence to some of the things that had been said about it for a long time.
Tim Doyle (09:09.698)
I want to dive deeper into all the specifics of that, but what I always have an appreciation for is, or what I'm always curious about is, okay, when somebody does work, like how does that person actually get to that point of, okay, this is the work that I'm going to do? And I think you have a really interesting backstory about how you've gone to your work with HeartMath, especially in your younger life. mean, in the past life, you were a big rock drummer.
and you played with people like Bob Seeger and bands like Leonard Skinnerd. What did that type of life teach you about the relationship between the head and the heart?
Howard Martin (09:53.12)
Well, I think what happened to me along the way is parallel tracks, you know, through back then, a long time ago when I was your age, yeah, that's what I did for a living. I was a rock drummer, you know, and that's what was up for me. And it was a stimulating life, but a very complicated one. It had ups and many, downs. was in, you know, hugely challenging in many, many ways. But when you're young, you don't really care about that. You're going for the ambition and certainly had enough glamour in it for me that it was cool.
But in the music world back then in the late 60s, early 70s, there was some spiritual stuff starting to slip in. if you go way back in time, it was like you may not remember this, but the Beatles, they got into Maharishi and all this stuff. So there's a little bit of merger between music and spiritual thing was happening. That began to intrigue me. So I began to look into that, look at a few books and things, read some things, and it was really cool. And then I met Doc Chaudhary, who's the man who founded Horror Math. He was just a few years.
older than me, but he had an awareness I didn't have. And that was something that I was drawn to. basically, as we became friends, he began to introduce me to the concept of heart. And he's definitely not a touchy feely kind of guy. And I certainly wasn't as a rock drummer. But I thought about all the things I'd been reading and they often referred to the heart as something really special. Many things were leading people back to this understanding of heart. So I thought, well, why not give it a shot?
You know, let's take a look at it. So I began to pursue some things from a more heart centric approach. It took a while, but over time, what I found was my appetite for certain things and life changed. You know, a lot of the sides of the music business were no longer savory to me anymore. know, some of what was glamorous at one time was not anymore, you know, and it began to feel rather mundane. And then I'd have other thoughts recognizing how self-centered what I was doing was.
This was all about me. This was all about the spotlight. This is all about, you know, clap for me, you know? And I thought, this is just not probably the real goal I have in my life. And those thoughts and feelings got stronger and stronger and very difficult to act on them because you're addicted to something. You're addicted to the music world and very difficult to just move out of that and do something else. But it finally reached a point where there were
Howard Martin (12:16.559)
business decisions happening that forced me to make some choices. And I recognize that some of the business decisions I was being asked to make were going to hurt other people. And I just felt like, you know what, there's something about this that's just not feeling right to me anymore. It's time for me to consider something else. And so it was a tough decision. I don't want to sound like a wimp, you know, compared to what people go through today, but to say to yourself that...
age 30 something, early thirties with no other career background, something you've had some success in, even though it's been up and down, but you're going to walk away. Walk away to do what? And you don't know, right? So I had to take the leap of faith in a sense and say, I'm going to unplug from this whole thing. I'm going to walk away from it and I'm going to take a look at life and see what else is out there for me. I was not immediately rewarded by that decision. You know, it was a tough road down.
to go from all that down to nothing and ended up, you know, in minimum wage jobs, you know, after having had that other experience, it was rather humiliating in many ways. But over time, it began to make sense. And I was putting, I would, what I call first things first, I put my own growth at the forefront of what I was about and let the external stuff sort of revolve around that. Over time, it led to, through my association with Doc and other people, when Hartmuth
was started at the very beginning, I was invited to be a part of it. So today here we are, me, you and I on a podcast, you know, and 30 some years later in HeartMath and all I've gotten to do and become, you know, an author of successful books to buy speaker, travel the world doing that, being able to do what I love the most and all this kind of things. I'll look back at it now and go, that was a pretty smart decision.
Tim Doyle (14:11.694)
Mm.
Howard Martin (14:12.899)
It's like I would be trapped in the music business now, just an aged rocker, you know, living in the past, you know, and instead I feel like I'm living in more in the now and certainly excited about the future. And I don't know many people, they can feel that way. So at the end of the day, some more move, but I tell the whole story to you today, Tim, because I know many people are looking for their purpose. You want to know what they're doing. People in your age range.
still a bit unsure about what the future is going to be even in the world today and what they're going to do in it and how they're going to be associated with what's going on in the world. Big questions. Short answer for me is I listened to and followed my heart and over time it worked out and I couldn't be happier with having made that decision. I don't live in the past about, I used to be this and used to be that and yeah, I played with him and I played with her and all that.
I don't even think about it. I've got too many other things in my life that are fulfilling that I don't have to go back in time to try to find fulfillment.
Tim Doyle (15:17.666)
I love that. And I love that we were able to talk about that backstory because I think it's so important to the work and the philosophy behind your work that you do today. I mean, like in the present moment when you were going through that and like you said, the road down and you're working those minimum wage jobs, do you still have an appreciation for
you know, I'm tapping into my heart here. Like, did you even have that type of language or that type of consciousness of, Hey, I'm tapping into my heart and my intuition here, or is that more of a reflective process?
Howard Martin (15:53.808)
No, it's moment to moment, day to day, know, I have to live my life that way. I have a lot to do, a lot of complexity, you know, as a business executive and a, you know, a frontline spokesperson for a successful organization. That is always moving, always changing, you know, always has, you know, different angles and different challenges that are associated with that. So it's a moment to moment, day to day thing with me of trying to keep that connection going.
I'm not sitting there analyzing, well, it's just my head, it's just my heart, it's just intuition, whatever. It's more of a flow, you know, but I know that when things feel a little rocky, when I can sense that I'm not connecting deep enough, I need to back off here for a few minutes and find, you know, find that place inside again. I'm letting life run me more than I'm running it right now. Let me try to find a balance in that. And so this is an ongoing thing for me. It never stops.
Tim Doyle (16:49.164)
If somebody's like listening to that and they're like, I want that to like to know that I feel like a lot of the time and I resonate with it, you really can't put language to it, but it's more so just like a it's a deep knowing and a deep feeling. And this is getting into your work with hard coherence. Like how do people tap into that?
Howard Martin (17:10.211)
Well, at HeartMath, there are couple many things we offer. And one of the things I'm going to suggest to your listeners right now is check out the HeartMath app. You know, we created a really cool app that measures heart, brain, body communication. Scores it for the degree of a term we haven't talked about yet. How coherent you are, how connected and heart coherent you are. In addition, within that app, there's a suite of learning experiences. All the HeartMath techniques are there.
their guided weekly journeys, their videos, courses, the whole thing is just full of learning. So you've got an app that provides both measurement and learning, which is rare. So people can get it from the heart, you know, their favorite app store, just download the heart math app. It's got a seven day free trial, you know, easy and easy out if you didn't want it, but check it out. That's one thing. Now, in addition to that, I mentioned some of the things about that are in the app, but
HeartMath is a lot of things today, but we are, in one way looking at it, we're both a training and a scientific measurement company. So we have a whole suite of techniques that are available to people through our training programs and a lot of stuff that's free online on our website, like heartmath.com, where people can learn simple techniques to them that begin to put them in connection with what they already have inside to give them that connection to their heart.
So yeah, it takes techniques, it takes tools to make this happen. There's a naturalness to it that we all have, but to really amplify that and harness all the capacity that we can gain from being in touch with the heart, you gotta have some tools. We have those tools and we're well known for that as well. Practical, simple tools that people can use to make that connection and then apply it in whatever it is they're doing.
Tim Doyle (19:04.75)
Dr. Chaldry was obviously a key part of your work and your journey through this. And he said he wasn't trying to be a mentor or a teacher to you, but just focused on bringing out greatness in great people. What do you think he brought out in you?
Howard Martin (19:09.455)
Yeah.
Howard Martin (19:22.571)
gosh. you know, Doc has always been about advancing people and helping them grow in the change, you know, and to, you know, to continue to evolve. That's just what he does. You know, and so with him being a friend and a mentor, he was always pushing me, you know, pushing me through change, pushing me to do more things that would help me grow, pointing out that certain events in life that I've
be challenged with were all for my growth, you know. And then at key points along the way where I might be at a decision point, he was there, you know, to help me make that decision. He would never make it for me. He would never say, well, you need to do this or you need to do that. He would always be giving me angles of view that I could then draw from to make my own decision. That's a really beautiful thing for someone to do that with you and for you. And so whatever he brought out in me has led me to where I am today.
without that guidance from him. I certainly don't think I would have been able to, let's call it achieve whatever I've achieved now. A little Southern boy like me coming out of the rock music world to end up being an author and all these other things. who'd figure? I think people that knew me many, many years ago probably find it hard to believe that he's that guy now.
So I think that's a lot of that's due to the guidance that I gave me. And then also to me having to have the meaningfulness to apply what he was offering. We all get things in life that can help us all get, you know, there's people or things we see or read or situations we're involved in that can help us grow. But at the end of the day, it's still about what we do, whether we do it or we don't. Right. You know, so.
Tim Doyle (21:14.424)
Yeah.
Howard Martin (21:16.48)
It comes down to that. self-empowered process, really.
Tim Doyle (21:20.568)
What were those initial questions or conversations like between the two of you that really facilitated like, hey, we should be exploring more into the heart here.
Howard Martin (21:32.271)
Gosh, I'll have go back a long way in memory for that. It's been a long time since we had those conversations. I don't know if I can definitively answer that, you know, as were the conversations like. It was ongoing. It was really about things like pushing past the emotional resistances, know, getting past some of the raw ambition and
starting to align more with maybe what your true mission is, which may not be what your mind thinks it is. Learning to discriminate is this kind of things would be subjects that we would talk about. Certainly looking at how to work out conflicts, how to go through certain things would be that more heart centric approach to doing it that way.
Maybe I can remember a time when I was involved in something that was really highly emotionally charged and everything, you know, and trying to get it worked out. And he said something real simple to me, like simple, but powerful. Well, isn't there a kinder way to work that out? You know, just a little symbol of it. You need to shift positions. Okay, now I'm going to try to do this kindly instead of, I'm not going to let them push me around and...
You know, this is not the way people do things and this isn't fair, so I'm going to have to straighten that out and all that. You know, he's like, just cut through all that. Isn't there a kinder way to deal with this? You know, and just that one moment of clarity at least began to redirect that energy to where I began to look at kinder solutions to working something out rather than the standard third dimensional human conscious program of you push your way through it, you know.
So learning to surrender in certain ways was something we used to have conversations about. I will give you one quick story that I just remembered. I did write about it in the book Heart Mass Solution that he and I wrote together. But it was when I had a girlfriend back when I was in my early 20s and we'd been together for a long time, like four years. And I was in the music business. Honestly, I wouldn't really treat her like I should.
Howard Martin (23:45.775)
and one day she went to work at a summer camp somewhere. And one day I got a letter from her saying that the guy who runs a camp and her had fallen into a relationship and she didn't know what to exactly do with me, but that she was attracted to this other guy. Right. So my vanity immediately flared up and you know, I'm going to have to take care of this. I asked her to come see me and she did.
When she came, we had that moment of connection that you have based on the past, the emotions that you've experienced and all that. so in the height of that emotional exchange, I asked her to marry me. And she said, wow, that's a level of commitment I've never expected from the emerald. I have to think about this. And then when she left, interestingly enough, Doc shows up at my house the next day, asked me what's been going on. And I told him, and I told him what had happened and what he said to me was profound. He said, well, you know what? If I were you.
I'd call her back and I'd release her from that. Because it's really pushing her into a corner. even if she makes the decision to take you up on the marriage offer, it may not be what is really high as best there. You need to give her the freedom to do that. And if you really want to find out if it's real or not, you need to call her and tell her, hey, that's not any pressure on you at all with any of that. You're off the hook on that. And he said, if she comes back to you.
It's going to be real, but if she doesn't, then you'll know that and you just need to move on. And I did it and she didn't come back and she's married to that guy today. So that was her direction. It made sense. Right. And that's a, that's a long story, but it's an example of you asked about dialogues we may have had. And that was one that, that was an important, at that point in my life.
Tim Doyle (25:27.31)
Wow.
Yeah.
Howard Martin (25:42.827)
because I could push that and force it and all that kind of thing and then where would that have led?
Tim Doyle (25:49.282)
Wow, that's an incredible story. And that happened all before you dove deeper into the research of the heart that you guys were doing.
Howard Martin (25:55.279)
That was before heart math. I I go back to Doc before there ever was a heart math, know, prehistoric heart math.
Tim Doyle (26:03.378)
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Diving deeper into the tangibles, like we were talking about at the start, how people can be misinformed or just have like a misunderstanding of the heart. Three major things that I find really fascinating about the work that you do and really emphasize about the heart that people know is that the heart has a nervous system.
And in the early eighties, it was reclassified as a hormonal gland. And it's also the body's most powerful electrical organ. Why did those discoveries matter for how we understand the heart's influence on the body? And even like we say, you know, the energy that we feel from people.
Howard Martin (26:46.542)
Well, first of all, gonna applaud you for doing your research for our time together today. So you studied that pretty good. Early on, Tim, we were looking, we felt that the heart was doing more than pumping blood. We wanted to know what. So we began to look at it. We found literature sort of scattered out through the research literature, showing that the heart was acting as independent of the brain and the mind. It was doing physiological things that it shouldn't be doing, independent of what...
the brain would normally be directing it to do and playing it had an intelligence. So our scientists began to look at that. And what they found was is that the heart was communicating with the brain and the rest of the body. And it was doing in four ways. You've touched on those four ways. First of all, there was a neurological communication. And what they found was is that there was a field relatively unknown, but a real scientific medical field called neurocardiology.
and that there had been books written about it, about this nervous system in the heart, and that the nervous system in the heart was the most sophisticated part of the nervous system we have other than the brain and the head. And it was referred to in the books written about it as the little brain in the heart. So this nervous system is sending information to the brain. It's kind of goes, know, it starts here in the heart, it travels up through the nervous system into the brain.
It comes in through the lower centers of the brain, it's called the medulla, but then it goes on. It goes into the mid-level brain where a lot of very emotional processing takes place and then goes all the way up into the higher perceptual centers of the brain, the neocortex. So you have this information going from the heart back to the brain. Now the brain does send information to the heart. It's mostly timing information, helping to control the timing of the heartbeat. But as...
scientists mapped out this communication taking place, they could see clearly that the heart was sending a lot more information to the brain than it was receiving from the brain. So there is this conversation happening neurologically between the heart and the brain, and the heart's doing most of the talking. And that's the first way. The second way you didn't mention, but I'll throw it in there, it's a biophysical communication, it's called.
Howard Martin (29:05.132)
When the heart pumps blood, basically squeezes and pushes the blood through the veins and arteries, creates a wave of energy, pushes the blood. That's called a blood pressure wave. Now the blood pressure wave does travel throughout our entire body. It's how blood gets everywhere to your earlobe or your big toe or whatever the blood pressure wave is carrying that blood flow. Blood pressure waves change all the time depending upon how the heart is beating. You know, the rhythmic beating changes in the heart or changing the blood pressure wave.
Changes in the blood pressure wave influence other parts of the body. For example, the electrical activity in our brains is synchronized to the blood pressure wave. So when the blood pressure wave changes, electrical activity changes. There's your fourth, your second wave, biophysical. The third way you did mention one of these things that I like to call today a who knew. Back in 1983, the heart was reclassified as being part of our hormonal system.
So now they were seeing it as cardiovascular organ and hormonal gland. The reason for that is they discovered it produced hormones. One of those was called, for example, oxytocin. And oxytocin is a very regenerative hormone produced in greater amounts when people are in a loving state, like say a mother with a young baby or when you're with your pet or something. It naturally produced more of this regenerative hormone.
And they found that the heart was producing a lot of oxytocin, for example. So the heart was producing hormones and that's a biochemical communication. Today, not just through our research, which is extensive, there's over 400 published research papers on heart math. But many researchers have looked into all of this. And so it's clearly understood that these communication pathways exist and are real and a very important part of our physiology.
The fourth way is where it really gets interesting. The heart is electrical in nature. It's electrical organ. When we go to a doctor, the doctor says, I'm going to do your electrocardiogram. What do they just say? Electrocardiogram. They put electrodes on your chest and they're measuring an electrical signal produced by the heart. Well, it turns out that the heart's producing a lot of electricity. It's by far the strongest source of bioelectricity in our bodies.
Howard Martin (31:29.102)
about 40 to 60 times stronger than the second most powerful source of bioelectricity, which is our brain. So it produces enough bioelectricity that it creates a magnetic field. And that field, measured with the most conservative equipment that you can measure magnetic fields with, it's called magnetometers, can be detected about three feet.
or for those of you that are listening from other countries, about a meter outside the body. And that field surrounds us in 360 degrees. We've got this field around us right now. Okay. Everybody's producing one. So as we began to look at the field, we found out that the information in the field changed depending upon what we were feeling. If we were feeling anger and frustration or sadness or this kind of feelings, it produced sort of an incoherent
frequency pattern in the field. Conversely, if we're experiencing some of the emotional states that have been associated with heart, like we're feeling more appreciation or more care or more love or more kindness, the field would change. It would be a more coherent ordered energy pattern in the field. And why is this important? It's important because first of all, we're broadcasting that information, those frequencies to our bodies.
Every cell in our body was being bathed in this field. I would rather bathe my cells in something that's coherent rather than incoherent. But we're also communicating it outside the body. We're broadcasting through the magnetic field. So whatever we're feeling is being broadcast. And we sense fields. Everybody does. Everything, every living system produces the field, by the way. And so we are
Constantly in exchanging information and unseen levels Somebody you can be in a conversation Anytime with somebody you can ask them a question. Hey, you to get together later tonight? They say yeah, you know, so their words said one thing, know, but you sense wait a minute I don't think it's really a yeah, right, you know And so you get the feeling there and you're starting to pick up on something else It could be that it's coming through our exchange of information through the magnetic field
Howard Martin (33:53.589)
Now I hope our listeners are not getting too confused here, but I'll, I'll take it one more level.
That field being measured up to three feet outside the body is being measured with very conservative equipment. Scientists believe that that field goes much further than three feet. It could be really big in terms of how far the field actually goes. we at HeartMath have been doing non-local research experiments at times. And additionally, when you introduce, we're looking at all this through normal physics right now.
But if you introduce the understandings of quantum physics, you get another perspective. I'm not any in don't know that much about quantum physics, but I do know a couple of things. One is, is that when you enter the world of quantum physics, you remove some of the normal boundaries of time and of space. They're not the same. go away. So if you were look at the heart's field through the lens of quantum physics, it could be almost infinite. It could be something that's connecting us to, I don't know, the universe itself.
from that perspective. So the heart's field is where the exciting stuff happens for me in this research because it goes into those type of perspectives and understandings. But there are your four ways, biophysical, biochemical, nervous system in the heart, and the energetic field produced by the heart. Now you see a picture of the heart is doing a lot more than pumping blood.
Tim Doyle (35:22.69)
Yeah, we have such a simplified understanding, it seems like from a physiological level of what the heart is and which is why I think your work is so important. I mean, you could have called this heart focus, heart regulation. Why was coherence the word that you guys fell on? Like, why do you think coherence displays this the best?
Howard Martin (35:46.786)
Well, what our scientific team has explained to me is that coherence is like when all the systems are working together, you know, and they have other more fancier terms for that. When all basically systems of any system, the components in that system are working together, it's called coherence. There's a coherent factor in that. It could be a watch or it could be a work team or it could be a football team. It can be, you know, lot of things when all the parts of a system are working efficiently, you enter a state of coherence. So,
In our reference to that, when we refer to coherence, sometimes we call it heart coherence. It's when all the major body systems are working together harmoniously. They're all synchronized to the rhythmic beating patterns of the heart. Like the heart's at the master of it all, master controller. Now all the systems are aligned with that. And those systems are things like digestion, respiration, hormonal response, immune system response, brain function.
all of that nervous system, all sync up. Now, when we hit that place where it's all synced up, what we've done is we've entered into a high performance state. Less energy is being wasted. We measured things like for athletes, like reaction speed time improves, visual field increases. know, it's also a very healthy state. You know, it's
good for the physical heart and for the nervous system. And when we're in a higher coherent state, the body's releasing more of the hormones into our system that regenerate us. So it's a very healthy state. So one of the goals of HeartMath training and the measurement we have in our app is learning how to increase our coherence levels. There's an additional benefit that's psychological. When we are in
When to enter a high coherent state, we have to be attempting to activate a regenerative positive emotion. Like feeling more appreciation, care, love, kindness that I mentioned earlier. Once we do it and we hit that place inside where things sync up, then those type of emotions start to flow. They become easier to access. So we start living life from those type of feelings and emotions. And when we do life's different.
Howard Martin (38:10.347)
Simply mean, anybody listening right now, do you feel better about life when you're complaining and upset or when you're feeling appreciation? You know, this is one plus one equals two there, right? So we'd want more of that as we experience life. Coherence opens a door for that. It's like an open the door way into the flow of this type of emotions through us that add to the fulfillment of our life experience.
Tim Doyle (38:37.422)
Do you feel like heart coherence lives at the intersection between what we've been talking about with the physiological and what we started with about having a more mystical, metaphorical, poetic sense of the heart? Like, do you see that as like a harmonization between the two?
Howard Martin (38:55.949)
I love your characterization, the intersection. Answer to your question is yes. You know, when we're in a high coherent state, I won't be able to just lay out a scientific research study that proves this point that I'm going to make. Now it opens us up to more, more of our true higher self. People call it different things. They call it spirit. They call it higher self. They call it lot of things. When we hit that coherent state, more of that part of what we truly are begins to download into our humaneness.
That's when the access opens up. That's when we become something more than our ordinary self. That's when we become our very best self. And that intersection does happen when we sync everything up through the heart.
Tim Doyle (39:38.414)
Something that you mentioned earlier, and I've heard you talk about it in different interviews as well as about, you know, hard coherence and hard math. It's about bringing a heart based system into a relatively heartless world. And I find that really fascinating. Do you feel like hard coherence is something that people are innately born with and it's part of their natural self and more like
Howard Martin (39:53.739)
Yeah.
Tim Doyle (40:08.246)
societal programming programs it out of us or what's your understanding there?
Howard Martin (40:12.877)
Yeah, that's exactly right. We're born with it and we have the opportunity to cultivate it, right? And grow it. But yeah, the naturalness of it is there from the very beginning. Life begins to program it out of us. You know, we began to model the behaviors that are around us. Our educational systems, as much as I respect that, you know, push a lot of ambition, know, and success and things like that, you know, and we began to lose that connection to something deeper.
I love to observe children and how they process certain things more from the heart than from, you know, the head, you know, guess a good example might be you could have two children at school and they're playing on the playground. get into a little scuffle, you know, teacher breaks it up, whatever. Five minutes later, they're playing again. get two adults. All they have to do is have one crossword and in a meeting and next thing you know, they're enemies for life, right?
It's like, where's the flexibility in that? What's the difference in that childlike spirit, which is connected to the heart? Also, the curiosity that children have, how they can see and play with things and be entertained by stuff. You know, it's just that open heartedness in them. And we do lose it over time through just the programming of life and societal programming. The good news is we can make that reconnection and it's easier than people think. And that's what we're all about here at HeartMath.
tools, techniques, technology, a lot of different angles that we do it through to help people do what? To help reconnect with something they were born with, something they already have inside, and something that they need right now more than ever to live in this world.
Tim Doyle (41:51.032)
Yeah, I feel like all of us are trying to tap into our mind. And I feel like that's become the main societal thing, whether it's through meditation or breath work or just different types of wellness routines. I feel like it's always very head focused. And I think what we're taught is that we should just
If we want to have a strong mind, we should just directly focus on our mind. But how do you see the best way of interacting with your mind actually being through your heart and starting in the heart?
Howard Martin (42:34.157)
Well, first let me say that some of the things you mentioned, I respect. I'm for anything that's helping people right now. For anything that's helping take people a little deeper within themselves. So all the things that are out there, the biohacking stuff, the mindfulness, all the various things people are doing, I'm cool with all that. And heart doesn't have to compete with that. Sometimes what I tell people is if something you're doing is working, then keep doing it. But try adding some heart to it, see if it doesn't improve it.
You don't lose anything by adding some of qualities of the heart to whatever you're doing. And so I think it's important to do that. What I would say is that the inclusion of heart in all these things enhances whatever someone's doing. So it isn't a competition between the mind and the heart or the brain and the heart. It's like we're an integrated system. They work together. So I think what's happened though is that people don't add enough heart into things. And that's the part of the problem.
Mind is a beautiful thing. It's a standard term. The mind is a beautiful thing, but when it's not aligned with something deeper, it can run crazy. It just works better when that heart's involved in the process there. And I think that, like I said, you don't lose anything by saying, okay, let me put a little more heart into this. Let me slow things down. Let me add a little love, a little care into the process here. And guess who wins on that? The mind. The mind's a big winner.
It gets new information, new fuel, new ways of looking at things. It appreciates it. The mind enjoys it. The mind wants to be connected to the heart. So a mind under the guidance of the heart or connected to the heart performs amazing things.
Tim Doyle (44:16.962)
Yeah, I think what's so important about your work and what this conversation has largely been about is that, you know, listening to your heart being aligned with your heart, that's not just a poetic or anecdotal saying like that is pragmatic and there's, you know, science and concrete findings behind that.
Howard Martin (44:37.153)
That's right. And what's also happening to Tim is that that's really on the rise right now, you know, whether it's through heart math or something else. mean, is heart is becoming more infused into the world right now. In some ways I've said it before in interviews, I think it's hard time on the planet. This is this is part of what I would call, I use a big term now for a little southern guy, but you know, the evolutionary imperative of our time is the reemergence of heart.
Right? It's part of the process. It's part of the high speed evolution that we're going through, uh, where consciousness and people are actually changing. So all around the world, people are getting onto this, you know, through a variety of methods that are happening. One of the things that we are trying to help with and facilitate here at HeartMath, we call it helping love go viral. You know, let's get the helping love go viral going. You know, it's like,
Movements are not something that you create. There's something that happened, but you can certainly seed You know the playing field now for a movement to occur a movement. I want to see is more people in Practical ways nothing grandiose, but just practical ways beginning to demonstrate more the qualities of the heart, you know As doc shorty has said to me many times, you know The next level for human consciousness is to learn to get along with each other better
takes the grandiose this out of it. Just says, we got to learn to get along. What does that mean? We got to learn to begin to dissolve some of the separation, to begin to embrace the differences that we have, you know, so that people don't see each other through the lens of us and them quite so much, you know, and that needs to happen at the individual level, certainly in the systemic level and certainly at the global level. So getting along doesn't mean you have to agree with everything.
People do say or whatever or their belief systems, but you don't have to judge it as hard either. You you can be more neutral about that, allowing people to be people, allowing them to have their own belief systems and don't have to try to make them like yours, know, maintaining your own belief system while not overly judging other people's right. And that takes some practice. I don't think you get that done without heart. I don't think you get that done without love.
Howard Martin (46:54.945)
That's what dissolves this stuff. As long as the mind is running the show with that connection to that, it's always going to find the fault. It's always going to find the reason to separate. It's always going to assign the problems that we are experiencing personally and the global problems to somebody else. I've said this before, there's one group of people in the world that creates the whole, every problem in the world today is being created by one group of people. It's a group of people called they.
Tim Doyle (47:23.63)
Yeah, yeah, that's a good point. Yeah, yeah.
Howard Martin (47:25.709)
They are. So we got to get the they thing, reduce some, know, none of this is going to happen overnight, but we can take important steps and it is happening. We see a lot of bad news. We see it all the time and we, the world's problems are definitely on full display. But when I step back, I see hundreds of millions, if not billions of people who've already started making choices, adopting different values.
wanting something different, not wanting to be in the same old patterns that they once were in. Right. I see the desire for that on the increase. So while the problems are increasing, so is something else. And we are really reinventing ourselves. The human being is actually reinventing themselves and it's happening pretty quick. Major shifts are occurring that we'll see the outcome of within two or three generations.
And we're right in the middle of it now. It's already been happening. So a couple of generations from now, this place is going to be different. Guys like you are going to be a part of that, make a difference. Not that we've got a lot of responsibility on you tonight, but...
Tim Doyle (48:36.181)
I appreciate you saying that.
Tim Doyle (48:40.558)
I appreciate that and yeah, that's fascinating to hear. There's definitely...
Yeah. And evolution and it'll be interesting to see how that evolution plays out in a lot of different ways, you know, physically, physically and physiologically, but then also mentally, emotionally, spiritually. There's another word that I would love to get your understanding and opinion on. Obviously we've been talking about the heart from a physiological and a mystical sense.
What are your thoughts on the word soul? And because I feel like that's a hundred percent. We understand that from a metaphorical and spiritual sense. What do you think that means or what does that mean to you when you know, we use the word soul?
Howard Martin (49:35.115)
Well, let me say this first. I can give a little bit on that, I'll say this first of all, the caveat to anyone listening, I'm not trying to push a book, but in the book Heart Intelligence, which is a heart math book, it written by Doc Choldry and there's three contributing authors. one of the other three. Doc wrote some things about salt, one about things like that in that book. And so if you really want to take a look at that and study it a little bit, other than what I might say today, that's a resource I'm saying is there. It's a book called Heart Intelligence.
again, the soul is, this is complex. we have, something we call a larger self and that could also be called the soul or whatever. And it's something it's, it's us in a larger form. And we're in these bodies with these personalities, you know, based upon our life experiences. And yet there's something bigger of who we truly are. And, it's nothing that I.
Can honestly say, I know, you know, part of the game of life is not to know, you know, you might figure that out later, but in this life, it's, it's, you're playing a game in this life where you don't get to see everything. And as you do, as you play the game without having all that wide understanding, you're actually getting a huge amount of growth and it's actually a big service. So it's part of the having the blinders on as part of the game. Right. but my belief is that we're bigger than.
personalities were bigger than all this body stuff that we have massive intelligence accumulated over a long, long time. And what we're experiencing is a part of that. And that's us, Howard Martin, Tim, you know, but there's something in each and every one of us that's much, much larger. and that could be called our soul. And what is happening though, is that more of that part of ourselves called soul or higher self or whatever is becoming.
closer to our personality. The bridge between the two is squeezing in a little bit now, you know? And so we're starting to get more glimpses of that within ourselves. And that's part of the evolution that we're going through right now. There's a lot to be gained in that. It's really great news, but the part that's difficult is that it's often providing direction that just not what the personality necessarily would want to hear. And so it forces growth.
Howard Martin (52:01.453)
It forces us to re-evaluate. It forces us to challenge our positions and our beliefs. And so that's part of the growth process that's happening. As more of our true higher self or our soul begins to integrate more with who we are, perspectives change. And then we have to look at those perspectives and find ways to accept them, even though when they don't line up necessarily with what we thought, right? So it's a changing time for us. Ultimately, that's really, really good news, though.
Because now we're accessing more beyond the normal limitations of what we are as a personality. And we can make so much more out of life instead of just sort of mechanically walking through this life process. And, you know, we can experience a lot more than we could have ever imagined. Just in a small scale for me, I could never have imagined early in my life having a life like I have and having experienced all the things that I've experienced.
Impossible to see it. You when we were starting HeartMath, started with a group of people dedicated to a mission of putting something together that could help people through changing times. Didn't have a lot of resources and all that to start with and just had belief in going for it. And I remember thinking about what it could be like and everything. I could have never imagined a global organization with all these resources and all this other stuff that's happened with HeartMath, you know, major brand in the transformational space and all these kind of things that, you know,
No way I could have seen that, right? If you ask me, what's going to happen in the future, my little prediction of it would be about that big, right? Well, that's true of us as people, each and every one of us. The possibilities we have in our life to experience some amazing things is beyond what we can imagine. And that does not mean we're all going to become rich and famous and all that. I'm talking about meaningful experiences, meaningful life experiences. The possibilities on that are
almost limitless on what we can experience and achieve in the time that we have here. And I hope people hear that. You know, they're watching, watching our conversation tonight, you know, because, you know, with a little bit of extra meaningfulness applied to things. And I would say from my life's work, adding more heart to what you do and respecting the heart and doing what you can to learn more about it and about how to access it, that you can have a life that's beyond your imagination.
Howard Martin (54:28.81)
beyond what you could possibly see.
Tim Doyle (54:32.012)
Howard, I think that's a beautiful place to stop. Where should people go to learn more about you, your work, anything else you would want to share?
Howard Martin (54:41.1)
Well, for me, I'm just like a lot of other people out there now, you know, Google me and you'll find like tons of videos and stuff from years gone by live shows and the whole thing. It's all there. But for HeartMath, just go to heartmath.com or heartmath.org. We have a for-profit and a nonprofit. And nonprofit site has a lot of the scientific research. They do wonderful work for the underserved, family schools.
first responders, military, things like that. HeartMath Incorporated is where heartmath.com is. Lots of resources there. The technology understanding is there. Many, many things are there. And that's a way to do it. So there all the time, there are free programs that we offer. There are webinars and stuff that we do. There's lots of ways in which people can participate. People that really want to do it can actually be certified to teach heart math.
as a coach or as a trainer, those programs are available. If you're a health professional, we have a professional health professional side to what we do of integrating heart math, science and techniques and understanding into medical practice, both psychological and physiological. All that and more is there on the heartmath.com website. Lastly, occasionally we have live events, know, we sponsor not just ones that we get paid to speak at.
Now we're having one in November on the island of Crete. HeartMath European Symposium is going to be awesome. I'll be one of the speakers. Dr. Deborah Rosman, the CEO of HeartMath will be there. Dr. Roland McCready, Director of Research there virtually. A famous author, friend of mine named Lynn McTaggart does the power of eight work is going to be with us. And people are going to work through a process for four days to unfold their own heart's code.
code and access into this thing called heart. And they got cool things are adding into that. Like you get your own heart code passport and some other fun things. And it's going to be done in a place like Crete, you know? And then later next year we'll do the annual HeartMath event that we do here. We're in California. We're near Santa Cruz. And so next year we'll be in Santa Cruz with that. So there are ways to come to live events and experience it with people who are similar in interest.
Tim Doyle (56:46.35)
Yeah.
Howard Martin (57:05.324)
I've laid out a lot right there. I don't want to confuse anybody anymore saying there are lot of really interesting options for you. If this conversation we've had is inspired you or made you curious.
Tim Doyle (57:15.918)
Awesome. Yeah. And and I love what you said right at the end there. You know, we, we can't comprehend what we're capable of. And the thought that I think I would say based off of that is because those types of things live deep in the heart rather than the mind.
Howard Martin (57:29.888)
That's right. And, know, again, I've got more to go. I'm always in a growth mode, but for me, thinking about where I started and where I am today, if it happened to me, it could happen for others. And that's part of what motivates me is, whatever it is for somebody else, but I want people to have the fulfillment that I think they, they have coming to them. And so I do what I can to help them do that.
Tim Doyle (57:51.84)
Awesome. Awesome. Great talk with you today.
Howard Martin (57:56.31)
Tim, thank you for having me. I wish you all the very best and thanks for doing what you do to have a program like this and to be sharing information with people. It all counts, it all helps. Appreciate you, bro.
