[hearttuner] Starting with the Heart Tuner

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-----Forwarded Message----- From: van den Bovenkamp Sent: Jun 20, 2005 6:59 AM hearttuner Subject: [hearttuner] Starting with the Heart Tuner

The new Heart Tuner users forum is a response to the many requests from (new) Heart Tunerowners willing to hear others' experience, and many others kindly willing to share it. This can

only be helpful to all. We are seeing over and over again that the Heart Tuner, especially the internal coherence measurement and -training are used in combination with existing therapeutic

practice and experience. Measuring coherence to measure internal emotional states creates not

only valuable information, it is also unique in the sense that it would not be served well with amere few one-liners in a user manual.Again, for beginners.. look at the height of the first peak from the left in the InternalCoherence ("Cepstrum") display. Relax, get a baseline (a stable reference level), then trycreating an inner picture and feeling inside of whatever it is that makes you feel passionate.Then watch - does that (coherence) peak rise when you light up your heart? This is the personaltest.Next, check to see if the right - left motion of that same peak, does line up between twopeople when they do indeed most feel and link hearts to each other. This is the simple coreof the HeartTuner experience, which is unique because when the peaks line up, this not onlymeans same heart rates, it truly means that all electro-magnetic frequencies in both heartsare in phase. Do not be distracted by too many other possibilities ( kinesiology measure, HRV,brain coherence, bliss etc) - until you have simply tried this. This is advice especially to new users.Internal cardiac coherence can be a measurable indicator of psychic qualities in the range of

empathy, attention-focus, emotional coherence and appreciation. This can be a "plug-and play"

experience. For example, at a teen age party to see whose heart ring with humor, and even who

"loves" or feels for for whom. But even more rich, is after you take some time looking at howhearts - particularly between people, connect. Try connect several pairs of people who reallyare important to each other. Look at how they respond to each other. Learn to think about the difference between empathy (hearts linking up - 2 peaks come together) versus passion..(hearts producing the raising of the coherence peak).Your first experience with the Heart Tuner could even be to see the difference in emotionalcoherence between "impatience" and "anticipation".. One other practical advise is also toactually read the user guide before pushing buttons. The comparison in terms of Mc. ssort of "consumability" with the Freeze Framer is very frequent, but not very creative and infact not appropriate. Internal cardiac coherence has very little to do with monotonic (narrowspectrum HRV-) breathing training and is far more content- and context rich as it captures thecoherence among a wide range of the electromagnetic spectral emission, in theory within thescope of a single heart beat.The best advise to get started with the Heart Tuner is, use it regularly with YOURSELF as atest person and learn how it FEELS when your heart is coherent, and when not. For example,like one young therapist in Germany, his heart jumped up (the cepstrum peak raised high) forthe first time after half an afternoon playing and testing, the moment his girl-friend came home unexpectedly. Our, the way round, at a seminar, a couple where I felt the husband was very

dominant, his wife very shy, she was on the Heart Tuner and nicely coherent during a friendly conversation, her peak litterally sunk down when her husband suddely made a remark abouther. THIS is the Heart Tuner: quick and subtle, sometimes almost like a lie-detector. So, towork with the Heart Tuner, you need to become familiar with the "emotions" (psychic states)with are associated with passion, empathy and openness of the heart, and this open-ness (andresponsiveness) measured in biofeedback style can be further developed and applied invarious therapeutic settings in a personal style. It needs some skill and (shared) experienceand also a bit of patience beyond the scope of a few lines in the instruction manual, and thisis one of the reasons Dan has set up this forum.

At this point I would like to drop a few notes on the combination HRV (Heart Rate Variability)vs. Internal Cardiac Coherence (ICC). HRV has become a well-introduced concept and goodHRV is generally accepted to be a good health predictor. From a purely technical point of view,we could draw the conclusion that HRV and ICC are mutually highly unrelated. This can e.g.be demonstrated easily in a computer simulation, and is true already because HRV plays in analltogether different frequency band (roughly 0.04 to 0.5 Hz) than ICC (roughly 1 to 22 Hz).Only when there is much HRV in the highest HRV range, this might affect, and in fact takedown ICC. So far a purely technical analysis. However, biology may in some cases decide abit different. For example, early Heart Math Institute collaborator Bill Tiller demonstrated thatsubjects with long time meditation experience, while in deep meditation, their internal ECGcoherence was high, while there was virtually no HRV. However, this does NOT mean thatICC and HRV are mutually exclusive in all cases, it just reflects a specific meditative state.Therefore, our general biofeedback guideline for working with the Heart Tuner is: be able toachieve high internal coherence (not necessarily all the time) PLUS have high HRV. The latter,as a measure for emotional responsiveness, then serves as a proof of genuinity of internalcoherence.So, the Heart Tuner can help people to learn how it feels to be emotionally flexible andresponsive, and at the same time coherent and focussed. This I would like to give as a kindsuggestion especially to new users, the rest is all up to your creativity using the concept inclinical or therapeutic practice, in coaching or.. for fun!Also - another function of this forum is to re-confirm how available Dan and I are for yourquestions - AND also to benefit by responses from ALL users who have experience andvision related to your issues. We look forward to a very stimulating and sustained dialoghere - and promise lots of developments in the future as both our software and our sharedexperience evolve. warm regards.

- in dialog with Dan