SPIRIT AND MATTER OF THE HEART
Interview with Dorothy Mandel
Dorothy
Mandel Photo by Jerri-Jo Idarius
As we consciously attune to our heart with
loving intention, we do affect the environment we are adapting
to. This in turn comes back and affects who we are. This is
the loop of creation.
My training in transpersonal psychology gave me an immense
amount of understanding, compassion and increased sensitivity.
Yet, when working with children and their families, healing
results weren’t always as quick or deep as I hoped for.
In wondering about that, I realized that many children and
adults were suffering a form of post-traumatic stress—often
going back to a time when nobody was aware that a trauma had
occurred. Because of the hormones present during stress and
trauma, the behaviors and responses that occur are learned
and remembered in very deep ways.
Multiple layers of birth trauma and prenatal trauma are recorded
much in the same way as any other trauma. The original physical,
mental, and emotional responses to those traumas are also
recorded and remembered in the body and psyche. An experience
that shocks the body creates an imprint of helplessness, hopelessness
and impotency, because the person wasn’t able to successfully
prevent or fight off what was threatening to survival. When
these imprints occur as early as prenatal or birth times,
they form a perceptive filter of reality. I began to realize
that what was needed for healing was not necessarily or only
the ability to retrieve the traumatic memory but, more importantly,
to tap into a deep physiologically and emotionally restorative
process, a place where safety, connection, and mobility were
once again possible.
The body has such incredible resilience and when given the
opportunity, can heal itself. There are numerous accounts
in medical literature of spontaneous healings beyond what
can be medically explained.
THE HEART IS THE ORGANIZINF FACTOR
OF THE bODY'S RESTORATIVE PROCESSES
The heart is the first organ to form in the body and is the
organizing factor for physical formation, including brain
formation. It contains extensive brain like neural matter
and has recently been classified as a gland because it produces
its own hormone. The electromagnetic field of the heart is
the strongest and largest in the body, far surpassing that
of the brain. What this means is that the heart not only puts
out its own balancing and regulating hormones, it also instantaneously
communicates electromagnetic and chemical information to the
rest of the body and to neighboring bodies in the environment
as well. The heart can act as an internal pharmacy— dispensing
and communicating what is needed where and when. Its rhythm
and pulse can entrain all of the body’s rhythms and cycles
into coherent harmony and communicate many other types of
vital information as well. (footnote 1)
New definitions of mind body medicine
are recognizing that “all forms of organization on the
psychological, physical, and biological levels actually are
expressions of information and its transformation” (Stonier,
1990). The transformations between mind and body are called,
according to health psychology definitions, information transduction.
The heart, though as yet unrecognized as such, seems to be
the star performer and mediator in the mind body communication
drama. (footnote 2)
The fetal heart rhythm is powerfully affected by the emotional
state and well being of the parents. If the heart functions
in a coherent manner, it will communicate with and entrain
the body systems into healthy physical formation. If there
is stress, the electromagnetic flows and pulses of the heart
will become more chaotic and agitate the fetus, which in turn
scrambles communication flows in the mind/body complex, adversely
affecting brain formation, overall development, and emotional
well being. When a sense of emotional well being is lacking
or when a fetus perceives itself in danger or in any life-threatening
situation (e.g. insufficient nourishment, chronic or severe
acute stress from the mother), then the brain and body do
not communicate clearly with each other or form optimally.
The emotional container of safety is disturbed, and bonding
also is disturbed.
In the case of an in-vitro conception, if the fertilized ovum
is not put into the womb of the mother soon after the conception,
it won’t survive. This is because the electromagnetic
field of the mother’s heartbeat organizes life for that
conceptus, and if it doesn’t have that heartbeat, it
can’t grow or survive. (footnote3)
HOW STRES AFFECTS
FETAL GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT
A study at UC Irvine of women who were pregnant and went though
the Northridge Earthquake in 1994 (6.8 on the Richter scale)
indicated a greater stress reaction among those who were in
their first trimester of pregnancy. They tended to have earlier
deliveries and were more likely to report the quake as “extremely
stressful” than mothers whose pregnancies were further
along. Early deliveries are associated with a host of complications
that often require neonatal intensive care at birth and have
long term implications for health, intelligence, and well
being. This is a unique study in that it was able to look
at how stress at distinctly different stages of pregnancy
can affect the length of gestation. When stress is perceived
by an unborn baby as life threatening, growth energy is rerouted
toward more basic survival processes. In its effort to protect
us from harm, stress also inhibits the health enhancing and
restorative responses of our own coherent heartbeats.
Other research has shown that unborn babies who are exposed
to a significant level of stress hormones inutero are more
highly aroused, more easily startled, and less able to form
internal images both before and after birth. These symptoms
appear to be precursors to post-birth hyperactivity and attention
deficit disorders.
WHAT WE CAN DO TO ATTUNE TO THE
HEART'S RESTORATIVE CAPABILITIES
AND MEDIATE STRESS
The heart has a number of languages through which it communicates.
Research done by the HeartMath Institute indicates that the
electromagnetic field of the heart is 5,000 times greater
than that of the brain and that each person’s EKG pattern
is as unique as their fingerprint. The wave variations in
each “heartprint” contain information about the
different organ systems and rhythms in the body. When two
people touch, the heartwave of one has been seen to register
in the brainwave patterns of the other. The interpenetration
of these electromagnetic fields is detectable by sensitive
instruments to a distance of eight to ten feet away from the
body. The evidence of the effectiveness of prayer in healing
over distances attests to how far these electromagnetic heart
fields may actually go. Genetically, cells adapt to what they
perceive their environment to be. Because an event experienced
in the midst of a heart response will be perceived and interpreted
very differently than an event experienced in the midst of
a stress response, the heart can also powerfully affect genetic
expression.
PRENATAL BONDING
AND HEART COMMUNICATION
What can parents do to enhance prenatal bonding and ensure
healthy fetal development? It is important to take care of
the mother’s emotional wellbeing and establish a harmonious
heart rhythm. This can take many forms, including having finances
taken care of, providing an appropriate living space and having
time to be with the child.
Whenever stressful occurrences are unavoidable, a parent or
other person involved can help mediate that stress through
communication. For example, if birth intervention has to be
done in order to save the baby’s life, communicate with
the baby just as you would an adult. Tell the child everything
that is going to happen beforehand with as much knowledge
and heartfelt compassion as you can. If a mother is undergoing
trauma for any reason, through communication she can help
create a separation between her own experience and that of
her child. Whatever measure of safety is real can be directly
communicated to establish boundaries between the mother’s
experience and the baby’s.
Prenatal communication enhances prenatal bonding. Even if
the parents don’t speak out loud, what they speak from
their own heart is a very clear communication. By leaving
space for the baby to respond and by parents trusting their
intuitive intelligence, many important communications can
occur. The answer may come in the moment, in an hour, a day
or a week. The important thing is to open up the possibility
that the baby may also want to communicate and they usually
do so in very interesting ways.
One couple that I was working with wanted to use hypnosis
during childbirth to avoid drugs. Part of that process was
establishing prenatal communication. The father had a gender
preference. He wanted a girl because his brother had been
a very difficult child and he was afraid that he wouldn’t
be able to handle a child like that. When the parents initiated
communication with the baby, they didn’t have any particular
thing in mind. However, the father received a very clear telepathic
direct eye contact communication with the baby that it was
a boy and that everything would be okay. This was a very profound
experience of deep connection that opened his heart. The reality
that the child’s assurance helped decrease the fears
of its parent is an indicator of the power of the feedback
loop that occurs when the heart channel is open.
ACCESSING A HEART RESPONSE
Anything that mediates stress will help ensure that a baby
has optimum mental, physical, and emotional capacity. Along
these lines, I recommend that parents learn to access the
heart’s restorative response. A restorative response
is one in which you experience the same sorts of feelings
in your body as when you are in love, looking at a beautiful
sunset or immersed in some hobby that you love. In this absorbed
state, you feel an incredible sense of well being. The heart
is coherent during those times and is able to send out emotionally
balancing hormones and a signal that is strong enough to entrain
all the other body processes.
Using active imagination or guided imagery exercises, you
can access the restorative physiology and emotional balance
of a heart response. Vividly recalling an event that elicits
a sense of appreciation, joy, or love is one of the most powerful
ways to access the heart’s gifts. The next step is to
notice the different sensory and emotional experiences that
are occurring in the body and eventually to experiment in
connecting a stressful situation with that same energy of
the heart. One way to do that is by traversing back and forth
between the stressful memory and the heart response in a kind
of titration process. If you mix certain chemicals directly
they will create an explosion, whereas titration is a process
of mixing those same chemicals a tiny bit at a time to safely
form new chemicals. In a similar process, going back and forth
in imagination between the sense of fear and of well being
while paying attention to the sensory experience of the body,
you can master your ability to traverse the pathway between
them. In so doing, you will no longer be locked into the feeling
that fear will overtake you. As you strengthen the neural
pathway to the restorative response, the pathway to the stress
response will atrophy. This is a very powerful act of personal
choice.
These techniques are easy to learn. The nervous system doesn’t
know past, present and future, so it will access the physiology
that goes along with any memory of heart opening. By learning
to activate a heart response during pregnancy, a mother will
be able to maintain or move into a harmonious state of being
at will. By having and making the choice to consciously attune
to her heart during stressful times, a mother will enhance
her baby’s health and wellbeing and also teach her baby
an automatic healing response. This powerful tool of emotional
self-mastery can thereby become a vehicle of evolutionary
growth. That’s a pretty far out thought.
INDIGO, THE THIRD EYE AND HEART
The third eye is our point of connection with all of creation—our
connection to our common origin as souls. The heart is our
personal connection with soul beingness. There is something
that is happening now in the evolution that has to do with
connecting that third eye with the physical heart to produce
greater heart wisdom. For me, this knowing is very much connected
with the color indigo.
I have known a number of people who had a universal heart
connection with people and with the planet, but who were unable
to make personal heart connections. It seems to me that it
is important to our evolution that we link the personal to
the universal higher frequencies of third eye. This puts us
in a different level of receivership and allows broader attunement
to the many dimensions of our being. It is also provides us
with a larger and more powerful space from which to co-create
and evolve.
According to other articles in this issue of Grace Millennium,
a lot of extra support is coming to Earth now from other beings,
other planets and other galaxies in support of evolution here.
Awareness is growing by leaps and bounds. To appreciate something,
you have to first become aware of it and then open up to receive
and take it into your heart. By focusing with appreciation,
intention, and attention on the heart, we may have the power
to interactively change the course of evolution.
1 HeartMath Solution
2 The Psychobiology of Mind Body Healing by Ernest Lawrence
Rossi
3 Joseph Chilton Pearce-Association for Prenatal and Perinatal
Psychology and Health Conference, Dec. 1999
