Brain – Forever Young

Brain – Forever Young

It is a common belief that our brain also gets old as we get older. In fact the sign of old age is being senile, unable to learn or accept change and cope with the demands of the environment. However, medical science is not able to support this belief. Earlier the scientists did find a correlation between increasing age and the symptoms of being senile. They did found evidence of physical deterioration in aged brains. When we closely look at the ‘sample’ being chosen for the study, it was the most easily accessible specimen ..  people from old age homes. The senility was the reason these people were admitted in the old age homes in the first place. Moreover, these homes themselves caused considerable reduction in the stimulus that keeps the brain’s circuits shooting sparks. To make any general statement about the healthy ageing from the specimen taken from these old age homes like clocking the speed of a panther in a cage and assuming that it matched the speed of panthers in the wild.

Modern studies show that almost all degeneration of mental faculties is caused due to disease and NOT from ageing process. If we are able to stop the disease, we stop the degeneration of mental faculties, old age notwithstanding ! In normal healthy people, most of the brain cells can last for long long time … may be 200 years. The physical body may not be able to sustain till that age and therefore the healthy brain has no vehicle to ride on.

It is true that we do lose some brain cells. From our first year after birth till we reach puberty, we lose 30 to 50 % of the synapses in the cerebral cortex. In young adulthood, this loss is slowed down to about 100,000 neurons per day. This rate of loss may accelerate after age sixty and may affect crucial areas for learning and memory. However, this is not all. Let us not jump to conclusion about the phantom of old age from above ‘statistics’. We need to put it into proper perspective.

In terms of the ‘weight’ of the brain, this loss is merely 10 % of the brain weight during the whole life span of 10 to 90 years. There is no definitive conclusive proof about the correlation between brain size, cell number and I.Q. 

We need to look at the cell loss not as a sign of ‘weakening’ but more as a ‘refinement’. The cells die away because they are no more ‘required’. If we have more ‘demands’ on the brain cells – by having creative joyful stimulus as done in Sri Anand Yoga – then these brain cells will live on.

Due to the tendency to get into ‘comfort zones’ as a person becomes older, the brain cells become redundant. This results in less flow of blood to the brain, consequent less supply of nutrients, less branches that link one cell to another, clumping and tangling of nerve cells etc. 

Interestingly, during the same period, one type of neuron increases it abundance. This neuron is rich with an enzyme which helps brain cells communicate helps in having higher thought processes. 

In Sri Anand Yoga we effectively make use of this knowledge by having a joyful and creative life offering plentiful opportunities to brain cells to be ‘in demand’ and therefore, to be forever young and energetic and healthy.

How this is done is explained separately in this blog.

Intelligence of the Heart

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9th February 2006
Shrikant Vasudeo


Intelligence of the Heart
Synthesis of Science and Spirituality

It is a set belief that the Brain is associated with the concept of Intelligence and the Heart is associated with the concept of Emotions. It is also our belief that both these concepts – Intelligence and Emotions are sort of mutually exclusive domains.

The management of business, governance of nations, career planning of personal life and education of students is emphasized to be based on ‘rational’ mind – meaning mind devoid of any emotions or brain to the exclusion of heart.

The spiritual practice of any religion of the world – past or present – gives emphasis on Heart rather than on the Brain, on emotions rather than on analyzing mind. This is the main contributing factor in creating a dichotomy between spirituality and materiality.

In Sri Anand Yoga – The Yoga of Eternal Happiness – we believe in the synthesis of heart and brain, with far more significance assigned towards the heart. The state of happiness arises in the heart not in the brain. The brain gives only the ‘virtual’ state of happiness. The Heart gives the ‘real’ thing.

Scientists have established with numerous experiments that the Heart is having an electromagnetic field. This heart field can be detected several feet from the person. Scientists have now accepted that the heart is far more than the simple pump. It is now recognised as a very complex system. It is having its own functional ‘brain’. We now have a totally new branch of medical research called ‘Neurocardiology’, i.e. the study of ‘brain of the heart’. It is now established that the Heart is a sensory organ. It is a sophisticated center for receiving and processing information. This nervous system within the heart functions independent of the cerebral cortex of the brain. It can learn, remember and made functional decisions.

Before we proceed further, please remember that this is NOT an essay in ‘Science of the Heart’. We are also not going to ‘apply’ this information for any practical use. We are only going to use this information as an affirmation and confirmation of the philosophy and practice of Sri Anand Yoga – which is already based on these scientific truths even before they were discovered by the scientists.

Higher brain centres are involved in perception, cognition and emotional processing. These centres are influenced by the continuous signals sent from the heart. There is also an ‘electromagnetic network’ permeating the whole of the body. The communication between various parts of the body is done through this network at a certain level of awareness. This is in addition to the nervous system, hormonal system and other pathways of communication. The major centre of this electromagnetic network is heart. The secondary centre is brain. However, heart generates the most powerful and extensive rhythmic electromagnetic field. The electrical intensity of the hearts field is 60 times greater in amplitude than that of the brain. It permeates every cell in the body. The magnetic field intensity of the heart is 5000 times stronger than that of the brain. This proves beyond any doubt that the heart is the real KING (or QUEEN, if you may like) of the body. Brain is the instrument in the hands of the Heart. The real decision make is the heart.

The brain rhythms tend to get synchronize to the hearts rhythm. The feeling of love and appreciation arise in the heart. It has been demonstrated in several scientific studies that the sustained feelings of love and appreciation is a major contributor of good health. Blood pressure and respiratory rhythms get smoothened by entraining themselves with the rhythm of the heart.

The foundation of Sri Anand Yoga is on Love and Appreciation. It results in higher level of efficiency and harmony in the activity and interactions of the various organic systems of the body. There is a marked reduction in internal mental chatter, elimination of stress, higher emotional balance, intuitive discernment and cognitive performance. The overall coherence of the various bodily systems is greatly enhanced. This directly results in the heightened awareness and sensitivity to our surroundings.

This Universe is filled with the ‘energetic and loving communication’ system. The electromagnetic field of the heart ‘rides’ on this communication network. If this functionality of the heart is harnessed effectively, it would create magical results. The strength of the electromagnetic field has great power to make the surroundings get ‘entrained’ to it. We are already using the term ‘magnetic’ personality without actually realizing that it actually represents the scientific truth. The method and technique of increasing the strength of this electromagnetic field forms an integral part of Sri Anand Yoga. However, it is not the focus area of this yoga. It is only its natural by-product.

It is also established that in order to have good brain development and formation of healthy self worth, the all round positive interactions between mother and the child is absolutely essential. The positive emotions emitted by the heart of the mother, like love, appreciation, joy etc ‘imprints’ the heart rhythm of the child with a life long effect.

In Sri Anand Yoga, we take this process a step further. Though, it may take some time for our scientific community to accept this phenomenon in any ‘provable’ manner, we can already perceive this truth. The electromagnetic field of the group of individuals who are aligned in a coherent manner with strongly charged emotions, create a ‘vortex’ of atmospheric charge of ‘intelligent energy’ which goes on to propagate itself far beyond its ‘arithmetic sum’. A group of 100 persons who are well harmonised in heart field with strongly charged emotional energy, can easily influence a population of 10,000 people and then to 10 million and so on to the whole earth. The ‘chaotic’ patterns in the atmosphere tend to diffuse the magnetic polarity of this energy field. There is another process of ‘Joy Wave’ which can effectively ‘re-polarise’ this diffusion. It is a matter of separate study.

The Group Field is comprised of the individual members of the group who have their own intent, awareness and energy pattern. When this triple attributes of individuality get aligned in the group, it increases the focus like a laser beam. The awareness level creates the depth of the field. The intent gives it the direction and the energy is like a propeller to the rocket. The ‘force field’ which is thus created is far higher in power and effectiveness than the magnetic field.

Let us get back the heart of the matter. Our heart have around 60 beats per second. The ratio of the systolic to diastolic blood pressure is around 1.6 – nearly same as the Golden Proportion. It is not a coincidence. It takes us to the core of the truth of the Universe. The law of golden proportion is one of the important conditions for self-organising systems. Our physical body is a symphony of individual rhythms of various organs and the Heart is the Master Conductor of this symphony.

So far we were obsessed with the statistics of the heart – heart weighs 300 gms of muscle, it pumps 70 liters of blood per minute without interruption for the whole lifespan of a person of 100 years, it beats 100,000 times a day which is equal to 40 million beats per year which is equal to 3 billion pulses per average lifetime. Now we are beginning to take note of the consciousness behind these statistics. Though science has concluded beyond any doubt that negative emotions like anger, anxiety, tension etc significantly increase the risk of heart disease, it is still in its infancy to fully explain ‘how’ and more importantly the ‘why’ part of it. Recently it has been discovered that the heart contains cells that make and release a significant quantity of neurotransmitters. These are in the form of norepinephrine and dopamine. These were earlier thought to be the monopoly of the brain and the nervous system. Heart can also be classified as an endocrine or hormonal gland. It was discovered that the heart produce hormone called Atrial Natriuretic Factor (ANF). This hormone has very significant impact on the functioning of blood vessel, kidneys and adrenal glands as well as on a large number of regulatory regions in the brain.

Heart uses several ‘afferent’ (flowing outward from heart to the brain) pathways to send neurological impulses to the brain. The emotional input is provided to the brain through these pathways. In this manner, the heart is able to influence and even to control many of the autonomic nervous system signals that flow out from the brain to the various parts of the body. It also impacts on the higher centers of the brain. This has direct relevance to the system of Sri Anand Yoga wherein we en-train our heart to re-charge the brain and the body by certain practices of Kriya Yoga. Neurophysiologists have learned as to how the impulses from the heart to the brain can ‘hinder’ or ‘facilitate’ the electrical activity of the brain.

Heart is now considered as a single entity. The brain of the heart is a network of neurons, neurotransmitters and proteins which send messages between neurons. In a similar fashion to the brain, the heart also has complex circuitry and support cells. It enables the heart to act independently of the brain in the head. It makes it possible for the heart to learn, re-member and re-produce the ‘e-motions’. E-motions are in fact the energetic motions of the heart. This discovery has led the scientists to surmise that the emotions are not the antagonist to the rational thought. There is an aspect of ‘intelligence’ to the emotions. Emotions have the rationality of its own. The neurologists have discovered the importance of emotions in decision making. While emotions have the power to put into oblivion the mundane events of our life, the reverse is not true. The mundane events can in no way knock-off emotions from our awareness.

It has now been established that the areas of the brain which are associated with various types of emotions are also controlling the autonomic nervous system. These same areas of the brain are influenced by the variability in the heart rate. This brings us to our starting hypothesis of the intelligence of the heart.

With all this new gained knowledge at our hand, the mankind is still not able to put this knowledge to practical use. Having known that the anxiety affects our heart function and consequently the heart intelligence, we conclude that anxiety is bad for health and life in general. When it comes to the question of how to eliminate this anxiety, the science can not offer any satisfactory solution. Man miserably fails in getting full benefits from the spirituality, yoga, alternate medicines etc because of his fundamental mis-perception of life processes. If we wish to fully benefit from these advances in scientific understanding of our physical body, consciousness and mental activity, we need to adopt a different route.

We need to listen to our heart, our wise and intelligent heart. We need to give the emotions their due and respectful place in our life. We need to re-learn our ability to cry and laugh like a child, be curious of new territories, be adventurous in taking up new projects and above all live life naturally. We need to bring back the Joy of Living in our life. This process, rather than weakening our rational thinking capacity, will immensely boost its effectiveness to the magical proportions from our everyday point of view.