kodalai | so it says in the song

I suppose for the first time recently I ran up against the phenomenon of being told that something you’ve been told all your life and have believed, is not true. V. interesting, as I am a child of very young generation and as such am not often exposed to such contradictions. I wondered if it would give me some more sympathy and insight into those who find their conventions thus challenged all the time.

Now, as I’m sure you all know perfectly well, the notion that the heart is the seat of emotion is a foolish and romantic one. Though many cultures have believed so throughout the ages, this was due to a lack of sophisticated understanding. Emotions, as with all other mental and conscious functions, are seated in the brain and regulation by neurons and such and such from therein.

Now, the other day in Psychology class we had a visiting speaker. He was from HeartMath, so he said, a project which is looking into wondering if that assertion might not be so true after all. If what he proposes is true, it seems, then the brain outsourced emotion to the heart long ago.

I speak the truth. As we have been taught, emotional states result in large part from the nervous system directing certain glands to release certain hormones into the bloodstream – tho what exactly the chemical composition of these hormones are we do not know. Most of the rest of the emotional state is the appropriate electrical signals being sent out from the central nervous system to the rest of the body, eliciting the appropriate sensations and feelings.

Now, so it seems, most of the glands which release said chemicals are indeed located nearby to or even inside the heart; and they are regulated by ganglia (nerve clusters) in and around the heart that are still part of the central nervous system, but not directly controlled by the brain. Secondary to that, the heart is the single largest electric and rhythmic generator in the body, and is quite capable of sending its own messages to the nervous system and the rest of the body.

So emotional states, while certainly registering in and initiated by the brain, are regulated and produced by the heart. Seems so intuitively obvious, ne? Yet not what we’ve been taught all our lives.

So. Set aside the scientifically pre-taught conception as the brain sitting as independent lord and master of the body up in the skull. The heart, it seems, has a mind of its own.