The Heart-Brain Connection
This is the first part of a series I am writing on the topic of emotional intelligence. I decided to write about emotional intelligence, the source of which is heart intelligence, after reading many posts on social media websites that indicated, from my viewpoint, that emotional intelligence and it’s importance in our lives and organizations is clearly misunderstood by many people.
In the book, Executive EQ, the authors state that a high price has been paid by trying to disconnect emotions from intellect. I have personally experienced this divide and it has sparked in me, a quest to understand why there seems to be such a reluctance in the workplace to fully accept and integrate the power of emotional intelligence.
I will begin by saying, the gap between mental and emotional intelligence has not always been part of the human psyche. In fact my research found that ancient people like the Mayans, Aztec and Kogi have always believed the heart to be the core of all that is sacred about life. Furthermore, they believe it is through the heart that we connect to the source of all wisdom and intelligence. It was not until the 17th century that the human mind; it’s capacity to think and reason were elevated above the wisdom and intuitive capacity of the heart. From that time forward, academia has carried forth the message that IQ is the greatest indicator of human achievement.
Scientists today have concluded that the human fetus has a heart beat before the brain is even formed. Wouldn’t this suggest that the heart’s beat is self initiated and precedes intellectual thought? Science also reveals that the heart actually has it’s own intelligence system with nearly as many neurons as the sub-cortex of the brain. And rather than a one way communication, as was once believed, instead of the brain sending a message telling the heart what to do, the heart actually initiates messages not only understood by the brain, but also obeyed. While it is clear that there is a two way communication continuously flowing between brain and heart. Research now suggests that it may actually be the heart that is leading, not the brain.
Even in the field of sales and marketing, we know that people make decisions emotionally rather than logically, and so we speak to the benefits more than features. Why then is it so difficult to accept that reasoning and decision-making, and emotion and feelings intersect? Or that emotional intelligence, which is the ability to sense, understand and align the power and intelligence of the heart to the reason and intellect of the mind, is a skill critical to human success?
In the next post, I will discuss the value of bringing emotion and intellect into greater harmony to heighten our ability to effectively manage our lives and work.
References:
Robert K. Cooper, PhD & Ayman Sawaf, Executive EQ: Emotional Intelligence in Leadership and Organizations (1997)
Institute of Heart Math, Science of the Heart (2001)







