Week 2

The Different Perspectives Involved in Experiencing.

In this session, we will explore how our experiences affect how we perceive our inner world and the world around us, simultaneously from different perspectives. When we feel authentic and whole, our experiences integrate and when we feel wounded, they disintegrate. While integration accesses a common witness, disintegration draws on an objective observer. In this session, we’ll get familiar shifting between different perspectives: to witness, observe, appreciate, and embody.

From the very first gestational stages of life, our heart has played a central role in all developmental stages, shaping and integrating all systems, including our brain. It’s important to note that the heart has its own intrinsic nervous system, referred to as the “heart-brain.” This works independently and closely with the autonomic nervous system. Furthermore, the heart’s electromagnetic field is like a beacon, relative to which all the body’s systems synchronize. This can be detected at up to 3-feet away from the body, using highly sensitive instruments like superconducting quantum interference devices (SQUIDs).

Based on extensive research into heart coherence and our own observations during twenty-five years, we choose to describe our ‘beacon’ as an absolute reference, a zeroth person or witness, which the brain’s first-person perspective dynamically extends into the social spheres around us. In this session, we will do a grounding experiment to explore this witness, relative to which our attention focuses to objectify our experience AND/OR opens to transform and resolve our experience.

Example: Witnessing overlooks how we extend into social spheres, using focused AND/OR open attention, and shapes how we think, reflect, feel, sense, empathize, use language, speak, and socially exchange.

Experience:

In this second session, we will emphasize exploring:

• Overlooking how selective (or focused) AND/OR non-selective (or open) attention become operational in different functions of the brain and body. While selective, focused attention activates, non-selective, open attention deactivates. Whatever happens above the awareness threshold, happens consciously. Whatever happens beneath the awareness threshold, happens unconsciously. Remember, the greatest part of an iceberg is invisible.

Reference:

Last accessed March 6th, 2025 HeartMath Institute