Science of Internal Resilience | Dr. Rollin McCraty
According to Dr. Rollin McCraty, a psychophysiologist and Director of Research at the HeartMath Institute, the secret to deep resilience isn’t in the brain totally—it’s in the chest. For almost 30 years, Rollin has been exploring a physiological state called "heart coherence," a hidden internal technology that governs how we think, feel, and lead.
The Intelligence of the Heart
We’ve long been taught that the heart is merely a mechanical pump, a servant to the brain’s commands. Rollin’s research flips this hierarchy on its head. "The heart sends far more information up to the brain through the nervous system than the other way around," Rollin explains. "That's been known since the late 1800s. It's just been largely ignored and forgotten."
When we are in a state of heart coherence, our heart, brain, and respiratory systems operate in synchronized harmony. This isn't just a fleeting mood—it is a measurable biological reality that dictates whether we can maintain emotional composure or spin out into a state of stress.
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MAGICommons Podcast (00:00)
physiological synchronization. And this means that when our body rhythms synchronize with other people, and we do this naturally, people do it all the time unconsciously, but there's a deeper level of synchronization where either our brain waves sometimes, but especially if our heart rhythms synchronize with others, that is directly related to pro-social behaviors, how well we get along, the performance of a group, what's called psychological safety, which is key, the absolute key thing to team performance.
Jiani (00:36)
Today with us is Dr. Rollin McCraty As
for almost 30 years and also leading the research department from HeartMath
covering spaces. For example, the physiology of emotions.
our intuitions, heart rate coherence, and also the interconnectivity between human beings and the Earth's electromagnetic spaces.
today's conversation is to find out first what is heart coherence. And then how can heart coherence
harnessed into powering leaders and team collaborations
beep beep. In front of you lands a spaceship, out walks a friendly alien. If you were to use one word, one sound or one movement to say hi, what would that be?
Rollin (01:34)
that should be two words and it'd be, buddy.
Jiani (01:36)
Hi buddy. love that. Beautiful. What if they don't understand the words?
Rollin (01:41)
Well, I think they probably would.
Jiani (01:43)
They probably have advanced technologies to translate. it. All right, so heart coherence. So why heart coherence in the first place? What was the seedling moment that you realized that, ⁓ the heart coherence would be the focus of the research?
Rollin (02:01)
Well, that wasn't necessarily a single moment. That was quite a few years of research that led to, I would say the discovery of the naming of the physiological state of heart coherence. And just give you a little bit of background. And this goes back to the 1990s, early mid 1990s.
And we were doing a lot of, we were starting to do, that's a psychophysiology lab work on the physiology of emotion, of course. And we looked at many, many things, hormones and immune systems and all kinds of things. But we were particularly focused on what's now called heart rate variability. This was early, early days.
And we were a little ahead of the curve, if you will, in terms of asking the question, what happens physiologically in our body when we feel good things like love, compassion, appreciation? Because at that time, very, very little research had been done on that. It was all about depression and stress and anxiety. There were like maybe three research papers, thousands on, you know, these other other negative states. And what we
Try and make a make this simple and a long story short, but what what those years of research uncovered Was that the heart is the most reflective of a person's emotional state? far better to understand how somebody's feeling than trying to look at brainwaves for example or many of these other type of physiological measures and in particular It was the rhythm of the heart now to understand that
I think a lot of people these days back then, nobody ever heard of this. It's called heart rate variability. So, now, so most people know what heart rate is, How many times did the heart beat in a minute, right? That's heart rate. That's heart rate. But in reality, our heart rate changes with every single heartbeat.
So it's always varying and that's what's called heartbeat variability. So that's a little more challenging to measure. But when you do that, you find that the time intervals between each pair of consecutive heartbeats is always different. And that's what creates our heart rhythm. And when you look closely at that rhythm, you see that there are different patterns that emerge in the up and down rhythms.
So when we feel things like anxiety or fear or frustration and patience, these kinds of what I now call depleting emotions, that creates a very chaotic looking when you plot it heart rhythm. It's if you it's yeah, it's kind of right. actually kind of looks like an earthquake graph, especially if we're angry or frustrated. I mean, literally. Whereas what we found when people are feeling appreciation, gratitude, kindness, compassion.
Jiani (04:28)
like.
Rollin (04:36)
that the heart rhythm shifts into a completely different pattern. It's like rolling hills, this beautiful sine wave looking pattern. Now, what's important to understand is in terms of really performing well, thinking clearly, faster reaction times, better coordination, pretty much anything and everything we do, feeling more vitality at the end of the day.
all has to do, it really boils down to what's going on physiologically inside of our body. How in sync are the different rhythms and systems in the body? So when you're in that incoherent heart rhythm, like what is driven by feeling, you anxiety and impatience and rushed energy, these types of things, fear is a big one. That's a big one in today's world, actually.
Jiani (05:15)
Fear, there's a lot of fear here.
Rollin (05:20)
That is driving our internal physiological systems out of synchrony. And synchrony is the key to optimal performance. Right. Whereas when we're feeling these other regenerative as I like to call them or replenishing emotions, it's actually adding energy rather than depleting energy. So this is very much based on the physiology of what's going on. And as it turns out, one of the key things that gets synchronized is the electrical activity of the heart.
and the brain, the brain waves, they can be in sync or out of sync. when we're in, so chasing that rabbit down the hole from a research perspective, like what's going on when we're in these two different, very different physiological states, we found that a lot of things to be in that heart, what technically would be called the heart rhythm coherence state, that a lot is going on inside of our body that has to occur for that rhythm, that pattern to emerge.
Jiani (05:52)
Yes, please.
Rollin (06:11)
There's increased synchronization between our blood pressure rhythms, which also vary on a beat to beat basis, our respiratory rhythms, our heart rhythms, and the electrical activity between the heart and brain. Those all become synchronized for that rhythm to emerge. So it's the physiology of optimal function.
traffic jam examples, but it could be anything, right? So there you are, you know, it's easy to be kind of in the flow and everything. All the traffic lights are green and it's all moving, but then you hit the traffic jam, especially if you're late. What happens to most people? Right. We start getting frustrated. Impatient, right? That's throwing our system into that.
Jiani (06:38)
yeah anxious fear impatience anger
Rollin (06:48)
Yeah, into that incoherent state. Of course, it doesn't make the traffic move any faster. It just depletes us, right? So anyway, we were really understanding physiologically what's going on. And what we now know is when we were in that incoherent heart rhythm state, now an important kind of tidbit here is to understand that the heart sends far more information up to the brain through the nervous system than the other way around. And that's been known since the late 1800s. It's just been largely ignored and forgotten.
Jiani (06:53)
No.
Rollin (07:15)
They're an absolute fact. So those signals, the quality or the pattern of those signals coming from the heart to the brain go to all major brain areas in our brain. And one of the key areas, there's several we could talk about here one is to the very core of the brain called the thalamus. And it's responsible, one of its many jobs, of the thalamus, is to synchronize the electrical activity of all the neurons in our brain.
which so we have to have synchronized activity for information to flow through our brain, be processed, perceived. Yeah, you can think of it that way. So when we're in that incoherent rhythm, that pattern is going directly to the thalamus and it interferes with or inhibits our ability for all the neurons to be in sync. And that results when we're in that out of sync state, our reactions are slowed, our perceptions are narrowed.
Jiani (07:42)
So it's like a traffic kind of center to like conduct her.
Rollin (08:02)
but it especially affects the frontal part of the brain, prefrontal and frontal cortex. And the way to think of those, to make it really simple, is what those neural structures give us, Jiani is the ability to have foresight. Okay, so foresight's a big deal. Foresight is unique to us humans as far as we know. In other words, to understand how our actions and behaviors in the now are going to affect
Jiani (08:18)
to think ahead.
Rollin (08:27)
future. So it's really the key, the essence of being able to self-regulate, to stay in charge of ourself, of our actions and behaviors, to make better decisions. Okay, so goal setting, planning, all of these things are under that
context of foresight. when we're in that, yeah, so when we're in that de-synchronized or incoherent state, those neural structures don't perform well. They're basically taken offline. And this is why when we're emotionally upset, you know, we get mad at someone, right? Not that you've ever done this, right? You get a little mad and you blurt out something that you don't even usually mean, you know, and you thank yourself a few minutes later or a minute later, my God, I can't believe I said that or did that.
Jiani (08:41)
team collaboration.
I haven't.
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
Rollin (09:07)
So that's what's called cortical
inhibition. The cortex, the part of our brain we get paid to go to work for is literally inhibited. Now, on the other hand, if we're able to shift into that coherent state and rhythm, that's also going to the thalamus, and it actually enhances all those same cortical and brain structures. So now we're able to make better decisions, think clearer, faster reaction times and so on, because it's a global...
effect on our brain.
Jiani (09:32)
Does empathy, the ability to see from different perspectives also get enhanced too?
Rollin (09:38)
Well, yeah, I wouldn't call that empathy, but absolutely the ability to become more objective and see things from different perspectives. It really affects our perceptions, the we're perceiving the world. So everything really ultimately boils down to perception. Yeah. So that's just a little tidbit, but then there's also a direct neural circuit from the information from the heart going to another part of the brain called the amygdala, which is our emotional center. Right.
Jiani (09:50)
Exactly.
Rollin (10:01)
So, you know, think of it really simple. Hopefully when you fell in love or you didn't say, love you with all my brain, right? You said, I love you with all my heart, right? Don't we all do that? Because we intuitively know there's something more about the heart, especially when it comes to the higher emotions like love and compassion, forgiveness and appreciation. There really is. So what the amygdala's are, this would be little complicated to go into all the scientific depth that
Jiani (10:12)
Yeah.
Rollin (10:27)
see if I can say it kind of simply. So the neural patterns, the patterns of the information coming from the heart go directly to the amygdala. In fact, these cells in the core of the amygdala are literally synchronized to the heartbeat. So whatever that rhythm is, it's seen. And what in our early research, what we found is the rhythmic pattern is just different for different emotions. Like anxiety is different in fear and different in anger and so on, right?
So what's really happening is that the signals from the heart are going to the amygdala and it's interpreting to a pattern matching process what we feel, what the heart and body are actually sending to the brain. So then you have the top part of the brain, the cortical regions, monitoring and labeling that, that it's a degree of match or mismatch, but that's going to get too complicated for I think our talk today. So what the the messages the heart sends to the brain, what I'm just saying, say this more simply.
is it's really interpreting, it's really an interpreter of what's going on in the body, but especially the heart.
Jiani (11:26)
So it's like we feel first then our brain gets the signal and start to of It's simpler, I see.
Rollin (11:31)
Well, it's a little more complicated. Yeah, but it's a dynamic system. One's affecting
the other always in real time. But it can be that way. Yes, the heart can lead, but most times it's the brain, you know, that we see something, hear something, somebody says something and it goes through processes and a pattern matching process. And then that creates an emotional response. But emotions do happen faster than thought. So a lot of our thoughts are really trying to unconsciously
Jiani (11:52)
Yeah. Yeah.
interpret
Rollin (11:57)
justify what we already felt.
Hopefully that answered at least part of your question. So being able to make that shift from incoherence to coherence is a really important skill for almost anything we do in life, right? Especially if we're in a leadership position, right? Being able to really be, so we do a lot. I'm kind of honored to say, for example, we got the contract and developed the resilience program for the U.S. Navy because our stuff is very, our tools and techniques are very practical.
Jiani (12:08)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Rollin (12:24)
So for example, if you're in law enforcement or a first responder or in the military, you want to be able to do is maintain your composure, your emotional composure, your mental composure in the middle of chaos that might be going on. shifting our physiology into this coherent state is really that optimal capacity to be more objective and stay centered and composed in the middle of
Jiani (12:36)
Mmm.
Rollin (12:49)
whatever's going on in the external world. So it's really our internists. You could think of this as internal technology.
Jiani (12:55)
Internal. love that. And I have a question. How do we enhance our internal technology of that sort of like resilience to maintain posture, not only from the outside, but also at the core level amidst of all the chaos and challenges, especially for leaders building a team or
or teams collaborating together, I mean, the world is getting more more chaotic. how do we...
quickly shift to that place.
Rollin (13:26)
Right, well,
that's where the techniques, once we understood the physiology, really deeply understood the physiology, we were able to develop a series of techniques that you can use right in a moment. I was using the traffic jam example earlier. part of it is learning to become more self-aware and honest about what we're actually feeling, which can be challenging for us men sometimes, because we'd like to deny that.
Jiani (13:47)
Yeah, sometimes we're not aware at all.
Rollin (13:50)
But that's the big game for really advancing. And even in our career, there's so much research that shows that even career advancement is really boils down to what sometimes called emotional intelligence. But what I'm talking about goes far beyond that. But that is an important step. So if we see that we're out of sync, let's say we're feeling frustrated or anxious, there's about eight key techniques at HeartMath.
that we can use right in the moment. Now the neat thing about them is you can do these with your eyes open. It's not like you're meditating and spacing out. These are techniques you can use right in the moment. No one else even needs to know you're doing it. Right? So we could do it right now and not even be aware.
Jiani (14:30)
Can we have an example? Like a simple one. Like a really, really like simple one.
Rollin (14:33)
Sure. Well, it's the simplest
and what is actually the first step in a lot of our more advanced techniques is called heart-focused breathing. heart-focused breathing. So you focus your attention in the area of your heart, the center of your chest. Okay, now imagine your breath is flowing in and out of your heart or chest area.
Jiani (14:42)
Heart focused breathing.
Rollin (14:53)
Now I know you're not really breathing, but a lot of people will feel it over time develop an energetic flow that can actually feel through that heart area. now so breathing a little slower and deeper than usual, but you'll want to find a rhythm that's comfortable. Now that rhythm that's comfortable, we actually have what's called a resonant frequency in terms of our human physiology.
And if you look across the global population, which we've done this over millions actually now literally of records and people, that's going to be a frequency in frequency language at 0.1 Hertz. Now that translates in time to a rhythm of 10 seconds. So it'd be like breathing around four or five seconds on the in breath and four or five seconds on the out breath. But you want to have an equal rhythm, you know, so it's a coherent.
breathing rhythm. So just doing that will take a lot of the intensity out of say an emotional reaction or a feeling that we want to shift. That's just the first step. But just that step alone is extremely powerful, especially if we're starting to react or feeling a little out of center. Now, the reason that breathing, of course, breathing techniques have been around for many, many centuries, right?
But there's really a lot of people don't understand why breathing is so powerful. I call it actually grandma's whispers, right? Because grandma's usually pretty wise. You know, if a little kid falls and they, you know, they're crying, what's grandma do? She picks them up and make sure they're not bleeding or something. But then she says, breathe, honey, you know, take me, breathe with me, right? Because she knows that until you can calm down, they're not going to be able to hear anything or kind of out to lunch. So.
Jiani (16:12)
Yeah.
Rollin (16:28)
But why this works is there's neural connections between the lungs and the heart. I won't go into all the anatomy here. So when we breathe in, that's modulating heart rate. the heart rhythm goes up and increases. As we breathe out, heart rhythm goes down. So we can just look at the pattern of the heart rate variability, that heart rhythm, and know exactly how somebody's breathing, how deep they're breathing, what rhythm they're breathing at.
But we have this natural resonant frequency I was talking about where everything gets in sync. The heart, the lungs, the brain, all of that system at that rhythm. So for most people, it's going to be around, typically around five seconds in, five seconds out on the out-breath. So through breathing, because that's something we can consciously engage with. We could be doing that breathing right now and nobody know it, right? But you find your own natural rhythm, so it's going to be somewhere around that frequency.
That is then sending a very different message to the brain, right? Because you've modulated the heart rhythm through breathing. Now the heart's sending a completely different pattern of information to the amygdala and the thalamus and all these other brain areas. That's now interpreting as, ⁓ everything's OK. Because coherence is the natural state that we go into when we feel good, right? For example, you walk out the door in the morning, and it's just one of those days, you you kind of go, ⁓ man.
Jiani (17:46)
It's so beautiful.
Rollin (17:46)
What a gorgeous day.
You you're really feeling appreciation, you know, or that sense of, God, what a beautiful day. You're most likely in a coherent state. Right.
Jiani (17:54)
That's beautiful.
I have two follow up questions. The first one is more on the technical part. So you mentioned about kind of equal counts as we breathe in and as we breathe out. I've heard of some other technique about breathing that counts like maybe like four to five as we breathe in and then double that as we breathe out. So what's the difference?
Rollin (17:58)
Okay.
Yeah. Breathe out.
Yeah.
Yeah, sure.
Yeah, that rhythm will take you out of coherence, not into coherence, because you're not breathing at the body's resonant frequency. And there are many, many breathing techniques out there. And they're all good, because if any conscious thing we do to self-regulate is a good thing. But the rhythm I'm talking about is one that matches exactly the body's natural resonant frequency and takes us into that deeper state of coherence.
Okay, that, if breathing techniques for the whole answer, the world wouldn't be as separated and stressed out as it is. So, but it's a great and important first step. And what a lot of our techniques would say then is, okay, now as you're doing the heart focused breathing, and also that focus in the center of the chest is also important from an energetic perspective. Okay, and I know a lot of people are gonna say, breathe in your diaphragm and...
Jiani (19:02)
So visualizing they have to.
Rollin (19:05)
and all that, but really more advanced breathing techniques have you breathe deeper up into the lungs. So you can get more air up into the top part of the lungs. So that also helps you there. But that's another kind of a sidetrack to what we're talking about now. So as you're doing the hard focused breathing, kind of a next step would be to activate, consciously choose to breathe a different feeling.
You can kind of call this attitude replacements, or attitude breathing is what we call it, one of our techniques. So you could breathe a feeling of patience. You can breathe the feeling of inner calm. You can breathe the feeling of appreciation. It could be a feeling of connection, deep connection. So we start taking charge of our emotional diet this way. Now let's take some practice. But we have far more power to regulate.
our emotions and our attitudes and emotions in people have been taught that that's the really the missing thing that just isn't taught to us when we're Or really any for most people anywhere in life. So then then it goes on from there, the techniques. But but just those two steps is huge, right? But then there's other steps where we can either radiate that feeling or ask our hearts intuition for guidance, different different steps that we would then add to those two basic steps.
Jiani (20:07)
That's true.
That actually ties to my second non-technical question. You mentioned about the child kind of state. So does the coherent state resonate or similar to the childlike state that we naturally felt as we were a little kid or are they different?
Rollin (20:35)
I would
say, you know, I would say yes. And I say that because one of the study that was done quite a few years ago now, that was an advisor on it was a PhD dissertation study. And this researcher, educational researcher, actually looked at kids across, I think, first grade, second grade, third grade, and so on in different school environments, public schools. I think one was a Montessori school, these kinds of things.
They weren't trying to do anything. They were just resting, measuring their heart rate and probability. And guess what? Kids are naturally coherent.
But as each advancing grade level, they were less coherent. So as we kind of beat it out of them, you through ambition training and, you know, and then we start getting into all the social dynamics and the frustrations and anxieties around that, that takes, those are the things that take us out of that natural coherence, largely because of the way our educational systems are designed from my perspective. If I take that one step farther, if I may,
I'm going to shift gears a little bit on you here, but this is also an important aspect, as you did mention, the social side. And this is so important in teams, whether it's a work team, a leadership team, a sports team, it really doesn't matter. So there's a huge amount of research. It's really just in its beginning, but it's still a lot. I've got a stack of papers right over here on to my right, about two feet stack, about two feet tall, just on what's called physiological synchronization.
Jiani (21:54)
I love that.
Rollin (21:58)
And this means that when our body rhythms synchronize with other people, and we do this naturally, people do it all the time unconsciously, but there's a deeper level of synchronization where either our brain waves sometimes, but especially if our heart rhythms synchronize with others, that is directly related to pro-social behaviors, how well we get along, the performance of a group.
what's called psychological safety, which is key, the absolute key thing to team performance. I mean, this has been shown in multiple studies now, a lot of work at Google and different things. Now, for us to be in sync with another person, there has to be some type of a signal, if I can use that language for people, not to make it too complicated, between people. So now when we put electrodes on the body to measure the electrocardiogram, the heartbeat,
We stick them on your head, you know, to measure the electroencephalograph brain waves. It's called electrocardiogram or electroencephalograph for a reason. We're measuring electricity. Literally the flow of electrical current. It's what the electrodes see. Now, whenever there's a flow of current, electrical current, whether it's ions or the kind of electricity going through the wires in your house, right? This is physics 101. You create a magnetic field.
Jiani (22:55)
Thank
you
Rollin (23:09)
The electrodes don't see the magnetic field. yeah. Yeah, we have a magnetic field around the Earth, God. But electrodes don't see that. You need a different instrument. That's called a magnetometer. Now, one of the qualities of a magnetic field is they go through things. That's why cell phones work indoors. My previous career, first career, was a communication engineer at Motorola, actually. So.
Jiani (23:10)
Because electricity is flowing. Yes. And then the Earth is magnetic.
you
Rollin (23:31)
So the field generated by the heart is huge. You may measure that in millivolts. Brain waves are measured in microvolts. So the electrical voltage of the heart is 100 times bigger. Right. So that field, if we take the magnetometer, the probe and stick it out, you don't have to touch the body. can, of course, in reality, you get them close because you want to have a high signal and noise ratio. But you can back that sensor up for quite a few feet before you lose the
ability to detect the field from the heart. It's about an inch from the brain before you lose capacity to detect it. So energetically, magnetically speaking, and I mean this literally, I'm not talking about an or something. I know this because I can measure it, Any person, anytime. So that field, magnetic field, you can kind of think of as your personal field environment. Now what we did, this is also going back to the later 90s, is we can take that
field, let me measure it. And using this is where my background in communication engineering was really handy, using the same techniques to decode the information being carried by that field, just like a cell phone, right? We talk into the phone or send a text, that information is being carried by the field, right? The magnetic ones, what's going through the walls and the windows, why it works indoors, the cell phone, but we're the same way.
Jiani (24:43)
What does the information
carry? The feelings, the thoughts or?
Rollin (24:46)
Well, in
terms of we know for sure that the heart's field is carrying the information about our emotional state. Probably many more things, but for sure, and this is all published in peer-reviewed scientific journals, and this is not. So we can actually measure the field and the information being carried by it until with about 75 % accuracy what somebody's emotional state is. And you can be putting on the plastic smile, right?
Jiani (24:53)
emotional state.
Rollin (25:12)
But if you're, if you're, yes, great. But if you, if you just had a bad interaction right before a communication with someone else and you're still processing, still feeling that, yeah, that and it's one of the types of intuition and it's related to empathy. Actually, you asked me about that earlier, but we're broadcasting that. So what I'm saying is quite literally, emotion doesn't stop at the skin. We are broadcasting it all the time. So that was a cool finding in our research, of course.
Jiani (25:14)
Hahaha!
You can tell. I think that's where the intuition comes because
Rollin (25:39)
Then the next question in that line was, well, OK, so what? Here's the answer. There's a big so what our nervous systems are like a big antenna or a biological antenna that's specifically tuned to the frequency and amplitudes of other biologically generated fields like other people's hearts. So let's say that if you and I were in the room and we've done all these experiments, that if one of us was in a heart coherent state,
That information we're broadcasting is majorly more, I'll say, ordered and coherent, and that tends to have a lifting effect on other people. Helps lift them into a more coherent and composed, balanced state. Whereas if we're angry or upset or anxious, well, we're also broadcasting that. That also is detected by other people.
Jiani (26:23)
and that potentially can interrupt or influence other people's into this dissonance potentially.
Rollin (26:27)
Yeah, well, yeah, not potentially. Yeah,
now this goes on, this energetic communication is going on within groups and teams and leaders and followers all the time, usually just at an unaware level. But it's still biasing and affecting our perceptions and our communications. Now, once you understand this, you can start watching it. You see it, you can just watch it happen and interactions between people.
Jiani (26:51)
So with that knowledge, then practically, strategically, how can leaders and talents and everybody who work in a team, and sometimes we say leaders and talents, but I think their role rotates based on the needs of the moment. So everybody leads or follows at different times. So as they kind of play the role of leaders or play the role of talent or followers, how can we practically
Rollin (27:06)
Sure.
Jiani (27:17)
to a space consistently where everybody tends to kind of reach this hard coherence together at scale.
Rollin (27:25)
Yeah, well, training, training,
training. In fact, we have one of our certification programs is really geared towards team and organizational coherence. It's one of the titles of it, also called activating the heart of teams. So it's really a process that we bring in because any team is made up of individuals. Right. So ultimately, it's going to get down to how coherent and self-regulated are the individuals who make up that team.
How coherent are they? How much is there? Are they aligned in sync? So as more as enough of the team members have that personal level of coherence, that's directly related to team coherence. And we have various ways we can measure that. And we have a specific psychometric survey we've developed that is called team coherence, right? But you can also measure it physiologically. How in sync are the rhythms of the team members?
And this is very clear now from this line of research we've been doing for the last few years in terms of heart synchronization. You know, I'll work with you, but I don't like you. You know, that kind of a feeling towards someone, you know, will tolerate you. But, know, outside of work, forget it. we're not, you won't you don't see synchronization. Yeah, it actually requires, you know, a positive or some type of a positive emotional bonding.
Jiani (28:29)
Professionalism.
Rollin (28:38)
I mean, we like each other. I enjoy going to work. I like working with you. And that's when you see that physiological synchronization. And again, that is directly related now, more more studies showing to team performance, to feeling heard by other team members, having equal voice, whether you trade off leadership roles or not. modern leaders are starting to understand this.
Jiani (28:59)
I see. I'm sorry, I need to kind of backtrack. for folks who kind of put up with each other, but still kind of work on a very professional level, does that also require a certain level of coherence or are you saying that it's incoherent?
Rollin (29:02)
Sure.
Well, I'm just wondering if we'll
tolerate each other, but we really don't like each other. Yeah, you can have it get stuff done and do all that, it's still going to keep that team harmony and synchronization at a certain level. They're not going to really advance to the teams that we talk about that excel, know, those magical teams. You know, and we see that in sports teams where something's magic's happening.
You know, there's just this coherence in this. It's almost like an unseen communication going on amongst team members. And in fact, that is true. In fact, we're getting ready to publish this stuff that's accepted now for one of the nature journals, scientific reports, where we live in five groups of 20 people. We looked at the synchronization amongst all the group members and two of the two groups that had significant in-syncness over a two week period, actually, which is pretty amazing.
were the teams that had that high degree of social connection and bonding. Yeah.
Jiani (30:09)
the deep heart resonance as a team.
That's beautiful. my goodness. We can go on and on and on. And I wanted to respect our time and space and our audience time and space.
Rollin (30:19)
Yes.
Jiani (30:24)
It's such a wonderful conversation that we've talked about the definition of heart coherence. We brought into the concept of heart variability rate. It's where the difference of each heart beat and how
Rollin (30:24)
Yeah.
Thank
Jiani (30:37)
that difference creates some sort of harmony. So if we feel fear, anxious and anger, depleting emotions, the variability will look like a heart, like an earthquake. It's like totally out of sync and it's crazy looking. And whenever we feel gratitude, happy, joy, love and compassion and just this like good, good and enriching emotions, the heart
heart variability rate will look very harmonious and beautiful. And we also talked about two basic steps to always help us reactivate that sense of heart coherence. And also what we call childlike wonder state or our original state is the first thing is to breathe. So envision we're breathing in through our heart.
Count on four or five and then breathe out through our hearts count four or five Make sure that the count is equal in and out and that's where the harmony will be reached and the second step is to kind of Breeze in the emotions. So if you want to feel joy if you wanted to feel love you wanted to collaboration compassion Feeling feeling that emotions as you breathing and breeze out
So those are the two kind of valid steps in going there. And we also talked about the heart coherence, the role in team. When a team reaches a peak performance as a group, according to research, that's usually a deeper or more synchronized heart coherence playing among every member, single member of the team. So one of the most effective way to help
teams to be peak performing teams is to help each other and each member of the team to get a better management and control and foresight over their emotions and always help them to stay more resilient and always help them to bounce back to that hard coherent state.
Rollin (32:36)
Good memory. just if I lost few minutes we have here, sometimes when we talk about things like patience or compassionate latitude is a term we use a lot. other words, extending compassionate latitude to somebody who, because we really don't know what their day is like. And the thing that upset us is probably something we did ourselves last week or will do next week. So extending compassionate latitude.
Jiani (32:36)
Much to learn.
Rollin (33:00)
And things like patience, these sound like these soft skills are often called, but it's really not. These are such important factors in terms of our being able to maintain our coherence. And if people, especially leaders can start to really understand the importance of these, these, they're really frequencies within our system because they are these various rhythms and how they get us in or out of sync.
It's there the key to, I think, the next generation of successful companies and successful leaders.
Jiani (33:31)
Beautiful. And talking about your magic as we conclude our conversation, what did you enjoy playing and creating so much that time disappeared for you when you were a kid, when you were in your hard coherent state?
Rollin (33:36)
Okay.
⁓ wow. You know, when I was a little kid, I grew up on a farm. And so I hung out with the horses a lot and kind of had a horse for a good friend. And we actually had a very intuitive connection. I could jump on the horse and just think about where I wanted to go and off we would go. But I think I came in to the planet this time around anyway with a sense of adventure and curiosity.
And in fact, my grandfather was the town mechanic. So I hung out in the summer times growing up how to fix cars and tractors and all that at a very, very early age. So I think that sense of adventure is actually still with me, I would say.
Jiani (34:21)
How do you keep that alive? How do you keep that always fresh?
Rollin (34:23)
I
don't know, I guess it's just kind of in there and...
So, that's your how I did it.
Jiani (34:28)
Okay.
Beautiful. Yeah, I think there may be ways to keep that alive. I think some of us are born with it or maybe because you are always in research. So like what you're doing career wise or professional wise is always reinforcing that sense of wonder and adventure.
Rollin (34:44)
Yeah. Well, yeah. And I think
I can say in hindsight, I've always naturally followed my heart. And I mean that literally, not as a metaphor.
Jiani (34:51)
What's your magic overall?
Rollin (34:53)
⁓ well, I would say the magic, especially as I've gotten up there in age now, is really more deeply understanding and have learned that my heart, everybody's heart, but my heart really is that bridge, what we call the energetic heart. We have two hearts, the physical heart and the energetic heart. We are multidimensional beings.
And at the frequency level, the vibrational level, which is clearly part of our undivided wholeness, is where the energetic heart exists. And that's the bridge to your higher magical, your higher magic. I call it your larger self. Because I mean this literally. I don't mean it in a new age or a religious context. Well, yeah, we didn't have time to go into that today. But yes, there is evidence of this very rigorous, hardcore kind of scientific evidence, actually, that
Jiani (35:30)
can be measured. There's evidence.
Rollin (35:40)
that this has to exist. it's really, we might, sure, but it's really, I would say that the answer to your question on my magic, and it really is magical, is learning to follow my heart, because that's what connects us with our deeper intuition and inner guidance system that kind of knows what's best for us and the highest best outcomes. So the more we align with that and follow that, life really does become magical.
Jiani (35:42)
Can we do another conversation on that?
Thank you Dr. Rollin for this magical conversation and I'm already getting intrigued about intuition and higher self and the bigger dimension of our being and I look forward to have another conversation with you on that.
Rollin (36:18)
Well, we can do that sometime. I'd be happy to have another conversation where we go more in that direction.
Jiani (36:21)
That's beautiful.
Yes, yes, yes. I was curious because sometimes societal has this like taboo about like talking about things. And it's because maybe we don't have the technology to measure it and evidence to show that. it'll be a very interesting topic for folks. Thank you, Dr. Rowland, for this conversation. Have a wonderful week.
Rollin (36:39)
Great. Kay, you have a great, in
any one listing, a great rest of your day. Take care.
Jiani (36:44)
Yeah, for
folks who want to connect, his information are on the show note below. So I hope that you get connected and start building magical stories together.
Rollin (36:52)
you
Jiani (36:53)
It's beautiful. Thank you.
Heart Rate Variability (HRV)
To understand coherence, we shall understand Heart Rate Variability (HRV). Unlike your heart rate (total beats per minute), HRV measures the time intervals between each consecutive heartbeat. When we feel "depleting emotions" like fear, frustration, or impatience, our heart rhythm becomes jagged and chaotic. Rollin notes that when plotted, this rhythm "looks like an earthquake graph."
Conversely, when we experience "replenishing emotions" like appreciation, kindness, or gratitude, the rhythm shifts into a completely different pattern—what Rollin describes as "rolling hills, this beautiful sine wave looking pattern."
This shift is critical because the heart rhythm talks directly to the brain’s synchronization center, the thalamus. When your heart rhythm is chaotic, it triggers "cortical inhibition." In this state, the frontal part of the brain—responsible for foresight and self-regulation—is essentially taken offline. "This is why when we’re emotionally upset... you blurt out something that you don't even usually mean," Rollin points out. Coherence, however, facilitates those neural structures, allowing for faster reaction times and clearer, more objective thinking.
Why Your "Vibe" is Literal Physics
Leadership doesn't happen in a vacuum, and neither does coherence. One of Rollin’s most fascinating points is that the electrical voltage of the heart is many times bigger than the brain's, generating a powerful magnetic field. "Emotion doesn't stop at the skin," he says. "We are broadcasting it all the time."
This energetic broadcasting creates a shared social environment. In highly functioning teams, members often exhibit "physiological synchronization," where their heart rhythms naturally align. This requires genuine emotional bonding and psychological safety. Rollin points out that while a team can merely "tolerate" each other and still get work done, they won’t reach that "magical" level of deep team harmony without true, positive connection. A coherent leader acts as a biological anchor, lifting the rest of the team into a state of composure.
Practical Mastery: The 2-Step Coherence Reset
How do we reclaim this state in the middle of a chaotic workday or a metaphorical "traffic jam"? Rollin suggests a simple, two-step process to shift your internal technology:
1. Heart-Focused Breathing
Focus your attention on the area of your heart, in the center of your chest. Imagine your breath is flowing in and out of that area. Breathe a little slower and deeper than usual, finding an equal, comfortable rhythm. Rollin notes that human physiology has a "resonant frequency" at 0.1 Hertz, which translates to a 10-second rhythm. Breathing roughly five seconds on the inhale and five seconds on the exhale modulates the heart's signal, telling the amygdala and brain that the system is safe.
2. Attitude Breathing
As you maintain that breath, "consciously choose to breathe a different feeling." Instead of sitting in the frustration of a challenge, breathe in the feeling of patience, inner calm, or appreciation. By doing this, you take charge of your "emotional diet." Research shows children are naturally coherent, but as Rollin notes, societal pressures often "beat it out of them" through ambition training and anxiety.
Leading from the Energetic Heart
As we navigate our lives and careers, the goal isn't to force our way through obstacles, but to align with what Rollin calls the "energetic heart." He views the heart as a literal bridge to our higher intuition.
"Learning to follow my heart... connects us with our deeper intuition and inner guidance system that kind of knows what's best for us," Rollin shares. For the modern leader, heart coherence is not a soft skill. It is a rigorous, scientific pathway to resilience, better decision-making, and a more connected, harmonious team. In a world characterized by chaos, the most powerful tool for composure is already beating in your chest.
⭐Dr. Rollin & MAGIC
Before pioneering the science of heart coherence, Rollin’s career began in a very different kind of field—working as a communication systems engineer. Today, as a psychophysiologist, a founding Director of Research at the HeartMath Institute, he has invested over three decades applying that foundational knowledge of electromagnetism and signal processing to the human body. Yet, despite a rigorous, data-driven career spanning millions of biofeedback sessions and dozens of peer-reviewed studies, he remains deeply connected to the childlike curiosity and sense of adventure he cultivated growing up on a farm. When asked about his personal "magic," Rollin points directly to the subject of his life's work: learning to follow his heart. He views the heart not just as a physical organ, but as a literal bridge to the "energetic heart" and our multidimensional nature. By tuning into this inner guidance system and trusting its deeper intuition, he believes we can all navigate toward our highest outcomes and experience a life that is truly magical.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rollinmccraty/
HeartMath: https://www.heartmath.org/
Creative Process
Discuss Potential Outlines: Human + ai
Create Initial Drafts & Iterate: Human + ai
Ensure Final Alignment: Dr. Jiani Wu
Initial Publication: April 8, 2026
Disclaimer:
AI technologies are harnessed to create initial content derived from genuine conversations. Human re-creation & review are used to ensure accuracy, relevance & quality.
