Take Charge of Your Life by Cultivating Inner Coherence
Modern life has become a synonym for stress, anxiety, and chronic misalignment with our true nature. Focused on performance, competition, and a struggle to maximize time, we lose balance, tense our bodies and minds, suffer from unfulfilling relationships, and neglect our inner life. Exposed to continuous stressors, we often feel distracted, confused, or disturbed.
Despite dedicating time to physical activity and spiritual practices such as prayer, chanting, or meditation, many people find it difficult to overcome the challenges of everyday life. Lack of knowledge, limited beliefs, and rigid social conditioning bind us in a net of survival-based emotions such as fear, sadness, anger, disgust, and shame. Yet if we recognize our inner intelligence and the fact that we are in control of our life situations, we can gain clarity, confidence, and power to take charge of our lives.
Coherence at the Confluence of Science and Spirituality
Since ancient times, mystics, healers, and thinkers have revealed principles, methods, and practices which create a state of coherence in both individuals and groups. Tradition has shown that coherence is a multifaceted state, achieved at the levels of body, mind, and soul. For example, through the techniques of concentration, meditation, and yoga, generations of spiritual adepts have reached a state of coherence in which “breathing is no longer arhythmic, thought is no longer dispersed, the circulation of psycho-mental forces is no longer anarchic.[1] In coherence, life becomes harmonious in all its aspects. The individual finds physical, mental, emotional, financial, social, and spiritual fulfillment.
Through rigorous scientific methodology, many experts now confirm that practices such as mindfulness, meditation, breathwork, and other systems of traditional knowledge can lead to sustained states of physiological coherence. Such claims once belonged exclusively to the domain of spirituality, while effective practices were available only to initiates of secret schools and systems. In this day and age, however, a growing body of science-backed tools and methods for personal development is available to all who possess enough will and determination to create a better version of themselves.
Today, more than ever before in human history, it is easy to gain access to the “coherence toolbox”—a large repository of information, knowledge, and methods for inner transformation. Coherent living has become a way to reconcile the demands of the fast-paced modern life with our innate drive to find purpose and meaning. There is a growing body of science-based evidence that coherence is a skill that can be learned and cultivated like any other. Science is now showing eagerness toward the exploration of techniques that induce states of coherence.
Change Your Energy to Change Your Life—A Science-Based Formula
Dr. Joe Dispenza — an internationally renowned author, speaker, and researcher in the areas of neuroscience, epigenetics, and quantum science—says that the only way to change our life is by changing our energy. And to change our energy, we need to begin by creating heart and brain coherence.
Although people used to associate inner transformation with the path of asceticism and seclusion, times have changed, believes Dr. Dispenza. There is a great paradigm shift in the way people perceive and approach personal development today. People no longer have to choose between living in the world (materiality) and working on inner transformation (spirituality):
“Old models and paradigms are breaking down. (…) People are beginning to realize that you do not have to be a Buddhist monk to do this or a nun with 40 years of devotion — you just have to understand the formula. There is a formula to create greater brain coherence, and greater brain efficiency, to make your brain work better. And when your brain works better, you work better. It requires a clear intention and an elevated emotion to begin to change our energy and change our life.[2]
Harmonizing the Heart and the Brain into a Single Potent System
Gregg Braden — an author, speaker, and pioneer in bridging science and spirituality — says that we possess an astonishing ability to harmonize our brains and our hearts into a single potent system that self-regulates our biology. When we establish a heart-brain coherence, not only our physical health improves, but we also tap into “powerful states of super-memory, super-cognition, super-recall, intuition on demand and synchronicities.”
Braden, too, reminds us that the methods for achieving coherence have existed for thousands of years; yet it is only today that these methods have come to the forefront of rigorous scientific research. He explains: “Our ancestors, indigenous traditions, monks, shamans, healers, mystics, yogis have all had techniques leading to the harmonization of the heart and the brain. Science did not take it seriously. Now these techniques are being validated in laboratories—focused awareness, regulation of the breath, and the ability to create emotion.[3]
Empower Yourself — The Laser-Like Power of Coherent Energy
Dr. Bruce H. Lipton — an acclaimed developmental biologist, author, and lecturer — gives a strikingly simple definition of coherence: “Coherence means that it is all lined up together; incoherence is when the energies are dissipated.” He further uses the commonly cited laser-beam analogy:
"If you take a 10W light bulb and turn it on, you are going to get a glow, but you can barely read a book under it. But if you take those photons, and instead of dispersing them randomly you make them coherent, streaming down in a narrow beam, a 10W in a laser will burn a hole in your wall.” The laser analogy makes it evident that achieving a lasting state of oneness or coherence should be everyone’s goal. Coherence is not only a solution to the problems that trouble us. Coherence is a way of aligning and focusing all our energy and resources. That way, suddenly, our performance in all areas of life gets dramatically amplified.
Dr. Lipton explains how empowering coherent energy can be: “If my energy is not organized, it is like a 10W light bulb; I am hardly lighting up anything with it. But if I learn how to cause a flow of energy in the body, the more I practice, the more my energy becomes coherent. If you can mobilize this energy and make it coherent, you become super-powerful. This is where all the Asian martial arts come from — being able to focus the energy and use it. Healers can focus and direct their energy (chi) from their hands, into another body, and heal in that way. Coherence exercises enhance your power. You can start to control the flow of energy and take it from an incoherent state (which has little power) to a stream of energy (which is very powerful). You empower yourself by controlling your energy.[4]
Meditation helps us channel our energies in a more focused — coherent — way, like the laser beam of light. This helps us overcome the state of disorganization, disorientation, and confusion. As a result, we begin to do things more productively and more creatively than ever before.
Sources
Mircea Eliade, “Cosmical Homologyand Yoga”.Indian Society of OrientalArt, 1937
Dr. Joe Dispenza, “Brain and Heart Coherence” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znOZ-peRiY0)
Adapted from Gregg Braden, “Heart Brain - Coherence, GlobalAwakening & Evolution of Consciousness”
Adapted from Dr. Bruce H. Lipton, “The Difference Between Coherence and-Coherence”