Head or Heart or Twins
5000 years of recorded history have remained divided between the heart and the brain: which is the center of intelligence?
Look in thy heart, and write,’ Sir Philip Sidney’s muse commanded him, chiding him for a ‘Fool’ for not thinking of doing this in the first place – and ‘heart’ in Sidney’s time was pretty much synonymous with ‘mind’ in this sense.
Later we have Wordsworth-
My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.
Throughout much of recorded history, human beings have understood that intelligence, the ability to learn, understand, reason and apply knowledge to shape their environment, was a function of the brain in the head.
There also is ample evidence in the writings and oral traditions societies passed down through the generations that they strongly believed in an intelligent heart.
Cardiocentrism was first derived from the Egyptian belief that heart was the house of thought and soul. This idea was later accepted by Aristotle who found that certain primitive animals could move and feel without the brain, and so deduced that the brain was not responsible for movement or feeling. Apart from that, he pointed out that the brain was at the top of the body, far from the centre of the body, and felt cold.
However, Pythagoras held an opposing theory called "cephalocentrism", which proposed that that the brain played the dominant role in controlling the body. Plato, Hippocrates and Galen held this view.
After English physician William Harvey wrote his On the Circulation of the Blood (1628) a viable alternative to Galenic physiology became widely accepted.
Harvey supported the Aristotelian notion of the heart. He wrote in 1653: "The heart is situated at the 4th and 5th ribs. Therefore [it is] the principal part because [it is in] the principal place, as in the center of a circle, the middle of the necessary body." He examined carefully the function of all of its different parts and came to a reverse conclusion of Galen and his medieval and Renaissance readers: he believed that the heart was actively at work when it was small, hard and contracted (systole), expelling blood, and at rest when it was large and filled with blood (diastole). In 1628, he wrote: "[T]he heart's one role is the transmission of the blood and its propulsion,, by means of the arteries, to the extremities everywhere." Harvey firmly dismissed the idea of a porous septum.
Yet he did not challenge the metaphysical intepretation of the heart. The heart, as Master Nicolaus had aptly observed in the late twelfth century, was the primary "spiritual member" of the body. As such, it was the seat of all emotions. "If indeed from the heart alone rise anger or passion, fear, terror, and sadness; if from it alone spring shame, delight, and joy, why should I say more?" wrote Andreas de Laguna in 1535. Harvey metaphorically described the heart as the "king" or "sun" of the body to underscores its cosmological importance.
https://www.heartmath.org/articles-of-the-heart/the-math-of-heartmath/heart-intelligence/
Research into the idea of heart intelligence began accelerating in the second half of the 20th century. During the 1960s and ’70s pioneer physiologists John and Beatrice Lacey conducted research that showed the heart actually communicates with the brain in ways that greatly affect how we perceive and react to the world around us. In 1991, the year the HeartMath Institute was established, pioneer neurocardiologist Dr. J. Andrew Armour introduced the term “heart brain.” He said the heart possessed a complex and intrinsic nervous system that is a brain.
Today, more than a half century after the Laceys began their research, we know a great deal more about the heart:
The heart sends us emotional and intuitive signals to help govern our lives.
The heart directs and aligns many systems in the body so that they can function in harmony with one another.
The heart is in constant communication with the brain. The heart’s intrinsic brain and nervous system relay information back to the brain in the cranium, creating a two-way communication system between heart and brain.
The heart makes many of its own decisions.
The heart starts beating in the unborn fetus before the brain has been formed, a process scientists call autorhythmic.
Humans form an emotional brain long before a rational one, and a beating heart before either.
The heart has its own independent complex nervous system known as “the brain in the heart.”
https://owlcation.com/stem/your-second-brain-is-in-your-heart
Amazing new discoveries have revealed that the heart organ is intelligent. Sometimes our heart can lead the brain both in our interpretation of the external world as well as the actions we choose to take. A large number of case studies was enough to prompt scientists to examine the heart with a different lens. They began by testing old theories that claim that the heart is involved in our feelings, emotions, and premonitions.
Since cardiac surgeon, Christian Barnard's first successful human heart transplant in South Africa in 1967, heart transplant recipients have had some intriguing experiences. Some of these events were so strange that recipients sought to meet the families of their donors to find out what was happening to them.
The question was: Could the patients have inherited certain behavioral and character traits through cellular memories from the heart of their donors? The following anecdotes are only a few of the many cases reported as evidence of something extraordinary happening to heart transplant recipients:
A gentle, soft-spoken woman who never drank alcohol and hated football received a heart from a crashed biker donor and turned into an aggressive, beer-drinking football fan.
A 47-year-old Caucasian male received a heart from a 17-year-old African American male. The recipient was surprised by his newfound love of classical music. What he discovered later was that the donor, who loved classical music and played the violin, had died in a drive-by shooting, clutching his violin case to his chest. A man who could barely write suddenly developed a talent for poetry.
An eight-year-old girl who received the heart of a ten-year-old murdered girl had horrifying nightmares of a man murdering her donor. The dreams were so traumatic that psychiatric help was sought. The girl’s images were so specific that the psychiatrist and the mother notified the police. Using the most detailed and horrid descriptive memories provided by the little girl, the police gathered enough evidence to find the murderer, charge him, and get a conviction for rape and first-degree murder.
https://ko-fi.com/thejournaloflingeringsanity
Spirits in the Material World: Healing & Transformation through Consciousness
https://open.spotify.com/episode/5S8GbmI8lsQAm1GN2g5ZIz
The materialistic view flies in the face of so-called primitive ways of understanding our physical bodies, and the material realms in general, as merely bio-spiritual epiphenomena created and sustained by spiritual energy.
aktually, Prof S, it's Triplets, as the Eastern sages have known for 5k years... ' Chinese medicine and Ayurveda have understood the importance of digestive health all along. Chinese medicine stresses the importance of preserving stomach-Qi as the most important treatment method, and Ayurveda, the ancient Indian healing system, believes that undigested and partially digested food lingers in the body, leading to the formation of “ama”, or toxins which cause disease in the body and mind.'
'Your Gut is Your Second Brain by Dr. Mercola
Your gastrointestinal tract is now considered one of the most complex microbial ecosystems on earth, and its influence is such that it’s frequently referred to as your “second brain.”
Nearly 100 trillion bacteria, fungi, viruses and other microorganisms compose your gut microbiome, and advancing science has made it quite clear that these organisms play a major role in your health, both mental and physical. Your body is in fact composed of more bacteria and other microorganisms than actual cells, and you have more bacterial DNA than human DNA....
Your upper brain is home to your central nervous system while your gut houses the enteric nervous system. The two nervous systems, the central nervous system in your brain and the enteric nervous system in your gut, are in constant communication, connected as they are via the vagus nerve.
Your vagal nerve is the 10th cranial nerve and the longest nerve in your body, extending through your neck into your abdomen.3 It has the widest distribution of both sensory and motor fibers.
Your brain and gut also use the same neurotransmitters for communication, one of which is serotonin — a neurochemical associated with mood control. However, the message sent by serotonin changes based on the context of its environment.
In your brain, serotonin signals and produces a state of well-being. In your gut — where 95 percent of your serotonin is produced — it sets the pace for digestive transit and acts as an immune system regulator.
Interestingly, gut serotonin not only acts on the digestive tract but is also released into your bloodstream, and acts on your brain, particularly your hypothalamus, which is involved in the regulation of emotions.
While we’ve known that the gut and brain communicate via the vagus nerve, researchers have only recently come to realize that gut serotonin regulates emotions in a much more complex way than previously thought. Not only can your emotions influence your gut, but the reverse is also true.
When Things Go Wrong in the Gut-Brain Axis [...]
wakingtimes.com /your-gut-is-your-second-brain/