An Interview with Howard Martin, Spokesperson for the  Global Coherence Initiative

For thousands of years people have been actively pursuing individual meditations, prayers, affirmations and intentions. Now, thanks to the internet and a new science-based project called the Global Coherence Initiative (GCI) we are truly entering a new energetic and consciousness frontier.A frontier where thousands of individuals can join together and send heart-centered energy to various parts of the world in distress. An exciting time in the world’s history where we are on the brink of measuring such studies with remote sensors and scientific equipment that reads changes in the ionosphere. Howard Martin is one of the lead spokespersons for the GCI. I had a chance to catch up with him and discuss the GCI project and the amazing complexity and brilliance of the human heart.

Tonja: Howard thanks so much for doing the interview. Let’s just jump right in, why is the Global Coherence Initiative so important right now?

Howard: Well I think the Global Coherence Initiative (GCI) is important because you have lots of people around the world, thousands and even millions of people who are making contributions through their prayers, their affirmations, their meditations and their intentions all desiring to see positive change occur in the world. Those efforts are important and one of the things that GCI can help with is the fact that we can provide a neutral place where regardless of the meditation or prayer you do, or wherever you are in the world, you can become part of something and participate with others in a meaningful way. The other reason it is important is because of the science we are adding. We’ll start experiments on intentionality and living systems. These include things like changes in plant growth and changes in water, changes in bacterial growth. All these experiments are helping to build the story. We are hoping to galvanize the membership of GCI and provide training of how we work as a group. Where the science is going is our attempt to measure change in the ionosphere.

Tonja: How would you explain the ionosphere and its importance to the GCI?

Howard: The ionosphere is a group of plasma like frequencies that operate above the atmosphere and out in space. It is a protective layer around the earth. Our hypothesis is that if people are feeling something, actually large groups of people are feeling something, then that emotional energetic output can possibly be detected in the ionosphere. It is well know that the ionosphere does have an impact on humans. When changes occur in the ionosphere changes can occur in health, there are correlations to traffic accidents, heart attacks, and so forth.

The purpose in looking for those changes is to prove, maybe for the first time ever, that our thoughts, feeling and intentions actually have a measurable impact on the planet itself. If we can do that it would be revolutionary. I think adding substance to the meditations we have been doing for thousands of years would be a monumental achievement. Right now with all the worlds needs, everyone is needing to pitch in to the shift that is going on. We are trying to make a better world quickly, to outrun some of the problems that are mounting. GCI is just one of many caring initiatives. It’s not the only one and we respect all the others, we are just trying to do our part.

Tonja: Well we at ISYS Worldwide certainly appreciate all the GCI is doing to make the world as better place. Can you talk about why your organization Hearth Math is behind this project?

Howard: Well the Heart Math system is a system comprised of some tools, techniques and technology. We’ve been descr ibed as being extremely innovative and have introduced a new understanding of physiology and psychology. Our research is heart centric. We are showing that the heart is more than a blood pump. The heart influences how we think and how we feel. The emotions associated with the heart like care, appreciation, love are more than nice things. They have a dramatic impact on our health, our performance and our relationships. So the system is packaged in training programs, books, cds, certifications and the emWave technology which make up how its delivered. It is really designed to be empowering heart based living so people can achieve greater levels of health, success and fulfillment.

Tonja: That’s an interesting name for the company- Hearth Math.

Howard: Yes, part of the reason math is even associated with heart is that we always thought these things to ourselves long before we developed the companies. We knew the heart had been around a long time and had been tried by plenty but by the 20th and 21st century the tools of science were essential because science gave proof that allows people to believe in some things they already wanted to believe in.

Tonja: And so what’s the connection. How does understanding the science or the math help us in understanding the heart?

Howard: Well through our research and the research of others there is psycho- physiological state called coherence. Coherence is a very ordered state and at the biological level all your parts are working together. You have synchronization in your heart rhythms, in the autonomic nervous system, triggering synchronization with hormonal releases, and effecting brain function. This is also a state that accompanies positive emotions and allows you to stay there. We’ve done a lot of research on making it practical. Much of our research is in scientific journals and we’ve built up a large amount of research around this coherence.

We’ve trained people for years around that both collectively and individually. We’ve taught it to large health care institutions, fortune 100 companies where we are helping them deal with things like stress and employee turnover or improving certain key performance indicators. Now we understand the individual coherence, and that is like focused power where you can get more done with less time. We understand it collectively through the organizational work. What we believe now is that when you add this coherence state to a prayer, or affirmation or meditation what it does is add an effectiveness to the potency of that. It increase the amplitude and you get more done with that prayer. It’s really cool because it is neutral, it is not impinging on anything. You can add coherence into your prayer or meditation and someone could be doing an eastern meditation and someone else is praying to God and when you get in that coherence state when you do it, we see that as an add on to what they do. We think this is key in this whole process of conscious intention to affect consciousness to change the world. By adding coherence, we are in essence increasing our effectiveness.

Tonja: As part of the GCI, you also have some pretty cool technology tools. What is the emWave and hoes does it help us identify things like fear, anger, stress?

Howard: We've learned through research that changes in emotions can be measured by looking at heart rhythms. Heart rhythms are not just your heart rate, you heart is changing speed all the time depending on what you are thinking and what you are doing and feeling. These subtle variations create a rhythm and we can look at the heart rhythms and see how coherent or incoherent they are. So the heart is driving coherence within the body and is the master rhythm maker. As the heart goes, so does the rest of this synchronization process. If the heart rhythms are very chaotic and di sordered it is low coherence. When they become ordered and sign wave like, that is when you see coherence inside the body. So the emWave technology was developed to look at heart rhythms and show people their heart rhythms and then use an algorithm our scientists created to score those heart rhythms for the degree of coherence. This is a training tool which allows you to train yourself on how to increase coherence.

You’ll learn to become more coherence, more often and much quicker. So when you are feeling angry, frustration or any of these emotions you can learn to rebound. The emWave helps you move out of those emotions that are not in your best interest and into ones that are. This technology can help you do that. When you do this with some consistency over time, it actually begins to reprogram the neuro-circuits in the brain. This becomes an easier way back whether you are using an emWave or not. We are quick to anger and build the neuronets the other way, that is well worn neuro circuitry, but you can change that neuro circuitry and self generating coherence does begin to open up new path ways that make it easier to get out of all the anger, frustration or fear. What we’ve found is that you can reprogram the brain, not with the brain, but with the heart.

Tonja: And I understand there are some real world applications being used with the emWave in various occupations.

Howard: Yes, there are surgeons using the emWave prior to doing surgery and a number of applications. A recent study we just completed involved a company who was looking at pharmacists and fulfilling a prescription with the wrong medication. They did a study with about 70 of these people who were using the emWave and compared it to the rest of the pharmacists within the chain. They saw that the emWave pharmacists had significantly lower errors and they decided to train another 200 pharmacists to use the technology. That’s the kind of mental benefit you get from these tools.

Tonja: Howard you mentioned earlier that doing heart centered exercises can actually change hormonal imbalances, in what way?

Howard: For the most part people experience life through the reactive patterns that they go through and have changes in hormones such as adrenaline or cortisol sometimes referred to as the stress hormone. Every hormone has its place and they are all there for a reason but excess amounts or imbalances can create a host of other health problems. There are many disease states for example that link to high cortisol levels which can create problems like degeneration of cells, excess weig ht built up around the hips and waist and other diseases.

Tonja: So an incoherent heart pattern may be producing excess adrenaline or cortisol. What happens when the heart is in a coherent state?

Howard: When you learn to operate more in the coherence state, it begins to trigger other types of hormones in the body. DHEA is considered the vitality hormone or anti-aging hormone. We’ve done studies showing big increases in DHEA levels by people practicing Heart Math techniques. One test study we did with 28 people, 14 women and 14 men and we took readings on the DHEA/Cortisol balance. There needs to be a balance between these two hormones and when the body is producing more cortisol then less DHEA gets produced and so forth. We saw a 23% reduction in cortisol levels in those that used the heart math techniques and we saw a 100% increase in DHEA levels. These studies were replicated in the United Kingdom with similar results.

Tonja: That is impressive. I was recently on the GCI website and I saw this wonderful quote, it said –and I’m paraphrasing here - it makes no difference if your anger, fear, frustration etc is justified, the emotion will impact your body the same. That was helpful for me because I think some of us tend to justify our negative emotional states for a longer period of time and say “Well I have a right to be angry about this particular issue—it’s justified.” Can you speak more about the actual physical reaction to the body.

Howard: Yes, it’s widely known that emotional states create physical reactions. If you get frightened or mad your body is going to start pumping out excess adrenaline or cortisol. In my book The Heart Math Solution I call it the morality of stress. You may have a right to get angry, but your body is still paying the price. To me one of the biggest benefits of being a member of the GCI is that you’ll get access to the latest information and coherence applications so you’ll see your own life begin to change. There are many Heart Math techniques like the notice and ease technique and heart soak. We’ll be adding techniques as we go. We are making it simple now, notice and ease is a technique on the site now because it’s easy to do.

Tonja: Yes, tell us a little bit more about that. What is the notice and ease technique?

Howard: Well it’s a technique where you want to notice what you are actually feeling. What is interesting about emotions is that its so natural and normal that most of our emotions go unnoticed. My feeling is that we have the conscious and the subconscious to me there is something in between which I call the subtly conscious. Which means if your were to stop just a second and slow down, you would understand what you are feeling but most of us don’t because the race of life is going on. We have this river of emotion that is running underneath our general awareness all the time that goes relatively unnoticed but its influencing everything. It’s influencing your perceptions, the quality of your day, your earnings, and all the stuff that is being driven off an emotional platform that most people are unaware of. To really take full advantage of our emotional capacity, is to just stop and notice is the first step. And then when you feel emotions like frustration or anger or fear, and you recognize you don ’t want to feel that way so the thing you do is focus on the area of the heart and breath in and out and ease those emotions out of your system. What you are really doing is taking down the emotional charge of the negative event and its an easy does it process and a way to reprogram into something that feels better.

Tonja: Now in addition to suggesting exercises like you just discussed, The GCI has been sending out recent emails about the economy and the hurricane. What do you see the individual members role being?

Howard: What we say to members is that we’d like you to be on call, there is always a crisis in the world of some kind. Even if its just five minutes a day to add that to their intention. Where it gets a little tricky is that there are so many areas of the world to focus on and we can’t focus on them all. What we may end up doing is find other sites that list out some of the natural disasters and socially injustice. We are going to encourage people to pick those sites themselves. I believe that all of the energy goes in a pool of energy that is then used at the right time for the right situation, the energy is never wasted. You may have noticed that when we sent the e-mail message to send heart coherence to the people affected by the hurricane we did not say stop the hurricane, we said make it easier for them during this time. There is suffering with fear and loss and so all we are asking from our GCI members is let’s make that easier. So our focus was really on the people and what they are experiencing inside themselves.

Tonja: As a GCI Member I got that email you sent about the hurricanes and what it did for me personally was break the obsessing thoughts I was having which at that time I think was fear based thinking about the US economy. I thought okay, the markets are down --but these people are fearing for their life. It felt good to know I can do something, I can send coherence – right now.

Howard: I’m sure we are going to see ma ny forms of transformation for people. I believe people participating in the GCI will not only be helping the world, they will find personal benefits. Like you said, you can stop for five minutes and take the worry out of your day.

Tonja: The GCI has set a goal to raise 2 million dollars for the Global Coherence Monitoring System(GCMS). What is the GCMS?

Howard: Yes, we want to raise a few million dollars and we’ll do it in steps and stages. The GCMS is a technology that can measure changes in the various frequency ranges that make up the ionosphere. This technology can take the frequencies and see them. We have sensors now, we actually call them sensor sites and we have a working one now which sends very reliable data back from the ionosphere. The ionosphere and ionospheric research are nothing trivial and its very complicated. We are in partnership with other researchers and we are learning and observing what the data means. The next step is to add two more sensor sites and create all the software and hardware technology that will allow three sensors to all input data. We’d like to take the data from all three and collate it into a picture. Right now we need only $100,000 for that technology to be implemented. Then the testing really goes to another level. Once we have mastered replication then it becomes easier to have a scaleable model. We’d like to get 50 sensor sites within the next 3 years and we can get a rather complete picture of the ionosphere. This is something we are taking on as a private organization. We’ve funded over $200,000 ourselves and we are looking for help whether it is donations or sponsorships. To me $100,000 is not that much money considering what can be accomplished.

Tonja: Who are some of the people involved at the executive level of the GCI?

Howard: We have a great advisory board and people involved in social consciousness, we have a representative from the Institute of Noetic Sciences, we have people like Jack Canfield, Gregg Braden, James Ray, Lynn Twist, we just added Nina Utteny who is iconic in the field of social entrepreneurs. We say we have to run this like a business. Other involved include Dr. Roger Nelson who recently retired from Princeton who worked with random number generators. We also have all the Heart Math people.

Tonja:  For people just hearing about the GCI who want to get involved, what’s their next step?

Howard: The simple next step is to go to glcoherence.org and register to be a member. Registration is free, they can make donations directly at the site, they will be able to participate in the group activities. Through their members page they can access things like downloads of interviews, review techniques and access the person community tracker so people can track their own coherence. We are inviting people in to be early adopters. By the end of this year, we’d like to have 50,000 members. We believe the numbers are not as important as having a group respond to the emails and act as a coherent group.

Tonja: Sounds great Howard. I’m sure many of our Inner Vision Magazine readers will be checking out the website and we thank you for all the wonderful research you and the entire team is doing. It’s going to be a fun project to follow.

Howard: Thank you Tonja.