**8. HeartMath Global Healthcare Meditation**

As concerns in-depth personal healthcare, the Heart Lock-In is one of the earliest HeartMath techniques developed. In a recently published study, 104 participants from five countries completed 15 days of ambulatory HRV monitoring. Analysis of participants HRV before, during, and after a Heart Lock-In meditation period indicated significantly increased coherence, as well as correlation with magnetic field activity on the day of the meditation [45].

This study may be regarded as cutting-edge quantitative scientific evidence for the claims of many earlier mass meditation studies to decrease violence and facilitate moral consciousness and behaviour, creativity, and health promotion [46]. From a qualitative perspective, an in-depth coherence experience has been described as follows [9,47]:

"Beyond the unique nature of each event, with their individual integrity and superficial differences, the essential structure of the coherence experience initially appears as some variation on the conscious practise of the cardiorespiratory, rhythmic process of breath connecting heart beats, warming and softening the heart, heralding a sense of stillness, alignment, harmony and peace, as scattered energy is felt to collect in the heart area, bringing deepening heart awareness and, typically, at some point a sense of "lift off" to unlimited self or space. This gathering energy seems to be distributed throughout the body and beyond, resonating with increasing subtlety and/or refinement into a higher, vibrational level typically experienced as love, accompanied by finer feelings of centeredness, wholeness, oneness and interconnectedness. Unique, individual experiences vary. They may be concrete, abstract, diffuse, definite, ordinary, mixed, mystical and/or paradoxical, of, for example, homecoming, unboundedness, spaciousness, timelessness, emptiness, freedom, happiness, bliss, joy and infinite creativity. Experiences typically have local, social or global action implications, insights, intuitions and moral directions, as, for example, for "making the world a better place" through writing, healing and teaching".

From this qualitative experiential perspective, it is instructive to note the great wisdom traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam view the heart as the principal organ of spiritual perception. The great healing value of the Prayer of the Heart is commonly extolled by Christian and Sufi mystics [23,48]. HeartMath technology has also recently indicated highly significant increases in both coherence and achievement in the use of a similar heart-based method called Arka Dhyana, or Intuitive Meditation. Authors postulate that the HeartMath Coherence Model cast new light on the ancient Yogic idea of yoking in relation to embodied spirituality, both with regard to integration of the diverse bodily energies in immanent spirituality and holistic divine heart-based transcendence.
