Intuitive Mentor Mom: Strategies for Life Empowerment, Self Love and Gratitude for Single Moms

22: Harmonizing Heart-Brain Coherence for a Life you Love

• Tara Mychelle • Episode 22

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This episode explores how nurturing our hearts impacts our mental landscapes and overall well-being, likening the mind to a beautiful garden needing love and attention. We discuss personal breakthroughs, the heart-brain connection, and practical steps for cultivating self-love and emotional healing.

• The concept of the brain as a botanical garden 
• Heart-brain coherence and its significance 
• Personal journey of self-discovery and insights 
• Importance of recognizing emotional triggers 
• Practical approaches to nurturing self-love 
• Reflecting on Valentine's Day as a time for self-care 
• Committing to cultivating one’s internal garden 

Where you can find HeartMath Institute


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Speaker 1:

This is a Valentine's weekend episode, but not in the way you might think. Are you in love with you when you look in the mirror? Do you love all that you see? How about your life? Do you love all that is about your life? What if I said your brain is a garden and outside the world, outside of you, reflects how well you tend to that garden. Within your mind, as in the mind, is a beautiful garden and tapestry of our thoughts. Just consider this concept, just consider it. If your brain I mean your garden needs some tending to, you need to hear this episode.

Speaker 1:

Welcome back to the Intuitive Mentor Mom Podcast, where we explore strategies for growing confidence, empowerment and gaining clarity for midlife moms. When life is happening for you and not to you, you can be living the life of freedom, fun and bliss. I'm your host, tara, michelle. Let's get to it. Today we're going to talk about your mind, or your brain, as this beautiful garden. So right after Christmas, I had a huge breakthrough around a need, a need that I was unaware I had. I was also unaware of how to communicate my need for this need, which is possibly a story for another episode. However, it's what brought me to this whole concept for myself and I wanted to share it with you. So, in a number of many conversations of processing this incident with one of my best friends, I came to this aha and was given a beautiful download by Spirit and I wanted to share it with you because it really has shifted my perspective and how I begin to look at my life, especially after doing the completion work that I did, you know, at the end of 2024 and ramping into 2025. It was a download of our brain being a wild, lush, gorgeous botanical garden and that our lives in our outside world were simply this reflection, like a function, of the beauty and the purity of this garden and how well we tended to that garden.

Speaker 1:

And when the download came, it was, you know, I don't know how else to describe it. It's almost like it's a bloom of color and visuals that come from the top of my brain into my third eye, like into my mind's eye. That's what I can. It's like a bloom, it's like a, and that's why I call it a download, because it literally comes in like this bloom of images and it's often very vivid and vibrant, often very vivid and vibrant, and so when I got this download, I could see the inside of our cranium, so the cranium being a giant container for the brain. Okay, and the cranium is made of lead glass windows. Think about like a botanical garden or a greenhouse, right, but it's lead pane, lead glass windows, like these little boxes with the lead in between, you know, and when you're sitting inside, you're looking out to this starry, crystal clear, deep blue sky outside crystal clear, deep blue sky outside. Yet inside the cranium was these lush plants of deep greens, golds, blues, hues of red. There were funds and palms, and they were all around.

Speaker 1:

And as I continued to see the image of this garden, I noticed that some areas of this garden within my mind were lacking love, seeming wilted and a little bit dried up. Okay, now, these parts of the garden that I was seeing actually reflected parts of my life around me that I'd either been ignoring or stuffing down with outside distractions, and that was something I really came to as like. A revelation at the end of last year was wow, I have this giant distraction. It was called online dating and it was really distracting a lot of things that I needed to look at for myself, and this distraction was because there was a fear for myself. I didn't want to feel the feelings that would surface in my heart if I began to look at these areas that I was neglecting. So, keyword here being heart, okay. So put a pin in that, because we're gonna come back to that, because I knew that if I tended to these parts of my brain right, the mind thoughts there was going to be emotions that I would have to now feel through and most likely not enjoy the way they felt. So there was that, excuse me, and there were parts of the mind, like inside my brain, in this garden, that I could see that really needed some love and attention and some nourishing.

Speaker 1:

So this had me start to really think, because you know those of you that are gardeners, any of you gardeners out there who are my ladies that are gardeners and men, hey, shout out. It takes something, as you know, to have a gorgeous, lush botanical garden. It takes something to have a gorgeous, lush veggie garden, you know, one that really produces food or flowers. It literally takes time and attention every day to have a gorgeous, well-nourished and loved garden that reflects the fruits of your labor. So then that got me thinking well, what would it take to create that in my brain, such that my outer world is this pure reflection of the cultivating and the love and the nourishing that I'm putting into my brain and I keep seeing it, like this garden, you know, like the big, massive gardens that you see in the middle of, like you know, I don't know. You know San Francisco, golden Gate Park. You know Botanical Gardens in Central Park, kew Gardens in London, England, although I've never been inside Kew Gardens, although I've seen images and it looks amazing, looks amazing, right, and I'm going to put that on my bucket list, by the way.

Speaker 1:

So there's also the saying of you are what you eat, and this saying is not limited to you are what you breathe, you are what you listen to, you are who you hang around and you are what you watch. Your brain is this data system that literally absorbs everything it hears, sees, smells. Everything it hears, sees, smells, tastes, listens to, all of that information gets populated up into there. And you know there's this saying about I think they've scientifically proven that the brain does not know the difference between what is real and what is not real. Brain does not know the difference between what is real and what is not real. Therefore, everything that goes into it it's computing, as this is real, okay. So, as I sat with this, it also inspired me to create my 2025 collage, and I referenced that in episode 18 and 19.

Speaker 1:

I talk about, you know, the things that I like to do, where I complete and close the year out and then I'll create a new year, but one of the things I love to do every year is do a collage. So this year and I love it, it's beautiful, by the way I chose to create a giant, massive botanical garden on my collage, evoking a mood and a feeling and being more of a metaphoric state for myself, and being more of a metaphoric state type of collage rather than images of things that I wanted. Right, usually, I'll put things that I want and things that represent the things that I want and and this year I chose to pull things that really spoke a beautiful garden, lush windows you know the types of windows of how I saw the cranium doors opening into different parts of the mind. There was even this corner. On the corner is like a door opens into this beautiful bedroom, because, as I saw it, I was like, oh, you know, this is where I go to retreat for rest.

Speaker 1:

And then I found which was amazing. I found this image of a beautiful garden with, like, there was a couch and chairs, but the couch and the chairs are made of what also looked like it was coming up out of the garden floor right, and then there was this beautiful lamp hanging coming out of the garden, like coming through the top, and it's very lush and beautiful. And I was like, oh, that's the image of where my guides and my higher being and or my higher power and God, like, come and they convene when I, when I'm dreaming, we're convening in this place, in the, in the lush garden. You know, this is where this is where things start to happen. And here's what I will say. My dreams have been off the chart lately this year, and I would imagine all of you, because we're just going through some massive energy shifts and energy changes. But it's been amazing because when I created that collage, I really said to myself every time I look at this, it's going to remind me of am I tending to that garden and am I pouring love into that garden? Because if I am, my world is going to begin to reflect that. Who I see in the mirror will reflect that. What I see in the world will reflect that. My situations and circumstances will begin to reflect that.

Speaker 1:

Now one might think how is this related to Valentine's Day's day, tara? Because a lot of times with valentine's day, people get depressed. There's such a focus on partnership, partnership, partnership, romance, romance, love. And why I want to bring this up is because, hey, I'm single this valentine's day and it's been beautiful, I spent it with my son, but I wanted to talk about this because I'm also spending it with myself. Like, how do I love myself? Like there's nothing to be depressed about. You know, life is good, Life is great, and what are we doing to cultivate that garden within, to make it greater?

Speaker 1:

Okay, so fast forward, a few weeks later, having yet another conversation with this best friend of mine, who I just love her because we get together and we'll have these little powwows and all these really cool insights will come up. But I was processing more thoughts around my journey of romantic love, okay, and seeing the distractions, seeing where I was missing things for myself and not paying attention to these aspects of myself. But it was in that moment, as I was talking to her, I started talking about, you know, cultivating this mind garden, this brain garden, and then started recognizing oh, oh, but wait, I also know that the brain is connected to the heart. Like there's a heart brain coherence conversation going on and then it dawned on me I was like, omg, the bulb, the root of my garden is my heart. So let's talk about heart brain coherence really quick, okay? Back in 2014, I was actually introduced to heart-brain coherence through a company called HeartMath Institute, which many of you listening may have heard of them. If you have not, I highly recommend you go check them out. Heartmath Institute.

Speaker 1:

I was living in Santa Cruz, california, at the time, and they literally were down the street. They were down the street in the well, it doesn't matter, they were in the Santa Cruz mountains. I'm trying to, I'm trying to remember. It's Scott's Valley, so they were in Scott's Valley and or maybe it was Ben Lomond, I don't know, but they're. They're up there. They're up there in the woods, and we were living in the woods up there. So I used one of their products the first products that had come out and I have to say it was really awesome, because I did experience this euphoric state of peacefulness and less stress in my life. Now I'm going to admit that I have not stayed rigorous with that, but I do still practice heart-brain coherence, just a little differently. But I actually want to get back to some of the things that they do because it's awesome.

Speaker 1:

So let's talk about some facts about the brain and the heart. I'm going to drop this in as well. So do you know that the heart and the brain, which are two organs, those two organs support the neural network within the body. Okay, so your neural network of nerves. They control that, the heart and the brain. Yes, there's also connection to the gut, but we're not going to get into the gut today. To the gut, but we're not going to get into the gut today. But I will say that the brain, the heart and we'll say the gut too, are connected by the biggest nerve in the body, which is called the vagus nerve. So look up vagus nerve, because there's a lot of healing around the vagus nerve as well when it comes to stress, food, anxiety, lots of things attributed and attached to that vagus nerve, which runs through our spine, goes through the base of the brain, down the spine, connects into the heart, goes, continues to go down, what would you call that? The thoracic area, into the gut.

Speaker 1:

Okay, now, in 1991, they say they discovered, but I'm gonna assert that somebody knew this before 1991, but let's just say doctors then said okay, we've validated that this is truth. They discovered that the heart has the thickest nerve bundle within the body and not only does it think, but it can feel and it can remember independently from the body. And not only does it think, but it can feel and it can remember independently from the brain. So just wrap your head around that, because so often we have been conditioned to believe that the heart and the brain are two separate things. Okay, like they don't go together. You get the brain up in the cranium area and you've got your heart down behind your chest cavity. Okay, however, the heart holds the thickest nerve bundle in the body and the heart thinks, the heart thinks. Okay, the heart feels and the heart remembers independently from the brain.

Speaker 1:

Now, these two neural networks can be harmonized to work together, and there's actually three steps that they do this, but I'm not going to go into that today. And when these two organs are harmonized together, they create a powerful chemical and energetic connection in our body, harmonizing feelings and emotions in a frequency within your body, and that's called coherence within your body, and that's called coherence, that's heart-brain coherence, and the heart signals the brain and optimizes the thoughts which are in the brain. Okay, did you hear that Optimizes? So what kind of thoughts do you have running in your brain Positive, negative? What kinds of feelings and thoughts are attached to the heart Positive, negative? What kinds of feelings and thoughts are attached to the heart Positive, negative? Because when we optimize, when we bring those together and harmonize them, it's optimized. Do you hear where I'm going with this? You may or may not see this, but now we can actually look at. How is your world reflecting to you?

Speaker 1:

Okay, so what they also saw is that the heart was actually communicating more with the brain than the brain going down to the heart. So imagine these. You know, when they start looking at the neurons and the firing, the synapses and everything's you know firing off, they saw more of that activity occurring in the heart actually being signaled back up to the brain versus the brain signaling it back down. So what does that mean? It means your heart is chief in command. So let's get back to the garden in our mind. Okay, that's a little snapshot. If you want to learn more about heart brain coherence, you can Google it, you can go into YouTube. Greg Braden's got cool stuff, heartmath has cool stuff, Bruce Lipton has cool stuff. There's a lot of stuff out there around brain and heart coherence.

Speaker 1:

So let's get back to the garden in our mind. And if we're to nurture, cultivate and grow this fantastic garden in our mind, which then will have our world reflect that life we wish to live, it begins at the root and the seed, or what I like to call the bulb, which is our heart. So the heart, literally, is the key to experiencing the world you truly desire, which I think is the coolest thing. And the mind cannot flourish into this abundant garden if your heart is harboring pain and sadness. Now, I'm not sure if it's possible to completely heal your heart, that you'll never have pain or sadness, but maybe it's a possibility because life is always happening, right, life is always happening for us. But it is possible to clean out and clear out a lot of that old trauma that's sitting in the back of the heart, the front of the heart, in the upper heart and lower heart. So there's different components of the heart in which you store that traumatic energy. And so imagine you start looking at your heart as this beautiful organ that's. You know, it's the powerhouse, it's the center of all of what is in your world.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so not to go too deep in this today, but what I saw, that was next for myself when I was having all of these ahas, and what I wanted to share with you because I just felt it was so profound and so beautiful. What I saw next was for me to really sit with the metaphor of my brain or my mind being this beautiful botanical garden and allowing myself to play with it, such that I would begin to quote unquote mind garden, with wild abashed creativity and bringing attention to what really has me experience love, love of self, love of my life, love for others at a new level, really nourishing that space and having profound gratitude when I'm sitting and being in this inner, connected garden that I call you know, I actually call it my brain tentacle garden, but this beautiful space called me. This is my inner, my inner self. You know where love starts with me, which then can overflow to my son, which then can overflow to my family. You know, which then can overflow to to my friends, which then can overflow to when a partner arrives in my life, which can then overflow into my career and into every action in my life, right and, more importantly, bringing my attention to where my garden needs tending to. Where is that seed? My heart or the bulb my heart lacking nourishment? So one might say, okay, well, how do you do that? So one way that I start bringing awareness to those areas of the heart that need healing and I'll tie this back to the original incident that occurred that had me even come to this place is I had a situation with a beautiful friend that I care very much about, where I was so triggered in a moment that it caused me to recognize this need that was missing in my life and that was missing in that moment. So what I do by bringing awareness is when my, let's say, you okay.

Speaker 1:

When your initial response to something is anger or frustration, you know you're triggered. That's your signal. That's your signal that there's something happening in your heart and there's something to go to work on Now. It doesn't mean you have to go to work on it that day. You may not feel like it, you may not be. You'll be like Tara. I'm not going to go to work on my heart that hard. I'm not going to go work on all my shit. Fine, don't. But this is what I do, because I do work on my shit all the time because it's important to me. It's important to me to heal these parts of my heart and heal my life, because I want to experience the richness and the fullness of life.

Speaker 1:

So, when you have that initial response, where it's anger or frustration, that's a signal for you to look at what you're needing in that moment and this might be the tricky part, because it was tricky for me to really get. Oh, my God, there's something I'm needing right now. That's why I'm reacting this way. And as I began to look in my God, there's something I'm needing right now. That's why I'm reacting this way. And as I began to look in my heart, which is the bulb, the root and the seed, I started asking what's missing. What's missing in this moment, and it was to be heard and it was to be hugged in that moment. That's what was missing for me. I needed a hug that day and I didn't even know it in the state that I was at. Now back to, how do you do this? How do you bring awareness to this?

Speaker 1:

When you have that initial feeling of anger and frustration that signals you like something's wrong. You ask yourself what's missing. You know, take a breath and just close your eyes and go deep into your body, go into your heart. Is it that you need to be heard in that moment? Do you need to be hugged in that moment like I did? Do you need to be understood or seen in that moment? Do you feel you're not being heard in that moment? What is it in that moment that is driving the response? And if you allow yourself to be still in that moment and ask your heart, what are you needing? It's going to respond. It's going to respond.

Speaker 1:

I just did it again the other day and in that moment what I was feeling was rejection and I felt into it and realized there is no rejection. The only person rejecting me is myself in this moment. Because I'm rejecting that feeling I don't want to feel in my heart. I'm rejecting allowing myself to open that door and say, oh, what's behind door number 25? Oh, it's still trapped. Sadness, thinking that you're rejected and there's something wrong with you. There's nothing wrong with you, so let that shit out. At least that's what I was saying to myself. And from there, how do you begin to heal and nurture that part of the garden. How do you heal and nourish the seed and your root? Remember, your root is your heart the seed, the bulb, the root, the heart. I'm going to leave you with three things that I like to do to begin that process of loving myself and my life more.

Speaker 1:

First, I become aware there's a trigger, there's a need and there's a frustration in my body. That's number one. Like first, I have to recognize it. I did the other morning. I had a conversation with a friend and I had a feeling coming up and I had to first become aware of it and it started bringing up tears. That feeling like the pain. I was like, oh shit, here's that feeling. I don't want that feeling. Two, allow yourself to sit in the emotions with zero story and allow yourself to really feel the depth of emotion.

Speaker 1:

So in that moment the other morning, when I was feeling this, I just allowed myself you know what, I'm going to allow myself the tears. I'm going to allow it to come up and I breathed into my heart and I closed my eyes and I asked like what is there? And I heard that it was rejection and then I said release that. Release that, because there's nothing there except for an emotion, an emotion that needs to come up and out of my system and I allowed myself to feel it, to cry it out and to not attach it to that person that I was talking to or to me. I just was like I'm just going to feel this. It needs to come up and out. And then I ask myself what do I need at that moment? And I wait for the answer to emerge. I ask myself in that moment and I wait for the answer to emerge. I ask myself what is it that I need? And I needed to just be heard and to be accepted and for what I said to be received. That's it. And so what I had to do for myself was I had to hear myself, I had to accept for myself and I needed to receive for myself. Nobody outside of me could do that for me.

Speaker 1:

So in the next episode, I'm going to share more about how I then move through those spaces of healing the garden and cultivating the growth in those areas. And where you have weeds, you know like go look, do you have root rot? Do you have weeds? Is there deadness in that bulb, that beautiful heart of yours? Like, be honest, be truthful with yourself. What's there? There's always opportunity to heal, expand and grow.

Speaker 1:

So I'm curious if any of this has resonated for you and if you're able to consider your brain and your heart in this way, like when standing in the middle of this beautiful mind garden. Just imagine and envision it. What do you see? What would you create? Do you want more color? Do you want more serenity? Do you want more calm? Do you want more vibrancy? Do you want more food, nourishing? What is it that you desire in your garden? What areas of your life need your tender care and attention? Let me know what you create. I'm always inspired by others' ideas. I look forward to seeing you on the next episode and happy gardening. Thank you for coming on this healing adventure today. If you're starting to see how everything is falling into place for you, consider rating the show and sharing it with one of your friends. Keep that spirit alive and join me next week. Same place, same time. Have a great week.