appreciation and gratitude

The level of coherence you experience during feelings of appreciation can be measured by sensitive instruments. Coherence also can be measured using heart-rate variability (HRV) – the naturally occurring beat-to-beat changes in heart rate, which can be seen in an electrocardiogram (ECG).
Measuring coherence can accurately show heart, brain and nervous-system interactions that are sensitive to changes in emotions. 

While an individual is experiencing coherence, the heart rhythm appears as a smooth wavelike pattern on an HRV graph. Contrast coherence with incoherence, created by negative emotions such as frustration and anger, which can often disrupt the synchronization of the body’s systems and create jagged or chaotic patterns on a graph.

Advanced research at the Institute of HeartMath and elsewhere has provided evidence that gratitude is not simply a nice sentiment or feeling. Sustained feelings of gratitude have real benefits, including the following four benefits:

• Biochemical changes – Favorable changes in the body’s biochemistry include improved hormonal balance and an increase in production of DHEA, the "anti-aging hormone."
• Increased positivity – Favorable changes in the body’s Daily gratitude exercises can bring about a greater level of positive feelings, according to researchers from the University of Miami and the University of California, Davis who studied this process in 157 individuals over 13 days.
• Boost to the immune system – The IgA antibody, which serves as the first line of defense against pathogens, increases in the body.
• Emotional “compound interest” – The accumulated effect of sustained appreciation and gratitude is that these feelings, and coherence, are easier to recreate with continued practice. This is because experiencing an emotion reinforces the neural pathways of that particular emotion as it excites the brain, heart and nervous system.

Thankfully, gratitude and appreciation can create their own positive psychophysiological holiday in your body – without the necessity of a feast. Sincere self-evoked feelings of gratitude and appreciation are explained in-depth by Institute of HeartMath founder Doc Childre and Director of Research Dr. Rollin McCraty in their e-book, The Appreciative Heart: the Psychophysiology of Positive Emotions and Optimal Functioning.