Valentine's Day Reflection on Ballet, the Heart, Love, Heart Cognition, Emotions, Feelings and Intuition
Genoveva Uzunova, M.D., Ph.D.
Physician -Scientist Studying and Developing Pharmacological and Non-Pharmacological Treatments for Psychiatric, Neurologic, Immunologic, Rare Disorders, Artist, Ballerina, Art Therapist, Positive Psychiatry Enthusiast
Happy Valentine's Day 2024, a day to express and celebrate love, which heals, brings joy (although some may say it also carries pain, as well) connects, and motivates people and is the greatest power in the Universe!
"Where there is love there is life."
–Mahatma Gandhi
For Valentine's Day 2024, I would like to write a brief supplement to the February 2024 issue of The Biomedical Artist, which centers on the connection between art, ballet, and the heart. I will start with an example of art, the ballet 'Romeo and Juliet" and from here, I will present ideas on the key role of the heart in emotions, feelings, cognition, and intuition. I express the notion that currently the heart is overlooked and its key role in emotions, feelings, cognition, and art is attributed largely to the brain and mind.
One of the most romantic ballets (and love stories) of all time is the ballet "Romeo and Juliet" based on William Shakespeare's play and with music by Sergei Prokofiev. We saw this ballet with Lloyd Williams for Valentine's Day, 2015 performed by the New York City Ballet with choreography by Peter Martins with Juliette Lauren Lovette and Romeo Chase Finlay, and loved it! Our visit filled our hearts with happiness and love! This inspired me to dance for this Valentine's Day 2024 the balcony scene from the ballet "Romeo and Juliet" when Juliet is dreaming about Romeo and he appears in the garden beneath her balcony. Dancing again was very joyful for me, because of the movement, the beautiful music, and the re-living of the story in my mind and heart! This is an example of the beneficial role of ballet for happiness, stress management, and health.
In this balcony scene, Juliet dreams and thinks with love about Romeo who appears in the garden. This prompted me to contemplate that how we feel about someone often reflects to a great degree the way they feel about us. This is something I learned from an early age and is reaffirmed by some of my colleagues - psychiatrists. To date, this concordance between feelings has been attributed in neuroscience to a great extent to the mirror neurons in the brain.
While I agree that mirror neurons are very important in empathy and in being "in tune" with the feelings and emotions of people around us, in my opinion, the heart plays a key role as well in sensing the emotions and feelings of others directly by a heart-to-heart connection. This in my view is achieved through the electrical signals emitted by the heart, which are transmitted to the skin and may detected by the ECG (or earlier named EKG).
For those of you who are not familiar with the electrocardiogram, here are the principles of the electrocardiogram:
It is known that meditation and yoga, which are noted to be beneficial for the brain and mirror neurons, are also excellent for the heart and cardiovascular system.
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Is this because thinking and the brain are silenced and during meditation, you "drop" in your heart and let it function without the constraints of the brain and mind, the ego, the "should", and the fear? Isn't this state closer to real love?
Therefore, there is a real biological substrate of "listening" to your heart, in which you connect to the hearts of others through love. I think this is the basis of intuition as well.
Perhaps this is why women have been known to be more intuitive because they listen more to their hearts than to their mind and brain, which is of utmost importance in the professional world. Women also have higher levels of oxytocin than men, the so called love and social hormone, which has receptors in the heart, as well as the brain.
Perhaps this is why heart disease is the number one killer in women
Indeed, my Mom had serious heart disease, high blood pressure and died of a stroke. She was very intuitive.
Oxytocin, besides being a neurohormone implicated in neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism (which I have studied extensively in mice and humans), is also produced in the heart. Therefore, the heart and its feelings, emotions, and cognition have a direct biological substrate, oxytocin, that may exert effects on the brain. This may explain how the feeling of love in the heart may recruit the brain to help create art.
Oxytocin may cross the blood-brain barrier, making it feasible for heart oxytocin to reach the brain and vice versa:
Dementia is more common in women, and while factors such as hormones and genes are discussed, not much attention is paid to the heart and oxytocin:
Listening to your heart is beneficial for society and for health because when you cultivate feelings of love, the electrical activity of your heart can be picked up by others and the feelings of love can be spread. Conversely, when the heart's voice and cognition are silenced, disease occurs such as depression, dementia, and heart disease.
This, in my view, explains how art and ballet are created from the heart and benefit the heart. Of course, dancing ballet benefits the heart also, because it is a physical activity.
These are just my viewpoints, "works in progress", which are supplemented by my life experiences, reading, discussions with others, and science. I will welcome your opinions on the topics in this newsletter supplement!