From the article, Heart Connections and the Healing Power of Horses, by Bonnie Treece.
“HeartMath Institute Engineers performed a study about how human heart rates affect each other. By connecting two people to heart and brain monitors they examined energetic interactions between them. An important factor in the interactions was the people’s heart rhythms or “Heart Rate Variability patterns,” which look like wave forms. When they held hands, one persons heart beat could be measured in the others brain waves. In some cases when one of the people is in a loving or appreciative state their heart rhythms become what they call coherent and the two people’s heart rhythms became “entrained”. If the HeartMath® study works human to human, it may also work horse to human. Do our hearts become entrained with theirs when we are in the presence of a horse? At rest the horse’s heart rate is 26 – 50 beats per minute. This is much slower than a human’s heart rate of 70 – 75 beats per minute. Since a horse’s heart beats so much slower, can we lower our heart rate simply by standing in their presence? An occurrence that many people experience after they spend time with horses is they feel calmer. Is the end result for them a lower heart rate or a more coherent heart rhythm? Horses know instinctively how to stay in the optimal healthy heart rate zone and may be able to help us to do the same. When they aren’t being interfered with, horses are rarely stressed. They instinctively conserve energy for when they need it to engage in life saving activities – like running from predators. They don’t fabricate events to agonize over.”
