Love is in the — Electromagnetic Communication?

You do not just wear your heart on your sleeve. It expands beyond your chest, every beat inflating an invisible bubble about your body, which wobbles and ripples as you move through the world. This dynamic projection is your electromagnetic field — it is created by your own heart and allows you to sense energy changes in our surrounding environment — including the fields produced by other blood-pumping animals.

Electrical currents are produced due to the movement of charged particles within the body. In the heart, the cells which facilitate this electrical current are called pacemaker cells, setting the rhythm of the heart. Fully absorbed in their role, pacemaker cells are the meticulous conductors of this bloody orchestra, keeping the ensemble of cardiac muscles in time. It is not uncommon, however, for this tempo to be lost — people with irregular heartbeats (either pumping too fast or too slow) are often fitted with artificial electrical devices which steal their name from these cells. Regardless, the beating of our hearts is a painstaking performance and, like any electrically charged movement, generates invisible lines of force around the body which constitute an electromagnetic field.

This force can extend up to three feet outside your body, enabling subtle communication with other people and animals. 

In a study by Linda Russek and Gary Schwartz undertaken at the University of Arizona’s Department of Psychology, electroencephalography (EEG) and electrocardiography (ECG) tests were used to monitor the change in heart and brain activity of two individuals seated opposite one another, with their eyes closed, during a two-minute period. An EEG measures the electrical signals in the brain and an ECG measures the electrical activity involved in the beating of the heart. The study showed that the brain signals of one individual could synchronise with the heart rate of the other. 

Furthermore, this degree of synchronisation was shown to be greater in participants who considered themselves as having been raised by loving parents, suggesting that this made them more emotionally insightful towards the feelings of others.

The wild red fox, for example, is known to use the Earth’s electromagnetic field to increase hunting success. Like the heart, our planet also has its own field, and red foxes — which often hunt prey scampering through thick layers of snow — use this as a targeting system to calculate their range of attack, diving into snow at the perfect distance to seize a struggling rodent.

The electromagnetic fields of humans and other animals may also interact with one another. In a 2015 experiment by Rollin McCraty, a PhD scientist from the HeartMath Institute in California, the heart rates of a 12-year-old boy and his pet dog were monitored as they interacted with one another. At the beginning of the experiment, while separated from one another in different rooms, harsh, jagged signals were observed in the ECGs of both participants. When the boy and dog were reunited both their heart rates lowered and became more coherent, indicating shared feelings of love and care. 

So on Valentine’s Day, whether you were in a candle-lit restaurant or a cinema, or even if you were taking some time for yourself in the comfort of your bedroom, know that an imperceptible force connected you to other people. It is with you now, pouring into your surroundings, retrieving energetic information that may influence your actions. But this is all unknown to you — the only thing you feel is a steady beating in your chest. 

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