Dr. Habib Sadeghi really is a man of the heart. Medically trained as a Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine, he has become a pioneer in merging western science with spiritual teachings and eastern medicine. He famously penned an essay on Conscious Uncoupling for Gwyneth Paltrow’s lifestyle brand GOOP and has made it his mission to educate the world on the profound effects of showing love to your friends, family and the rest of humanity.
Growing up I was frequently taught by my parents that I should not be “content with showing friendship in words alone, let your heart burn with loving kindness for all who may cross your path.” I always wondered, why should I love everyone I come across? How is that even possible? Sitting down with Dr. Habib Sadeghi, I found that not only is it possible, but if everyone made the projection of love a prime focus in their lives, they would not only feel better and be more successful in their daily pursuits, but they would have the power to change the world. Imagine if we were collectively on fire with the power of love? Why is that such an exciting thought? Luckily Dr. Sadeghi gave hypeeffect.com a thorough explanation.
“Feelings generate real energetic vibrations in the body,” says Dr. Habib Sadeghi. “At the cellular level, those vibrations signal thousands of specific chemical changes through chemical messengers called Cytokines that turn biological processes on or off and even cause genes to be expressed or suppressed, depending on what it is that we’re feeling. This is why negative feelings sustained over a period of time is one of the greatest contributors to disease.”
The idea that our feelings turn into physical pain is not new and Dr. Habib Sadeghi is the first to admit that this is an age old piece of wisdom that deserves much overdo attention. “Socrates famously said that there is no illness of the body apart from the mind,” Sadeghi continued. “Because the mind and body are intimately connected, a mind that is not at ease will eventually manifest as dis-ease in the body. Science has known for decades that negative emotions like fear and resentment suppress the immune system, leaving us vulnerable to all kinds of diseases.”
The picture he paints is clear and frightening. “When we don’t love ourselves, we’re bathing all one trillion of our body’s cells in negative emotions like criticism, hate and disgust, and the caustic chemical changes that come with them. We’re taking the full force of these negative vibrations because we’re directing all of them inward toward ourselves and not outward at someone or something else.”
The worst case scenario according Sadeghi involves the manifestation of diseases that are boggling some of our brightest scientific minds. Like Cancer, HIV and ALS just to name a few. “So often I find a lack of self-love is an issue in patients with autoimmune diseases, conditions where the body is attacking itself. There couldn’t be a more literal physical metaphor for self-hatred,” he says. A thought that resulted in multiple ah-ha moments until he hit on the most significant one in my mind. “Interestingly, 75% of all autoimmune patients are women, and when it comes to specific diseases like Hashimoto’s thyroiditis and others, the ratio of women to men can be as high as 10 to 1. I believe a large part of that disparity has to do with the fact that women struggle much more with loving themselves than men. They criticize themselves regularly about their weight, appearance, performance as mothers and regularly compare themselves to others. This slow drip of constant self-judgment eventually takes its toll in one way or another.”
Mom’s out there no doubt relate to this. How many hours did my child spend with a babysitter instead of me? Did I help my child enough with their homework? Should I have spent more time cooking? Are the hours I spend working, resulting in enough of a pay-off for my child to make up for the fact that they hardly see me? These questions can quickly turn into negative thoughts that can swim around in ones mind for hours, days, weeks and years. So to think that Dr. Sadeghi is offering a means to combat this is truly remarkable.
“Love generates the highest and most positive energetic vibration in existence,” he says. “When we feel love, a flood of chemical changes rush through the body that trigger countless beneficial changes at the cellular and even genetic level. When we feel loved, we feel safe, connected to others and to life itself. When we consistently feel this sense of balance in our emotional world, it creates an echo in our physical world, which includes equilibrium in our bodies, as well.”
This isn’t just a thought or idea of his, it is actually scientifically proven. “The Institute of HeartMath calls this great balancing frequency coherence. Much of their research has shown the electromagnetic field emitted by the heart is 5,000 times stronger than that of the brain,” he says. “Loving energy can actually be measured as it transfers from one person to another; and feelings of deep love have been shown to cause DNA strands to expand, open up and switch on healing genes while switching off those selected for disease. Naturally, when we direct this kind of love inward toward ourselves, healing happens. When we direct it outward toward others, we achieve healing or coherence in our world, also known as peace.”
Yes, you read that correctly, Dr. Sadeghi just said that the power of love is 5,000 times stronger than the electromagnetic pulses emitted by the brain. So now that we know this, Dr. Habib Sadeghi believes there is something we can do about it and it starts with the smallest of acts. See below:
- Stop the craziness of life in any single moment.
- Turn off your digital devices.
- Go out into the world and make a loving connection with someone.
- Give them a Love Button to help them pay it forward.
He calls it the “Love Button Global Movement.” It starts with an act of love, no matter how small and ends in thousands upon thousands of electromagnetic love frequencies being released on the planet.
“When we receive genuine loving kindness, we feel our deep spiritual connection to others, and it’s that feeling of connectedness that urges us to then pay the act of love that we received forward to someone else,” he says. “The Love Buttons we leave with people are their reminders to send that love back out into the world. Imagine what we could accomplish if people were doing that on a global scale. It’s more than possible, and that’s what Love Button is all about.”
So what can you do to be a part of this movement? “This doesn’t have to be complicated,” says Dr. Sadeghi. “You could give someone your place in the grocery store checkout line, let another car have that prime parking space, put quarters in someone’s parking meter and leave a note and the Love Button on the windshield, rake leaves or shovel snow for an elderly neighbor, buy a gift card and give it away, talk to the guy at the party who looks out of place, invite someone who lives alone over for dinner, buy a homeless person a sandwich, send a Love Button in a real card with a handwritten note to someone you love for no reason, give someone else your seat on the subway, offer to help with someone’s home improvement project, hold the door open for someone behind you, compliment someone, express your appreciation for the service you received from a waiter, cashier or clerk, or give away something you don’t need to someone you know who needs it. The possibilities are endless. Be sure to provide the person with a Love Button and ask them to pass the love on to someone else. No big explanation is needed. Just be genuine. That’s all. Once you open yourself up in this way, you’ll begin to see opportunities to share your love all around you. It’s because we tend to live very closed off, self-involved lives that we miss all these chances to connect with others and create a more cohesive sense of community.”
The idea that a small act of love toward someone else can change the world is truly exciting. But according the Dr. Sadeghi and countless others, the ancestral feeling to loving others is loving yourself, so I couldn’t resist asking him about the importance of self-love, in the Global Love Button movement and otherwise.
“You can’t give what you don’t have,” Dr. Sadeghi said. “The primary relationship you have, the only one that lasts your entire life, is the one you have with yourself. When we don’t love ourselves, but instead treat ourselves with cruelty, criticism or even disregard, we often end up subconsciously projecting those negative emotions out onto other people in our lives, harming our outer relationships, as well. For example, a wife who constantly complains that her husband never acknowledges all she does for the family most likely feels herself that she’s not doing enough for the family. The reality is that she is doing plenty for the family, but probably wishes she could do even more in spite of her current responsibilities. This false guilt causes her to judge herself as not doing enough, and so she projects his judgment outward onto her husband as not appreciating her when, in fact, it is she that needs to be more loving toward herself and appreciate what she’s already doing for the family instead of seeking external validation of something she already knows.”
Dr. Sadeghi believes that the way we treat others is a solid indication of how we are treating ourselves and until we start to examine our relationship with ourselves it will be a lot harder to develop bonds of love with others. “It’s not that we can’t love people at all if we don’t love ourselves, but those relationships won’t be as deep, fulfilling or free as they could be.” he says. “Every relationship we have with family, friends, co-workers and so on is a reflection of some part of the relationship we have with ourselves. This is why I encouraged selfless selfishness with all my patients, especially women, who give so much to others but always seem to leave themselves off the list. When we are kind to ourselves with our inner talk and make it a priority to do the things we love just for us, we fill ourselves up with love to overflowing. Only then can we have enough to give to everyone else. There’s nothing selfish about giving to yourself in such a way. When you’re filled with love to overflowing, you’ll be a better parent, spouse, sibling, co-worker or any other role you play in life, and relationships will improve because sharing your love will have become an organic and effortless experience.”
The campaign he has started is a real world get-out-there-and-feel-it movement. Though social media might be a good place to inspire others, Dr. Sadeghi warns of the possibility of the ego getting in the way if we spend too much time documenting our every move on social media. “Comparing yourself to others isn’t a very loving thing to do because it involves self-judgment and feelings of not enoughness,” Dr. Sadeghi says. “The truth is that we can never really know what someone is struggling with or what their life is like behind closed doors. There’s an old saying that goes if everyone put all their troubles into a bag and then each took a blind draw, we’d soon be wishing we had our original problems back. So be grateful for everything that is working in your life and never assume what the situation is really like for someone else.” This is his precursor to warning us about taking all things we read on social media with a grain of salt.
“The best way to forget about your troubles is to do something for someone else. Get the focus off of you,” he says. “It also helps you put those problems in proper perspective. This goes a long way toward helping all of us feel better about ourselves and not fretting the fact that a friend is doing something that we’re not. By its nature, social media is very egocentric. It’s all about ME and what I’M doing. In a very real way, it’s not helping the world become a more loving place. What it’s actually done is replace human connection with communication, and they’re not the same thing. In contrast, the Love Button Global Movement is about taking the emphasis off the self and seeing what you can do for others. In this way, yes, acts of loving kindness toward others can go a long way toward neutralizing the angst that comes with the excess of me-ism that’s involved in social media. As you get better at incorporating loving service into your life, you’ll eventually feel so great about what you’re doing that posts about where your co-worker is vacationing or the new car your cousin bought won’t even phase you. Better still, you won’t even see them because you’ll be spending less time on social media, since you’ll be out in the real world making real human connections with love.”
Thank you for the love Dr. Habib Sadeghi. We can’t wait to share it with the world and see it transform one heart at a time.
Visit
lovebutton.org to learn more about Dr. Sadeghi’s movement and take part in what can become the biggest love fest to ever exist.
