Unity "Of one heart"

  Becoming One


Moses 7:18  Pearl of Great Price

And the Lord called his people Zion, because they were of one heart and one mind, and dwelt in righteousness; and there was no poor among them.

An Amazing Phenomenon Happens to the Heartbeats of Choir Members When They Sing Together

Why are we asked to sing before we do anything else at church? Why is singing  so powerful?  It brings the spirit but it also has the power to unify is and make our hearts as one.  Being one in heart is part of being a Zion people.
This is why I love it when we sing and meditate as a family. It knits our hearts together in love.
Mosiah 18:21
Book of Mormon
And he commanded them that there should be no contention one with another, but that they should look forward with one eye, having one faith and one baptism, having their hearts knit together in unity and in love one towards another.
In  the video below  we are all metronomes going through life at our own tempo. With a common foundation of Christ and the Gospel to build on we can synchronize our hearts  or tune them so that we can be unified. Music does this. I am so glad we are commanded to sing the songs of the Gospel.  Elder Oaks reminds us to sing- even if we dont think we are good at it. LINK  When we dont join in song we are loosing out on an opportunity to feel the spirit and have our hearts beat with those who are striving to  live  a Zion life.

Below is a news story on this concept if you want  to read more.

Choir singers not only harmonize their voices, they also synchronize their heartbeats, a study suggests.

Researchers in Sweden monitored the heart rates of singers as they performed a variety of choral works.
They found that as the members sang in unison, their pulses began to speed up and slow down at the same rate.
Writing in the journal Frontiers in Psychology, the scientists believe the synchrony occurs because the singers coordinate their breathing.
Dr Bjorn Vickhoff, from the Sahlgrenska Academy at Gothenburg University in Sweden, said: "The pulse goes down when you exhale and when you inhale it goes up.
"So when you are singing, you are singing on the air when you are exhaling so the heart rate would go down. And between the phrases you have to inhale and the pulse will go up.
"If this is so then heart rate would follow the structure of the song or the phrases, and this is what we measured and this is what we confirmed."
Sing from the heart
The scientists studied 15 choir members as they performed different types of songs.

When you exhale you activate the vagus nerve... that goes form the brain stem to the heart

Dr Bjorn Vickhoff, Gothenburg University

They found that the more structured the work, the more the singers' heart rates increased or decreased together.
Slow chants, for example, produced the most synchrony.
The researchers also found that choral singing had the overall effect of slowing the heart rate.
This, they said, was another effect of the controlled breathing.
Dr Vickhoff explained: "When you exhale you activate the vagus nerve, we think, that goes from the brain stem to the heart. And when that is activated the heart beats slower."
The researchers now want to investigate whether singing could have an impact on our health.
"There have been studies on yoga breathing, which is very close to this, and also on guided breathing and they have seen long-terms effects on blood pressure... and they have seen that you can bring down your blood pressure.
"We speculate that it is possible singing could also be beneficial."



 http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-23230411