individuals thinkone way, feel another, and behave inconsistently, they are in an inefficient and ineffective state-that's non-coherence. A situation adults commonly face illustrates another kind of incoherence.For example, if a child has hit another child and must be taught to be kind to others and thathitting is not acceptable, consider the internal state of an adult in the following two scenarios:1. The adult who punishes the child with a spanking for hitting another child.2. The adult who takes time to teach and encourage the child to apologize and render an actof service or kindness to the other child. In this instance, the thoughts, feelings and actionsof the adult are in coherent alignment with the message being taught. Then the child ismore likely to have a coherent understanding of the lesson being taught.Another aspect of coherence relates to the dynamics of the flow of action produced by asingle system (McCraty & Tomasino, 2006). This is coherence as a uniform pattern of cyclicalbehavior. Because this pattern of action is generated by a single system, the term auto-coherenceis used to denote this type of coherence. This concept is commonly used in physics to describethe generation of an ordered distribution of energy in a waveform. An example is a sine wave,which is a perfectly coherent wave. The more stable the frequency, amplitude, and shape of thewaveform, the higher the degree of coherence. In physiological systems, this type of coherencedescribes the degree of order and stability in the rhythmic activity generated by a singleoscillatory such as the hearts rhythmic activity. When coherence is increased in a single systemthat is coupled to other systems, it can pull the other systems into coherence or entrainment,resulting in increased cross-coherence in the activity of the other systems, even across differenttime scales of activity. An example of this is in the increased heart-brain synchronization thatoccurs in a heart coherent mode.The material presented in this article is informed by the following theoretical considerations.Our psychophysiological systems process an enormous amount of information, which must becontinuously communicated from one part of the brain or body to another and often stored as amemory of one type or another. The traditional approach to understanding how the bodyssystems interact adopts an activation perspective, in which variation in the amount of a substanceor the amount of a given physiological activity is viewed as the basis of communication.Although the amount of activity is clearly an important aspect of communication, the generationand transmission of rhythms and patterns of physiological activity appear reflective of a morefundamental order of information communicationone that signifies different emotional statesand operates to integrate and coordinate the bodys functioning as a whole.Throughout the body, information is encoded in waveforms of energy as patterns ofphysiological activity. Neural, chemical, electromagnetic, and oscillatory pressure wave patternsare among those used to encode and communicate biologically relevant information. By thesemeans, the bodys organs continually transmit information to the brain as patterns of afferent(ascending) input. In turn, as we will see below, changes in the patterns of afferent input to theINTEGRAL REVIEWDecember 2009Vol. 5, No. 2brain cause significant changes in physiological function, perception, cognition,