Kimberly Snyder is the founder of holistic wellness brand, Solluna. Solluna offers a growing variety of beauty and wellness products to support your physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual wellbeing. As a holistic nutritionist, Kimberly has empowered celebrity clients like Reese Witherspoon, Channing Tatum, and Kerry Washington to use food to find balance and harmony. Kimberly is a New York Times best selling author, international speaker, spiritual teacher, and meditation teacher. She also hosts the Feel Good with Kimberly Snyder podcast, where she dives deeper into wellness topics.
I recently met Kimberly to talk more about her work with holistic nutrition, meditation, and manifestation. Kimberly’s warmth and passion for wellness exuded throughout our interview. We chatted about the upcoming release of her new book, The Hidden Power of the Five Hearts. The Hidden Power of the Five Hearts explores the heart-brain connection through the lens of science and ancient wisdom. Kimberly also led a HeartAlign Meditation, so I could feel the powerful effects of the practice.
Tell us about what inspired your new book, The Hidden Power of the Five Hearts.
My pathway into wellness was nutrition. The four cornerstones we talk about at Solluna are food, body, emotional wellbeing, and spiritual growth. It all ties together. There’s the energetic heart, there’s the spiritual [heart] chakra, but there’s the physical fact that the heart is also a brain with 40,000 neurons. So whether we’re talking about manifestation [or] elevating our health, food is supportive to this. There’s a food component of embodiment in each heart section. But really the power of awakening your heart is going to change everything.
When we say the five hearts, there are five stages that we all go through to awaken the heart. The science of heart coherence aligns with these five stages.
The Dark Heart is where your heart and your brain aren’t talking. So it’s very difficult to manifest what you want, because what you’re registering out is low energy, disordered energy. You can say you want to manifest love, or you can say you want to manifest your dream job or that house, but energy doesn’t lie. The fifth stage is known as the Clear Heart. This is heart-brain harmony.
You and I are sitting here where we think our bodies are contained within the skin. It’s not true. We’re actually going out and eight to ten feet up and around. Coherence means you sync up the heart brain waves in your nervous system. This means more health. This means better gut health. No matter how healthy you’re eating, your digestion will improve when you start to do the three simple practices in the book. What this means, from a manifestation perspective, is, as your field becomes strong, when you become more coherent, your field actually becomes stronger. This is measured by sensitive equipment known as magnetometers. It’s more harmonious, it’s stronger. What does this mean? This means, scientifically, you become more magnetic. So this means, from a manifestation perspective, people are just naturally drawn.
Working on the level of energy is the most powerful place to work. So when you’re working with your heart energetically, spiritually, [and] physically, you’re changing the energy that you’re emanating. You’re changing how people perceive you and how you perceive the world. [That’s] the most powerful way to manifest because we’re working with energy,
This is measurable in science. Just one month of activating the heart brain, cortisol went down 23% and DHEA went up 100%. This is not taking something. I’m shifting down into this incredible power center, and now hormones are balancing. DHEA is so necessary for vitality and fertility and combating depression. All these amazing things [come] from your heart.
I think the world needs more heart right now.
Can you tell us more about what the five stages are?
The five stages are Vedic. They’re ancient, and they’re also scientific. They correspond to the science of heart coherence. So it starts from incoherence, the Dark Heart, which is where your heart and brain aren’t speaking. You feel that fear, that confusion, and lack of purpose.
The [second stage is the] Propelled Heart, which is where we see a lot of society between dark and propelled. There’s more energy, but there’s also the seeking, this constant looking for meaning and validation. Who am I? How do I prove myself? Always on, never content. Burnout, insomnia, overthinking.
Then you start to build more coherence into the third stage, which is known as the Steady Heart, and this is where you start to find this anchor inside of yourself. You start to be more resilient against stress. Also [you’re] defining yourself from the outside world. There’s this real groundedness inside.
Then the fourth stage is the Devoted Heart, and this is where you become more devoted, not just anchored to the inside, devoted to the inner heart. [These are] qualities like love, compassion, peace, kindness. You become more about service in each moment. What’s the kind thing to do? It’s not just checking things off the list, but what is my experience in this moment? How am I connecting with this person here, right now. It’s such a high level of coherence and heart awakening that you tend to manifest what you want. There’s far more intuition at this stage.
The fifth stage [the Clear Heart] is known scientifically as heart-brain harmony, the state of flow. [It has] great synchronicities. You become more transparent. You’re clear to the universal heart. So it’s not just about me, but wow, we’re all in this together.
So what’s amazing about this work and these stages? It’s for our individual benefit, but on a collective level, this is how we change society, because the more people that come into their heart, could never harm someone else. [It] could never be me against you. I’m competing with you. This group, against this group. It becomes this awakening on a bigger level of the heart, unity, [and] peace.
Sri Yukteswar talks about these ages, where there’s the Dark Ages, and we’ve seen them through time where there’s massive, horrible things happening, like the Christian crusades and darkness comes, but then the more people that awaken their hearts, it ushers in a New Age known as the Satya Yuga, which is possible, but it’s going to take many of us.
This is the age I feel like all of us have to make this choice. Am I going to keep living this way, in separation and fear, or what am I going to put into the field? Because ultimately, all heart fields intersect. It just keeps growing. All of us can be part of this.
Kimberly led me in a HeartAlign Meditation from her new book. Afterward, Kimberly explained the meditation’s positive feelings in more detail.
There’s so much change happening energetically, and yes, they can measure some of it scientifically, but the heart is a gateway to our true self, to the highest self, to the soul, to spirit, however you like to think of it. There’s this power center here. And scientifically, because of the heart brain, as we’re going into these states, it’s changing the way your body is actually operating. Your heart is the main biological oscillator, setting the rhythms. It’s helping your digestion get better. It’s making everything more efficient inside of you. So on all levels, it’s creating this coherence and that tingling [sensation]. It’s sort of this expansiveness. So when you come back into your world, into your day, you have a different perspective. You could maybe see solutions. You could see what someone’s really trying to say, even if they’re struggling. You could see this person’s having a hard day [and] you become more naturally kind and compassionate.
The other practices in the book [are] meditations that you can do in your day in three to ten seconds, or under a minute, as you start to transcend and go through these different heart stages.
We all have these Dark Heart moments where we feel confused or in fear. The Clear Heart [is] where we’re this high state of flow, where there’s natural synchronicities, where you naturally manifest without all the pushing and arduousness that the mind tells you it has to be like.
The power of this work is that we all realize we are the center for ourselves. Then more actually starts to come, because this neediness is actually incoherence. It’s creating these energy waves which register to other people, whether we realize it or not, as chaotic, [which] actually kind of repels situations. This is the ultimate way to manifest.
We last caught up in 2020. How has Solluna grown since then?
Solluna is based on our [four] cornerstones: food, body, emotional wellbeing, and spiritual growth. In 2020, we were just starting. Now we have all this heart work and meditation work. Then we have the Glowing Greens Powder, which you could add as a standalone or into your Glowing Green Smoothie. We have a holistic pregnancy course coming out. We have a new website launching. We’ve just expanded. It was this infancy time [in 2020], and now we’re just so excited to continue to deepen our offerings across the cornerstones. [When] I started my wellness path and nutrition, the food part was kind of dominant, but now I feel like it’s really balanced across all of them.
What are some of the nutritional challenges you see your clients facing most often?
Confusion is number one. I think there’s information overload, which leads to decision paralysis. Again, very heady. When we come down into this more somatic [state], you can take all this information and discern it through what is the best for me and my body, and this time in my life, and this time in my menstrual cycle, and this season.
I also see the overcomplication of nutrition and numbers and constantly counting carbs and sugar, versus this much more natural holistic approach, which Solluna has always been about. Eat whole foods, create simple meals, [and] create regularity when you eat. It just works so much better when I take clients away from really complicated, overthinking diets and approaches to nutrition [into] this natural, simplified way.
Today there can be a sense of overwhelm when it comes to choosing foods that are healthy. What advice do you have for choosing the most nutritious ingredients to cook with?
One thing affects everything, right? So the root is a feeling, a sense of anxiety and overwhelm that then goes into the way we approach food. It goes into exercise. It goes into not knowing how to take care of ourselves in general, not knowing healthy boundaries, when to say no, overpromising or giving ourselves away, or always being on our screens. There’s a root, and the root is being disconnected from the heart. So the central thing is you start to get really centered in yourself, and it becomes so much more easeful when you open the fridge. This is the best thing to care for myself right now. You can start to drop all the emotional attachments, stories, and narratives attached to food. You start to establish some really healthy routines, which are very grounding in the heart.
I talk about this in the book, grounding your brain and your mind. I have patterns. In the morning, I drink hot water with lemon. I take my Solluna SBO+ Probiotics. I drink my Glowing Green Smoothie with Glowing Greens Powder. You have some foundational things. But then when it comes to lunch and dinner, and where there’s more variety, it’s not so scattered all over the place, because we started the day with a really solid morning routine, and then you’re far more in touch with your intuition.
Can you share a bit about your manifestation journey?
Whatever we say we want, we have to embody the energy of what it is that we want to create without the neediness, the feelings of lack. Even if you’re trying to say affirmations, but inside, you really don’t feel like you could create it or deserve it. You actually don’t create what you want. And we’ve all gone through periods where that’s felt arduous.
I want to share a story that’s in this new book that empowered the five hearts, about true manifestation. The fifth heart stage, we all dip in and out of. The stages are fluid. You can feel this harmony when you’re doing the dishes and you’re just not thinking, you’re just kind of like here. Or [when] you’re taking a shower, and you’re just sort of really feeling the water, like this state of going beyond thought.
I had one of those moments [when] I was living in New York City. I remember feeling the sunshine on my shoulders and feeling this flow state, not thinking. I had sent my third book to Deepak Chopra called The Beauty Detox Foods a few weeks before. After a lot of follow up, getting through his team, he gave me a great review for the book. But I felt like I was meant to do something more with Deepak, and I just held it in my consciousness without a feeling of lack. It was just this knowingness. And then I was in a state of flow.
I was walking along, and I got to the corner of Union Square Park. And I always walked across the park. I felt this natural inclination to walk around the outskirts of the park to the west, which doesn’t make sense, because it would have been twice as long, but I did it, and who did I run into on the street? Literally smack like Deepak Chopra. [I said], “It’s me. It’s Kimberly. You just reviewed my book.” He was so warm, and I was so in the flow, no lack, no shyness, just here I am. Here you are. He gave me his cell phone number.
A few weeks later, we met at a coffee shop. In two hours, [we] decided to write a book together known as Radical Beauty that went on to become a New York Times bestseller. This is not the linear way the mind thinks. Manifestation, in its truest sense, works in its own dynamic patterns. If you try to force, if you try to plan, if you try to control, if you’re not working on an energetic level, you block yourself.
The ultimate way to be that magnet into attraction is to create heart coherence, because the energy emanating will start to pull into your space in ways that you could never think of. So you work on this really powerful base level of energy, and then things start to fall into place as they’re meant to in the most powerful ways. And from that place of inspired action these feelings come, like, “Walk this way,” or, “Yeah, I should really send this email today, or reach out to this person, or go up to that person at the party.” You still have to take action, but it’s from this much deeper place where you’ve created an energetic shift first.
[My meeting with Deepak Chopra] was meant to be, but I also started to embody that energy. All of us can do this. It’s not like some people are more powerful or special than others. Everybody has this potential.
Yogananda and Sri Yukteswar teach [that] all hearts are equal. When you start to awaken your heart, you’re stepping into these different fields of energy where more synchronicities and manifestations more easily take place. So it’s available to everyone.
What are some of your best practices for manifestation?
The heart coherence practices, the heart of line meditation that was researched to create 29% coherence. It is the number one practice for manifestation, because you’re working on your energy and your coherence, and that is how you become magnetic.
What advice do you have to encourage someone who experiences roadblocks on the way to manifesting their dreams?
So this is what we would call stage one, the Dark Heart, where we’ve all been. Dark Heart doesn’t mean evil. It means your heart and your brain aren’t syncing up. Yet, we all know that feeling of being overheady, overthinking, [and confused]. This is a normal part of the journey. No matter how dark or confused or frustrated you feel, the light of your heart is always there. You can start to awaken it little by little.
There [are] preliminary practices in the book. You can start to just put your hand [on your heart]. Start to connect a little bit by putting your attention here. Research published in the American Journal of Cardiology, shows that this alone starts to wake up those neurons. This alone starts to rewire your nervous system. So I would say to that person, you start taking these steps.
The more you do these practices, you start to build what’s called your coherence capacity. It’s like a muscle. It starts to get a little bit easier. You start to be more resilient. You stop going into stress responses so easily. You start to feel more confident in this energy inside of you, not having to create something externally. You start to feel more connected to yourself. You start to feel more connected to your food, to other people.
It starts to build and to build, and suddenly you’re like, “Whoa, that was a really amazing meeting.” And “Wow, I just felt so connected to that person when I was talking to them.” This is how the web starts to be woven into manifesting the life that you want.
Is there a question you’ve always wanted to be asked in an interview?
I guess the question I would ask myself [is], “What do you think is the most important thing to be healthy? What do you think is the most important thing in wellness?”
I would say there’s many parts of the puzzle. Lifestyle is important. Nutrition is important. All these corners of the body, emotions, [and] spiritual growth. But I really do believe now, the heart is this central place that ties it all together. The ancients have always said this, and science is backing up this third brain, which is between the brain and our gut. I feel like awakening the heart is really the most important thing that we can all choose to follow right now in our journey.
To learn more about Solluna, visit https://mysolluna.com/
To order a copy of Kimberly’s The Hidden Power of the Five Hearts visit https://mysolluna.com/fiveheartsbook/ or Amazon
