Collaboration

I had the privilege of working as a cardiologist in Italy at the Rehabilitation Center of San Pellegrino Terme, starting in 1978. For forty years, I served as Head of the Cardiac Rehabilitation Department, where approximately 40,000 patients were treated under my care following myocardial infarction, coronary angioplasty, aorto-coronary bypass surgery, or valvular surgery.

I have always cultivated the importance of the human relationship between physician and patient, and among patients themselves, as a fundamental element in the healing process. For this reason, in 1983 I founded the Italian Association Amici del Cuore (Friends of the Heart), which brought together patients with the aim of promoting the control of coronary risk factors, encouraging a balanced low-cholesterol diet, maintaining ideal body weight, and fostering physical activity.

Within this context, a group of friends and patients walked more than 600 kilometers in relay from the city of Bergamo to Rome, where we were received by Pope John Paul II, who gave us his blessing and supported our awareness initiatives.

We published books and health information periodicals, including the volume The Heart of Women, reflecting our interest in assessing cardiovascular risk in women, which at that time was underestimated because it appeared less frequently than in men. The association grew to include thousands of members.

During those years, we commissioned a statue dedicated to whom we considered the patron of the Friends of the Heart, Fra Tommaso da Olera, author of the book Fire of Love, containing words addressed to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, which we believed to be a source of comfort for patients, especially during periods of instability in their illness. A sculpture by the artist Alessandro Verdi was dedicated to him; it still stands today in San Pellegrino and is visited by patients.

Subsequently, I directed my efforts toward an international vision, recognizing the importance of the physician–patient relationship also in developing countries. In this context, I founded the association Heart Friends Around The World, supported by my activity as a public relations member within the working group of the European Association of Cardiovascular Rehabilitation, for which I had organized a congress in Italy.
On that occasion, bringing together more than 20 cardiologists from different European nations, we officially established—under the laws of the Italian Republic—the association Heart Friends Around The World for the prevention and rehabilitation of cardiovascular diseases in developing countries.

For years, we were members of the World Heart Federation and participated in congresses worldwide. I particularly remember the first World Congress in Berlin, where my wife Claudia and I managed a stand and offered T-shirts to cardiologists who joined the association. On that occasion, cardiologists from more than 30 countries and all five continents enrolled.

Among the most meaningful encounters, I recall Dr. K.K. Hyder Siddiqui, who at that time was also Sheriff of Kolkata and President of the Asian Pacific Society of Cardiology, and Dr. Eduardo Rivas Estany, who later became President of the Cuban Society of Cardiology.
We organized annual congresses in several countries, including Italy (Venice, Capri, Castiglioncello), Czechoslovakia, Venezuela, Poland, Portugal, India, Cuba, and the Philippines, and we participated as invited speakers at international congresses in Spain, Iran, Pakistan, China, Cameroon, Kenya, Nigeria, Ecuador, and Uruguay.

We also hosted, at our own expense in Italy, seven Nigerian cardiologists, introducing them to the principles of cardiovascular rehabilitation and prevention, based on what we considered the foundation of our vision: the human relationship with the patient.

In India, Dr. K.K. Hyder Siddiqui had founded the affiliated chapter of Heart Friends Around The World, now carried forward by his son, Dr. Khawer Naveed Siddiqui, also a distinguished cardiologist. The association has recently been renewed, with a strong openness to international dialogue and active connections in India, the United Kingdom, Bangladesh, and the Arabian Peninsula.

In my current path, emphasizing the importance of the heart as an organ whose periodic oscillation may represent a reference point for quantum and conscious information within the human body, my wife and I founded the Casina Briga Foundation for Research in the Sciences of Consciousness in Italy.

I believe that the Foundation can play an essential role also in cardiology, considering that the heart—through its intrinsic nervous system, neurons, and ganglia—interacts coherently with the brain and functions as a relational organ capable of fostering well-being and healing.
Within this perspective, the physician–patient relationship increasingly orients itself toward the research and transformation of what I define as “pathosophy”: the original existential cause of pathology.

Preliminary experiences have shown positive signals, particularly in improving cardiac remodeling in patients with non-ischemic cardiomyopathy in Iran. A study was conducted using cardiac magnetic resonance imaging at Omid Hospital in Tehran, in collaboration with Drs. Zahra Alidez Sani and Sonia Rezaee. The research was entirely funded by Heart Friends Around The World, while the researchers’ participation was voluntary.

With the establishment of the Casina Briga Foundation and the renewed international structure of the association based in Kolkata, we agreed to discontinue the activities of the Italian branch of Heart Friends Around The World, while formalizing a collaboration agreement between the two entities.

Today, my role as Patron of the association in India and the presence of Dr. Khawer Naveed Siddiqui on the International Advisory Board of the Foundation represent the basis for an integration aimed at studying the heart not only as a pump, but as a fractal node within a cardioconscious network in a holographic universe.

A definition that can be fully understood only through the experience of non-dual transperception—a universal human quality supported by the rhythmic oscillation of the heartbeat.

We have both the time and the responsibility to carry forward this research with rigor and foresight. When we speak of consciousness, we speak of experience—an area in which it becomes challenging to reconcile experience with experiment, the foundation of traditional science.
A first collaboration between Heart Friends and the Foundation will focus on “First Line Prevention,” that is, the prevention of disease even before signs and symptoms appear, through the perception of states of consciousness and the investigation of pathosophy, understood as the original deviation from one’s life project.

This collaboration will also look toward the development of research in the Sciences of Consciousness, a field still in its early stages, yet with future perspectives that require an open and non-reductionist approach.

The recent visit of Dr. Siddiqui to Italy marks the beginning of this new shared path. We move forward together.

Dr. Flavio Burgarella