The Origin of Planet Heart™ Neuro-Art

By Tali Lehavi

Long before "adult coloring" or "mindfulness art" existed, Planet Heart™ began as a childhood doodling habit and a creative yet practical question: Can I actually build an entire planet made of hearts?

I was determined to make it as realistically possible while knowing it was make-believe. Even as a child playing with plush toys, I was hyper-aware they weren't real—this left-versus-right brain tug-of-war has been active inside me since the very start.

From School Notebooks to Library of Congress Registrations

At least as early as junior high and high school, I filled the margins of my notebooks with the F2 (Family-Friendship) 4-heart motif—the foundational symbol that later became central to Planet Heart. I would draw an X, fill the tops with heart curves, and wedge more hearts off of it. It was how I focused during class. (And yes, I still have those notebooks today!)

By college, while designing potential Planet Heart product lines like toys, jewelry, and linens, I searched the market for heart beads and patterns that could interlock. I discovered that none of the hearts on the market had a base angle that matched its top "mouth." (Yes, I had named the parts of the heart by then!) Standard hearts back then were placed randomly; they were never arranged to wedge.

To me, aligning and connecting them felt like second nature—it’s how hearts, and people, are meant to be. But none of the hearts on the market could link bottom-tip to top-mouth or wedge side-by-side. On fabrics, they were always dispersed. I was shocked. Hearts are meant to be together!

This meant that in order to build a planet made of hearts based on my hand-drawn designs, I would need to produce a single heart unit that could someday be manufactured into a building toy, a bead, and all the elements that would allow children to build a world of hearts. (This was before 3D printing existed, so I needed a practical design to keep manufacturing costs low.)

I set out to fix this in the most practical way, daring myself to see how far I could take the challenge. Dial-up internet was just starting, and while a few items from UC Berkeley's Doe Library were being digitized, there were no algorithms or formulas for the heart geometry I was seeking. I searched, but no heart existed that matched my criteria.

My goal wasn't just to draw a heart—all hearts are wonderful for what they represent—but to engineer a "perfect" heart defined by specific geometric features. I needed a heart that could be used in multiple orientations and wedge seamlessly with identical copies. That way, if it were a physical toy, it could function like a building block (much like a LEGO® piece). I manually adjusted the curves, flipped the shape, and tested it repeatedly until I created a heart with what I called "magical powers."

From there, I systematically tested and named 2-heart combinations, 3-heart arrangements, and centered identical hearts along an X-Y axis—wedging outward from my core F2 symbol to create angles at every corner where even more hearts could link. I wanted to patent this geometry, but due to a lack of funds, it became my trademark: a proprietary, hand-measured heart that interlocks infinitely in every direction. It could even flip over itself to form a heart in any orientation—a secret feature I kept hidden for a future big reveal to the fan club!

Listening to My Brain: How Neuro-Art Was Discovered

As I drew intricate heart mandalas, heart-flower landscapes, and "heartling" characters befriending flowers in the same scenes, I paid close attention to the internal dialogue happening inside my mind:

  • My Left Brain’s Precision: I felt compelled to create geometric symmetry, balance, and pattern harmony across every heartling and flower mandala. My left brain recognized fascinating patterns within the X-Y layers and across Z-layers, pushing me to match those patterns throughout the image and even into shading styles. I couldn't not see the patterns.
  • My Right Brain’s Creative Freedom: An intuitive voice in me wanted to break the pattern for aesthetic expression, pushing back against the strict rules of the left brain. I felt that "breaking out of the pattern" was like adding the dimples, freckles, and wrinkles that make faces interesting. After years of sitting in academic settings and following society's rules in general, I needed this creative freedom like oxygen. My right hemisphere needed to express itself beyond geometric boundaries.
  • My Left Brain’s Justifications: Every time I let my right hemisphere have its way, my left brain explained it away—attaching meaning, value, and narrative roles to those "dimples" and unexpected pattern breaks. Eventually, the two sides found benefit in listening to each other. I discovered that if I let my stream of consciousness roam free and then invited the left brain to attach meaning, those interpretations fed directly into the storylines. One truly fed the other.
  • The Discovery of Choice: As this tug-of-war repeated, I became better at hearing both sides and letting them accept each other's input graciously. I became a better decision-maker. That is when I saw the profound benefit for others: being faced with a clear geometric pattern creates a safe, meditative space to practice decision-making—choosing when to honor the pattern and when to break it.

The key was that the paper provided a safe, low-stakes space to practice these foundational life skills. Having built-in patterns gave structure, while leaving room to release a stream of consciousness, reflect, and listen inwardly. Engaging in this safe tug-of-war between hemispheres is what ultimately leads to what I termed Hemispheric Harmony™.

By 1997, I had hand-bound at least 20 of these original books and filed them with the Library of Congress. I organized sub-genres of pattern coloring long before commercial publishers recognized the concept—creating books divided by spatial challenges, books for mindfulness to reach Hemispheric Harmony™, and SAT-style pattern analogies along an X-Y-Z axis. These were entirely new categories that simply didn't exist yet.

A Vision Built for Human Connection

Pitching this body of work to traditional literary and talent agencies was difficult. I mailed entire packages filled with about 16 sample books, accompanied by sample stories kept neatly in a manila folder. Was I pitching a single story? No—I had created multiple stories. Was I pitching an activity book? No—I was presenting an entire ecosystem, complete with special coloring papers, markers, and product lines.

Agencies struggled to comprehend such a massive, multi-faceted vision: a world of heartlings with main characters, mindfulness coloring books, tools for decision-making, school activity sets, character education activity books, a Heart Pictionary, and toy lines growing out of all of it.

Every shirt, mandala, and mindfulness book available today is rooted in that original, organic discovery: listening to my brain, finding my own Hemispheric Harmony™, wanting to benefit others through neuro-art, and building a world of love from scratch.