Minding the Heart
Even though in our culture we tend to live very much in our heads, our hearts are never really far from our awareness. What other bodily organ has as many poems and songs written about it? Think about it. When was the last time you heard a song about your liver or an ode to your spleen?
There is no part of us more often spoken about, celebrated, or worried about than the human heart! Listen to our language: My heart isn’t into it; I gave him all my heart; My heart feels heavy; My heart felt such compassion for them; She has a courageous heart; My heart sang, soared, sank. How about our descriptors of people: She is cold hearted; He is openhearted; She has an angry heart; My heart is sad?
In spite of our fixation with our gray matter, there is obviously a lot of life that goes on a mere foot below our busy brains!
Our hearts whether we are aware of it or not are actually in the front lines of our lives. It is through our hearts that we connect to the world, experience others, and have relationships for good or ill with people, places and things.
Our hearts do not exist in a vacuum away from the rest of us. We cannot separate our emotional life and its effects on our well being. If a person is habitually angry, sad, stressed, frustrated or depressed have no doubt that there are unhappy neuropeptides, disturbed nerve transmissions and other effects taking place in their heart. The good news is that the opposite is also true. Our positive mental and emotional states have a profound and healing effect on our heart.
Click on the player below for a brief meditation to begin to connect to your heart and develop the ability to calm turmoil, feel love from the inside out and develop inner peace and strength.
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