It seems like a strange thing to say – yet if you stop for a moment, how often do you rush through this moment, eager to get to the next? Confronting what lies ahead of you, with a just get it done kind of attitude. Well of course you’d be forgiven for that, given the pressure and busy-ness of life right now – especially for those of you raising a family. But how often do you look in hindsight at your week and fail to feel the satisfying fulfilment of rich interactions, meaningful achievements and the relief that comes with knowing the contentment of a life being well lived?
Perhaps you feel like you have no choice – that you are to some extent powerless over the circumstances you find yourself in. Repeating the same thoughts, patterns and feelings with no way out of the maze, the walls of which seem to be closing in on you tighter and tighter. I wonder how long you can go on in that situation? What do you think?
Can I invite you to stop for a minute?
I’d ask you to close your eyes but then you’d have to stop reading and that wouldn’t work at all! How does your body feel? If you imagined a spotlight scanning over your body slowly from the top of your head, over your shoulders, travelling down your torso, shining a light on any areas of tension and as you do so you notice those muscles relax a little – as if, just by bringing your awareness to the tightness it lets go. Take that flashlight and shine it into your heart. Imagine you are looking deeply into your heart. What do you notice?
What would happen if you imagined you were looking out through your heart – shining that light out onto your life from your heart? What would you see? How would your life look from the eye of your heart? What does your life feel like from within your heart? As you look out, you might notice the rhythmic breathing of your breath in the background, the pulsating beat of your heart, constant, reliable, safe, comforting.
How does that feel? Did you notice time slowing down a little? How comfortable are you in your own heart? Did you notice you inadvertently jumped back into your head?
Here’s some fun facts
- You can be brain dead and your heart still goes on beating, but if your heart stops working, that’s it for your head.
- The heart is the first organ to develop in a foetus, while the brain starting to form around 7 weeks is not thought to finish developing until around age 25.
- Your heart has neural networks far superior to that of the brain and according to Heart Maths*, is a highly complex information-processing center with its own functional ‘brain’ that communicates with and influences cranial brain function and most of the body’s major organs, playing an important role in mental and emotional experience and the quality of our lives.
- Our heart, it’s been shown, significantly influences the way we perceive and respond in daily interactions – acting as though it has a mind of its own.
- The hearts rhythms are the most dynamic and reflective indicator of emotional states, stress and cognitive processes, which means if we can create a coherent heart state, we can also create an optimal physiological state – increased cognitive function, self-regulatory capacity, emotional stability and resilience.
- In almost all traditions, the heart has for centuries been known as a source of courage and wisdom.
So what happened?
How did we go from a species in tune with our own courageous hearts and coherent with our surroundings to the anxiety ridden, mental model of life we have today? Did we lose the way to our own hearts by becoming more focused on trying to figure out, fix and stop our feelings? Was it from studying, testing, researching and documenting the way we feel in order to understand our world and our place in it? Was it from the development of drugs, therapies and institutions designed to help us reconnect to our happiness, convincing us we are broken and encouraging an obsession with our problems, rather than a long lasting solution?
It’s my belief that the massive, almost insurmountable problem humans face now around mental and emotional health is for one fundamental reason.
Feelings are NOT thinkings
Our heads cannot do the job of our hearts. My head cannot fix my heart and my heart can’t be understood by my head. I have to feel to access my heart’s true power, and if I have been raised to use my head to fix everything, I may even find it challenging to identify a feeling. It took me quite some time, at 37, to learn how to feel again. I had been thinking my feelings for so long, I was missing a huge piece of my puzzle.
I realised I had been using conditioned strategies (dynamics) to deal with my feelings and so lost my capacity to experience the richness of life. That is, my relationship with my feelings consisted of suppression, avoidance, resistance or denial. What does that tell you about the relationship I had with my own heart??
I’ve discovered the heart is a ‘portal’ that generates love – it expresses my true nature of peace and freedom. My heart has always had the power to create a coherent state and resolve the most impossible of challenges in ways that create more connection and harmony. That is, I’ve observed, my heart can harmonise experiences as they arise – if I don’t jump into my head and try to fix/control things. Furthermore, if my heart can generate love, the patterns of behaviour I used to use to ‘get’ love are unnecessary. This completely changed the WAY I was in relationship with others.
What if the mental world we live in has distracted us from looking into our hearts?
Could the consequences of this way of living be anxiety, depression, fear, judgement, resentments? Suicides, disconnection, relationship breakdowns, violence, wars, fear? What if the relationship we don’t have with our hearts is the cause of low self-esteem, lack of self-love and self-trust? More importantly, what if the heart, as you might read in ancient texts, is our source of clarity and TRUTH, without which we find ourselves in dysfunctional societies and a world being led by “Emperors in new clothes” – lots of bells and whistles but no substance?
Luckily, the heart holds our solutions if we are brave enough to look.
I’d love to suggest an ‘emotional awakening’ – transforming our emotional operating system by activating our heart power and creating new levels of coherence in all our relationships. It is natural to live through our hearts – and what is natural is easy, satisfying, sustainable and fun. It’s not as hard as you might think to make the flip – your biggest hurdle may be the willingness of your own mind. It’s mighty tempting to keep doing what’s familiar even though life gets more uncomfortable every day. However, being brave enough to lean into change comes with some very substantial rewards. No more repetitive cycles in relationship (along with the capacity to heal hurts in situ), new levels of creative potential and feelings of deep connection to a rich and joyful life. Compare that to what you’ve got going now – you be the judge. What sort of relationship do you have with your own heart?
Sending love, Lisa x
Lisa Jayne is an Emotions and Relationship Specialist, Psychedelic Assisted Therapist, Author and Speaker. She teaches a process of Heart Mapping that supports people to reactivate the authentic power of their hearts, creating new levels of coherence in all their relationships. Schedule a call to find out more here or email info@iamlisajayne.com for more details.
- Heart Maths https://www.heartmath.com/