A gift from the heart
Connecting with friends, family, and community during the fall and winter holidays is meant to warm our hearts. But when we lose touch with the heartfelt reasons for celebrations, gift giving, and gatherings, we can experience the season as full of pressure, obligations, burdensome expectations, and painful disappointment. Anticipated happiness often gives way to tension, frayed nerves, and fits of temper.
Instead of pouring Prozac in the water supply, why not learn some mind-body techniques for focusing your heart energy in ways that calm and soothe body, mind, and spirit. But be warned: studies have shown there are side effects to heart-centered practices. They can lower your blood pressure, soothe headaches, alleviate insomnia, reduce anxiety and depression, increase feelings of optimism, improve cognitive performance, enhance healing, and decrease pain. And because your harmonious heart energy radiates all around you, affecting anyone nearby, you could find yourself as popular as Santa Claus.
Your heart is the strongest generator of electromagnetic energy in your body. Its signal can be measured as far as eight feet past your body's perimeter. Experiments at the University of Arizona's Human Energy Systems Laboratory have demonstrated that the heart's energy signal is powerful enough to entrain or draw into synchronization the electrical brain patterns of a nearby person and change that person's mood.
In many Eastern traditions the heart is considered to possess an intelligence that makes it the governor of rest of the body. Modern science concurs with this idea. Research reveals the role the heart's electromagnetic signal plays in synchronizing other body systems. Studies done by the Institute of HeartMath show that "techniques which combine intentional heart focus with the generation of sustained positive feelings lead to a beneficial mode of physiological function they have termed psychophysiological coherence."
You can deliberately invoke this beneficial synchronizing power of your heart energy by using heart-centered mind-body practices. Choose either of the following techniques for optimizing your heart energy, or mix and match them to create your own method. Used even casually, practices like these can benefit your physical heart and body, as well as quiet the mind. But if you really put your heart into them, they can be truly transformative.
If you're shy about getting in touch with the energy of your heart, it may take some practice to feel confidence in your ability to sustain your heart focus and shift your mood, but be assured that these are games that anyone can play. Unlike meditation, once you learn these techniques, you can use them at any time. It's simply a matter of making a habit of focusing positive energy through your heart whenever you find yourself in a challenging situation.
When you first practice these exercises, sit quietly with your eyes closed. After you become familiar with evoking positive emotion while focusing on your heart, you can practice them anywhere, any way you like. The most important thing to remember is that what makes these exercises "work" is maintaining a heart-centered focus while feeling -- not thinking about -- positive emotion.
There is undisputed scientific evidence that this is an area where the deliberate use of consciousness produces powerful beneficial effects on your physiology and psychology. Heart-centered mind-body practices are quick, easy, portable, and cost nothing. You may want to make this the gift you give yourself this holiday season.
Warming Your Heart
This practice is modeled on Heart Rhythm Meditation, which is based on an old Sufi practice. It is the subject of the book Living From The Heart: Heart Rhythm Meditation, by Puran Bair.
- Relax as you center your attention on your heart beating warmly in your chest. Sink your awareness deeply into the warm, rhythmic beating of your heart.
- Expand your awareness to follow the warm pulse of your heartbeat as it moves from your heart through your body. Relax into the warmth of your heart's energy pulsing in your face, your eyes, your mouth, your neck, your back, your belly, your arms, and your legs. Where you don't feel the warm pulse clearly, consciously expand the heart's energy into those areas until you feel them warmed and pulsing gently in harmony with your heartbeat.
- Relax further as you maintain your focus on your heartbeat, feeling the warming energy your heart sends throughout your body and into the world. Whenever you find yourself feeling unsettled or notice negative emotion, pause for a few moments to connect with the warm beat of your heart until you feel calm, relaxed, and centered.
Opening Your Heart
This practice is modeled on the Institute of Heartmath's Freeze-Frame technique, explained in the book The HeartMath Solution, by Doc Childre and Howard Martin, Read about more about the Freeze-Frame technique at Heartmath Institute's web site.
- Whenever you notice you're feeling stressed or disturbed by negative emotion, pause and turn your focus to your heart. Imagine breathing through your heart to center your awareness there. Feel your heart energy relaxing and expanding as you breathe through it.
- As you continue to breathe through your heart, fill it with a positive feeling. Imagine a scene, person, or experience that gives you a feeling of relaxation, happiness, appreciation, love, or inspiration. If positive feeling seems too much of a stretch considering your mood or the situation, fill your heart with the relief of neutrality, letting go, or with simple peace and quiet. Relax into the good feeling filling your heart.
- When you feel ready, ask your heart, "What would bring harmony?"
- Open yourself to the answer while you stay focused on the good feeling filling your heart. Whether or not you notice a clear answer, your desire for harmony is always fulfilled by your deliberate shift to this openhearted awareness.