Happy Valentines Week!
Happy Valentines week! I hope that yours is filled with heart felt love and connections.
In yoga, the heart center is considered the seat of the Self. Energetically, its central location gives it the unique quality of connecting the lower centers of the body with the upper centers of the body and brain. Science now knows that there are more neural networks connecting the heart to the brain than the other way around. In other words, the heart informs the brain! That is, if we don’t block it and at least give it a chance.
For thousands of years priority was given to the lower centers of survival so that we could simply maintain as a species. Then logic and analysis took priority and we seemed to completely bypass the wisdom of the heart. But now as matter is being questioned as the fundamental basis of reality, consciousness is being given a more serious look. In his book, An End to Upside Down Thinking, Dispelling the Myth that the Brain produces Consciousness, Mark Gober makes the case that, in study after peer reviewed study, science has never been able to prove that the brain produces consciousness. I believe it was Swami Satchitanada who said that the brain does not produce consciousness, it is a reducing valve FOR consciousness. In other words, matter is not fundamental, consciousness is! I love it when science catches up with yoga philosophy ;-). And consciousness is not localized in the brain, it is in fact the foundation of all that we experience.
Yoga has long espoused that the heart center has its’ own power and language. It knows and sees how we are all connected and will guide us in that direction as we become established in this center of awareness. When our attention/energy moves into the heart, the body (and ego) can let go. We come into a state of present moment awareness and the heart informs the brain that past trauma is over. It also helps us to be open to future possibilities not based on the trauma of the past.
I recently read that “fright” is a temporary and necessary survival reaction. “Fear” is holding onto, reliving, storing in the body and projecting that fright into the future. When we live established in the heart, we can more readily make the distinction between fright and fear. The voice of the heart becomes our inner guidance system. It gives us courage, care, kindness and a deep abiding feeling of love and connection from within. And it is always available to us.
I’ve begun starting and ending my day while still in bed, by placing a hand on my heart and taking 5 very slow deep breaths. It shifts my energy away from thoughts of anxiety or worry to appreciation and gratitude for the day that has passed or the one yet to come.
Many Heart-y returns,
Love,
Lynne