Heart Tradition

Our heart is this amazing thing. It is so much more than an organ. Do you have an emotional reaction when thinking of your spleen? Chances are probably not. Because the heart is an organ that is more on the plane with the brain. It enables us to live a life with meaning and depth.

Sure the heart is a rock star organ that pumps blood throughout our body, but also think of all the other things you do with your heart. You can think with your heart, listen to your heart, open your heart, tap into your heart, speak from the heart, love with your whole heart, and so much more. Who would you be without your heart?

Actually we know what a person looks like without a heart, or cut off from the heart. Just think of the Grinch whos heart was two sizes to small, miserable and alone. Or the tin man who lost his heart and is cursed to turning to rust without it. That there was no point to even moving without having a heart. You get the idea.

The heart is this magnificent thing and yet it is so easily hurt. It can turn to stone or have a wall built up around it. When we become cut off from our heart, life can lose its beauty and safety. The world becomes a cold dark place that we must keep ourselves safe from. Often times when people function from a place of over protecting a wounded heart it is rooted in an imbalance of safety, trust, and self love.

On the flip side a happy and open heart is what enables us to have social connections, to build relationships with family members, at its best it is what children so freely give in early childhood: unconditional love. So how do we get back to that place of unconditional love? How do we open ourselves up to all the positivity that the universe has to offer?

When our heart is open it allows us greater insight to our emotions. Nothing needs to be oppressed, we can truly gauge our reactions to stimuli in our environment, we can freely process without a triggering response and our emotional process will guide our response to things rather than reactive thinking.

This is work that is very personal and needs to be done in a safe space. It is soul searching, and deep diving. We can create so many blocks throughout a lifetime in order to keep the heart safe. Below I will offer an activity to try help you work on opening your heart sphere. If this is work that you feel ready to take up than please reach out to me and we can start your heart tradition today.

• Listen - When people are talking to you, just listen. Call people, or invite friends and family over to talk, and ask them how they are doing, and listen. Build and strengthen your relationship to people by truly listening to them. Often times people are thinking of a response rather than listening.

• As you are listening you will notice new things about these people you already know. You will reaffirm why you already care about them.

• You may even hear things that trigger you, but take the time to questions the offending act, take the time to ask yourself where your reaction is stemming from.

• Imagine that all these words are gifts to you and you alone. Appreciate how this individual is opening up to you.

• It may be helpful in this time to journal your experiences so that you can measure your growth.

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