The Power of the Heart: Finding Your True Purpose in Life (8 page)
Read The Power of the Heart: Finding Your True Purpose in Life Online
Authors: Baptist de Pape
Every moment is unique, unknown, completely fresh.
—PEMA CHÖDRÖN
In order to experience heart coherence, you can connect with your heart by doing the simple
Inner-ease Exercise
, which the Institute of HeartMath developed.
A coherent rhythm causes all the other systems in our body—the brain and nervous system, the immune and endocrine systems, the digestive and circulatory systems—to function better. When we go into heart-rhythm incoherence because of negative emotions like fear or anger, this has bad effects on our immune system.
MARCI SHIMOFF
Heart-rhythm coherence is actually our heart’s optimal state of functioning. But you can’t think your way into coherence—you can’t just think about love and have your heart rhythm sync up. You actually have to feel the love, feel the gratitude, feel the care, feel the compassion. And that will put you into this optimal state of coherence.
When you connect with your heart, you amplify your positive emotions, which are at the core of your Authentic Power.
The Inner-ease Exercise or Love Response
Step 1:
Close your eyes. Put your hand on your heart. This simple act causes a chemical called oxytocin (also known as the “love hormone”) to start coursing through your body.
Step 2:
Imagine you are breathing in and out through your heart. Exhale more deeply than you inhale, as if gravity is pulling your breath down to the ground. Breathe for six counts in and six counts out, exhaling more deeply than inhaling. Keep doing this until your breathing calms and feels natural.
Step 3:
Keep breathing through your heart. On each in-breath, imagine that you’re breathing in ease, love, and compassion. Exhale normally. On each in-breath, breathe in ease, love, and compassion. And exhale. With your third inhalation, feel yourself drawing in ease, love, and compassion through your heart. On the exhale, you can take your hand down and open up your eyes.
Notice how you feel in your body right now compared with how you felt a minute ago. Maybe you feel lighter, more relaxed, more at ease. Maybe you have a warm sensation in your heart or even throughout your body.
Do this exercise whenever you can. Try it particularly when you are not feeling too stressed (or when you are actually feeling good). That way, you will become better at using it whenever you are under stress and need to calm down. You can do this with your eyes open after the first time.
If you do this exercise three to five times a day over the next few weeks, you will start to habituate this inner-ease or love response. It will become more and more a habit, so it becomes your default state. Then all you need to do is put your hand up to your heart and the whole process starts automatically.
GARY ZUKAV
How do you connect with your heart? This is the very core of creating Authentic Power. Creating Authentic Power is learning to distinguish love from fear within yourself and choosing love no matter what’s happening inside of you or what’s going on outside of you.
There are plenty of ways of connecting with your heart and living in the moment. There are as many ways of connecting with the heart as there are people.
ISABEL ALLENDE
My connection is through nature, through my dog. I love to play with a dog. Then I feel my heart exploding and I feel the heat of my heart.
Animals and nature are known to open our hearts, calm us, and reduce blood pressure and stress.
JANE GOODALL
Unless you actually can be out in nature and experience the birds singing in the trees and the blue sky, you are divorced from the great spiritual being that I feel is all around us. And it’s being out there in nature. Then you can become a whole human being with heart and brain and spirit all connected and whole.
Many roads lead to the heart. Children tend to be good at following their hearts. Their enthusiasm and intuition lead them until they are told to rein in those impulses. To connect with your heart, it may help you to reconnect with your inner child. Think of what animated you and filled you with joy when you were young. Allow yourself to feel that again, no matter how simple it was—a color, a place, a toy, a food, a game, a visit with a friend or relative. In that lies a connection to your heart.
Jane Goodall
PAULO COELHO
To connect to your heart, become a child.
Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.
—JESUS
Reconnecting with your inner child is not the same as behaving in a childish way. It is about allowing your adult self to be guided by your inner child, by that inner voice that, with a gentle whisper, points you in the right direction. The heart reveals the coordinates of your true path. You won’t lose your way, even when you seem to be off the beaten track.
ISABEL ALLENDE
When I’m playing with the kids, when I make love to my husband, when I read a good book, when I’m writing and I feel that the character becomes a person and talks to me, then my heart also feels “fluttering.” I think those are the connections with the heart: creativity, nature, love, prayer, and silence.
Even though people have many different ways of connecting with the heart, the feeling of connectedness is a universal experience. It transcends national borders and links souls around the world. Love connects you with other people. Wherever you are, you will instantly recognize a mother’s love for her child—their heart connection is palpable.
MARIANNE WILLIAMSON