This had been, without a doubt, the most rewarding 15 minutes of my life, as well. I began having similar if not, in some ways, identical results with my 4 external clients. Breakthrough after breakthrough with significantly more regularity and greater impacts than before came through to my clients AND to me. The more I cut off the ‘thinking head’, the thinking ‘heart’ sliced through to the ‘heart of the matter’ each and every time.
Here is a quote from one of my clients shortly after our next session: “she gets right to the heart of the matter, enabling clients to feel empowered”, Max Bolka. But, of course, I give him and my clients the credit, as well, as they are opening their hearts and trusting themselves for their own answers, seemingly, much more easily and faster than ever before. Now that we have incorporated these heart exercises into our sessions and into our lives, it feels as if we have practically fast-forwarded our entire evolutionary processes.
One of my clients was so elated with her progress in our next two sessions that she spoke to the director of a local Unity Spiritual Center and I got a phone call asking me to do a weekend workshop on the “Uses of the Heart and Finding your Purpose” (the latter had been the focus of my clients’ goals). I decided to let my heart guide me and though I made a rough outline of the material I would cover during a 6 hour session, I never did stick to it and it did turn out beautiful.
POWERS OF THE HEART
The highlight of the workshop was an impromptu experiment I now call ‘detecting heart energy’. Quite by accident, while describing the ‘feeling’ I have that I use to discern whether my heart is open or closed, we discovered just how powerful the energy of the heart can be. I was demonstrating that I felt like my heart was open almost like a window being opening by pulling the top glass panel down from my neck to my navel and encouraged all to try different methods (one found that she could just picture a big swimming pool in the area of her heart and it made her whole body feel better).
I had been sitting directly across – approximately 15 feet away – from a participant named Jan. She had gotten up to go to the bathroom and came back in the room after we had begun experimenting in closing our hearts or ‘windows’ (curtains, or swimming pools). I could see that Jan had no idea what we were doing at that point and when I stopped to see if I might catch her up – she was looking puzzled – she cut me off by asking in a very annoyed if not paranoid voice, “what IS going on”? I told her, quickly, we had just been experimenting with ‘closing off’ our heart energy and she BURST into tears and state, “it felt like when I sat down you erected a big brick wall while I was gone or something”!
We then went around the room, starting with Jan, and asked each to describe the differences and how subtle or palpable they were. It was amazing to me to find, without exception, everyone felt the ‘heart energy’ extremely well and the lack thereof almost moreso. We then experimented with pairing up people, faced them to each other and used our own individual methods of sending and closing off the energy. In every case, no matter who we paired with whom, with eyes closed, the recipient could always tell when the ‘deliverer’ of the energy was ‘opening the floodgates’ or ‘shutting them tight’.
It seemed to me that it was clear that not only could our hearts’ energies be helpful to US in calming, perhaps healing, and trusting our resultant decision-making processes and conclusions, but, our energies were effecting others in either a positive way (when hearts ‘open’) or negative way (when we voluntarily shut them down)! Perhaps the benefits of ‘heart-minding’ with my clients were working on many more levels than I had thought: MY heart energy was affecting them and me in a positive and healing way and their open hearts were doing the same for me and for themselves. No wonder, I’d thought, the CP class and the workshop were the most profound (though the individual coaching sessions were nothing less than marvellous, too). We had groups, in likely both cases, of open hearts. I concluded, certainly, ‘the more the merrier’ – so to speak.
FURTHER BENEFITS of an OPEN HEART
Not only, as Rinpoche states, does an open heart naturally open the mind for new and often the best and ‘highest’ ideas, according to Michael Singer (Singer, 2007), opening the heart is absolutely essential for all/any emotional healing to take place. He explains in his book, The Untethered Soul, that following the common human reaction of ‘closing up’ / restricting our chest and heart areas when our buttons are pushed – i.e. from a snide remark, a cold shoulder, a criticism – only keeps the pain in. True healing comes when we ‘stand behind’ ourselves when a ‘button is pushed’ and allow the pain to be present, to witness it, and to let it move through us. This happens only when we consciously open up the heart and relax the whole body during any perceived attack or even when a resistance is felt to anything outside of ourselves in the present moment. Rather than resist or close, we breathe, open up, relax our heart area and allow whatever pain or discomfort needs to be felt. The result is nothing short of healing. The pain truly leaves and he states that his experiences in teaching over the years shows that it is a permanent healing and the only way he has yet to come across such a powerful tool.
It is fascinating that Jill Bolte Taylor, the brain scientist (Taylor, 2008) only discovered true ‘peace of mind’ when her left brain (the logical, rational, and linearly reasoning part of the brain) was temporarily rendered non-functioning by a stroke. In her book describing the experience, she explains that when only her right brain, which is thought of as the intuitive part of the ‘brain’, was functioning, there was a peace deep within her that was beyond anything she’d ever experienced before. While in the hospital in this state she could, for the first time, ‘feel’ the energy of each and every person in her presence and know what they were feeling inside themselves and what they were feeling for or toward her. Perhaps this was her right brain or perhaps, as the many spiritual avatars throughout history and new heart-mind scientists are discovering, it was simply that her left brain was quiet – the interference of the of the incessant chatter (that meditators claim to quiet) is no longer present and the heart energy can take over bringing the much needed calm that the body and mind crave.
The heart may indeed be our greatest intuiter and healer. Unlike the brain or ‘head-mind’ it’s advice and insights always seem to feel true and good. It seems to empower rather than deflate and strengthen the body rather than weaken. When the heart works with the brain and takes the leading role, even the brain seems to increase in vitality and harmonious thoughts furthering the well-being of its host and perhaps, even those around it.
References
Institute of HeartMath (2001), Clinical Research, accessed February 2012 http://www.heartmath.org/research/science-of-the-heart/clinical-research.html
Taylor, Jill Bolte, (2008), My Stroke of Insight, Penguin Group, New York NY, USA
Rinpoche, Tsoknyi, (2012), Open Heart, Open Mind, Harmony Books, New York NY, USA
Singer, Michael, (2007), The Untethered Soul, New Harbinger/Noetic Books, USA
McTaggart, Lynne, (2002), The Field, Harper Collins, New York NY, USA