Feed Your Soul - Yoga for the Heart

Yoga for the Heart

Joy in the Heart
What do people from all walks of life have in common? Among many things that might have popped-up in your mind, they all have an emotional heart, that senses, feels, responds to the world, gives comfort to the mind. The heart is a great friend when in joy, full of happiness, but when it is not taken properly care of, fills the world of any person with sorrows.

It is the beating and pounding of the emotions that allow us to be what we are, to do what we want. It is because of our heart that we are cherished by our loved ones, respected by our peers and provided with a sense of self-esteem. The most important thing for every human being is that when your heart is full of joy, all things transform, everything becomes meaningful. It is then a delight to live.

The food tastes better and even a tiniest thing can bring you joy. Nothing bothers you and no one can affect your mood.

Heart and Mind
One day you had to make a decision against your heart. Everything planned, logically arranged, agreed by all, but not satisfying to your heart. Well then, it is the rational and logical choice and you make it. Nevertheless, something stirs-up in your chest, you feel uncomfortable, uneasy and willing to undo that choice you have made. In the long run, it becomes evident that the commitment you have got yourself into, starts ruining your life, getting energy away from you, leading you into a depressive state.

The logical decision you have made could be a marriage, a new business partnership, a new job or any project you might consider. The heart is just not following the intellect and denies you strength to go on with the decision you have made.

Then you decide not to listen to your heart and emotions and go on with your project. You do not let your heart speak and fill your mind with down-to-earth reasons in order to contradict your emotions. However, the heart will find a way to make itself heard. It may make you feel anxious; it may cause you sleeping disorders and maybe lead you to stress and/or illness.

For example, a man works at a company as an accountant and he is the breadwinner of the family. He has two children and cannot quit the job, although he hates the dull daily routines of crunching numbers over and over, feeding meaningless data into a computer. He in fact, would like to be a counseling psychologist, but cannot afford to pay tuition in order to pay for the expenses of the family, and does not even have the time to dedicate himself to the studies. That is what his heart desires.

On the other hand, his logical mind tells him that he must be accountable for child rearing expenses and the house mortgage. All those concerns prevent him from quitting his present job in order to achieve his dreams. Therefore, he follows the logical mind, and keeps on with his unpleasant work. In the long run, his professional and personal dissatisfaction grows so much that he ends-up developing tendonitis.

He then seeks professional help of an acupuncturist and finds out that his deep dissatisfaction with his job is the cause of his ailments. The illness was a way for his emotional heart to tell the logical mind that something was missing. The heart was telling that he needed personal fulfillment through professional life.

A young fashion designer works in a very demanding environment that requires from her a lot of her energy and talent. Fashion career is what this young woman has always sought after as a professional fulfillment, and although financially well rewarded, her emotional heart yearns for more free time, in order to devote quality time to her husband who is becoming estranged because she is never home.

Logically, she was trailing what her career plan has traced for her, getting an above average financial compensation. However, she was not happy for the outcome of the detailed career planning she had set for herself, for she was losing her husband. Eventually her husband asks for a divorce and she gets into depression. She feels very weak and has hard time to keep up with the job's demands. One day she wakes-up with an incredible back pain and she is not able to go to work. Physicians run a thorough examination of her lower back and find no anomalies. Again, the emotional heart had found a way to make itself heard.

A woman in her fifties suffers severe fatigue, joint pains and sleep disorders. She describes herself as being disillusioned and embittered by life and often feeling unable to make positive changes. She spent most of her life taking care of her family, raising children, looking after her husband. By following a role model dictated by her logical mind, she had found fulfillment as housewife and mother, however through denial of her own heart and self. Although love giving and compassionate, she had through all those years of self-denial, systematically behaved to erase and to rebut every trace of her individuality. The loving and caring mother forewent taking care of herself, by replacing her husband’s and children’s individual fulfillment as being of her own.

She then becomes disillusioned and embittered as the family does not recognize enough her efforts and her loved ones do not behave as she has expected and dreamt of. This free behavior of her family members gets her desperate, for she had projected her self fulfillment in them. She starts to develop a negative view of life, often thinking that something bad might occur to her family members. Her emotional heart complains by causing pains all over her body and thus becoming the center of attention of the family. This is the way her heart had found to recover her individuality from the family, by getting back all the loving and caring she had devoted to them.

Although there is nothing wrong in pursuing one’s logical mind, there must be a balance between heart and mind. The most important thing is to be able to follow one’s commitments in family/working life with joy and fulfillment in the heart. A joyful heart will always enable further enjoyment in life and strength for more material and spiritual fulfillments.

Now let us suppose you follow only your heart's wishes. You wake-up one day and you feel like not going to work, or prepare your kids' breakfast. Let us say someone will do that for you. You will feel great one day, but if you keep on indulging yourself, doing everything as your heart pleases, you will create a murky load of laziness in your chest and not be able to do a thing. Ancient Chinese Taoists called it humidity of the heart and the Hindi called a state predominated by tama, of inactivity. You will then start feeling lazy about doing anything and even not willing to feed yourself if you overindulge to the wishes of the heart.

Structure of the Emotional Heart
Let us consider the emotional heart as an entity living under your chest, channeling all energies related to the body and working as a central harness to the conscious mind. It is a being that feeds and lives on life-energy, call it Shakti (according to Hinduism) or Chi (according to Taoism).

It supplies energy to the mind in the form of emotions and coordinates the life-energy distribution within the various parts of the body, especially the mind. It works in close relationship with decisions made at conscious levels, sending a lot of life-energy especially to decisions that are likely to feedback the emotional heart with life-energy. When the heart is devoid of energy, it will send stress signals throughout the body (illness), and not letting at the same time the mind focus on thinking processes or decisions that are harmful to the emotional heart. The emotional heart simply does not function properly when not appropriately fed with life-energy.

In sum, the emotional heart will be likely to work closely with the mind when it is full of life-energy, and abstaining from participation when bereft of energy.
Taoists would call the logical mind, yang (active essence) and the not so-logical emotions, yin (passive essence). It is well known that a balance between yin and yang is necessary for the benefit of the body, so the same goes for the consciousness composed of mind and heart. Being opposites in essence, both the mind and the heart feed each other with their energies, being co-dependent.

The question is how to feed each part of the mind/heart consciousness without overdrawing energy. Too many logical decisions of the mind leave the heart dry and weak whereas too much indulgence of the heart leaves the mind lazy. One must first understand with the mind how the heart feeds and nurtures itself. Then learn how to educate and discipline the heart to behave accordingly, in order to be able to supply life-energy to the mind.

In Katha Upanishad, an ancient Indian scripture, the body of a person is likened to a chariot, in which the mind is the reins directing the horses (heart). If the reins (the mind) are too tight, the horses (heart and emotions) will not get you far. If the reins are too loose, the horses will go astray, taking you anywhere. Who he guides the reins must know the horses and the horses must know what the guider of the reins want, in order to lead the chariot to the right direction.
Wouldn't it be great if you could live on logical choices and at the same time listen to your emotions to your heart's content?

That is not impossible and many people in fact live like that. They are often joyful people, full of discernment and in harmony in their material and spiritual lives. These people can find joy in any environment, no matter what their jobs are, whatever their financial situation are, pressured to study, be in a family with problems, married to a troublesome husband/wife or raising difficult children.

They are mostly love giving and compassionate persons. They are full of self-love, first in love with themselves other than anything else. For a heart full of love-energy cannot be hurt, cannot be soiled nor be frustrated.

Understanding the workings of the heart, giving discipline to the emotions, there arises wisdom (prajña in Sanskrit), as much as discipline to the mind gives rise to intellect and knowledge (jñana in Sanskrit). With knowledge based on wisdom, one will be able to use the intellect to discern when to please the mind or the heart.

Gratitude
One of the aims of this yoga is keeping your heart full of joy. Joy is the panacea for all ailments of the heart. Gratitude will nurse and feed your heart, for it brings joy to the heart. It is a great tool to keep the light in your heart lit, when everything else seems to be lost. When you are extremely sad, bored, angry or full of negative emotions, and nothing seems to be able to change your mood, start feeling gratitude towards everything you possess. Your heart will begin to feel lighter.

You can start feeling gratitude for the very fact that you are alive. Be grateful to the very body that you possess, feel gratitude towards your parents for having sacrificed the best part of their lives so that you could grow. Be grateful to the house in which you live, the food you eat, the air you breathe. Show appreciation for your wife/husband, daughter/son, parents, relatives, friends, colleagues and associates.

When you feel gratitude towards someone, you become able to receive more love from the person you feel grateful. The channels of love between you and the person you feel gratitude are opened, enabling a more positive exchange of energy, making a stronger bond.
You can also feel gratitude for the objects you have. You will be simultaneously thanking the energy of everyone that helped in the process of making, acquiring and using the object. You can start by being grateful towards your personal belongings. Things and persons that are close to you are likely to affect your day-to-day energy.