Every morning, I try to do this thing. I lie in bed with my hand over my heart and I listen. I tell myself I am safe and I move from love. Then, I let myself be in that energy.
I started doing this a few months ago, and to be honest, I felt a little silly. I’m not the girl to write affirmations in lipstick on the mirror and I’m usually quick to skeptic. The east coaster in me wants facts and drive. And sometimes, a whiskey.
So when my teacher challenged me to deeply settle into the vibration of my heart, I didn’t love it. In fact, I didn’t like it. Working with my mind, I dug. Talking through yogic concepts, I dug. But, settling into the warmth of my heart? The intangibility of the whole practice felt like it was thus inconsequential.
I was wrong.
Heart Is Boss
In yoga, you sometimes hear that the heart is the “highest consciousness”—the thing least affected by avidya (ignorance / delusion)— the thing we need to learn to best honor. Medical science tells us the same thing; the heart literally has the strongest electromagnetic field in the body!
But if you are of the human variety, it seems like nowadays, the heart is the thing we come to feel wary of or even deny. We protect it. We avoid it. We blame it.
Why not love it?
The heart speaks, and when it speaks, the heart deserves to be listened to. Because of its high electromagnetic charge, the heart can sense shifts in energies of people before words are spoken. It can also spread its energy in much the same way. Basically, your heart is a boss.
The Yogic Heart
Yogic teachings take it one step further. Our heart is housed in the Anahata Chakra (anahata = “unstruck sound”). The quality of the unstruck sound is the same quality that makes up nadam or the universal vibration. Simply put, our heart speaks and energizes to the universe.
For me, when I realized this, it not only made logical sense but it physically felt so so freeing! Our heart is our connection to the universe; not our knowledge. Not even our beautiful bodies. Our most profound energy is the energy within.
