The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched-they must be felt with the heart
Helen Keller
Last December on my 40th birthday, I started the day with a group of people in a Yoga to Open the Heart class that I was leading. I was grateful and humbled to be there. We were doing the vulnerable and powerful work of tending to, welcoming, healing, and opening the heart. Years ago I could not have led a class like this.
I have always been a compassionate and passionate person but I could not share the wholeness of my being and heart in the way I wished I could. I could engage the wild companions of joy and various pleasures, but part of my heart was silenced and shivering, walled in , keeping some of my spirit locked away and isolated. My pain was holding me when what it needed was for me to hold it.
Most of us in our development had to construct escape hatches out of our tender hearts as the wounds we experienced were too much for us to process consciously. Opening and re-inhabiting the great landscape of the heart takes courage and support.
I heard the call from my heart to open it. It asked to be the guiding force in my work and for its locked away places to be liberated. I begin to breathe deeply into my heart, into my whole heart, to open my arms and lift my chest, to let you in, to let love in and out. Rumi said the cure for the pain is in the pain. I say the cure for the heart is in the heart. The qualities of love, compassion and empathy in the heart are the healers for where the heart is hurt. These are our allies as we move into whole hearted living. We need lanterns of love to take into our shadows, to illuminate what needs attention, care, expression and integration.
“And the Heart said: let there be space for me.” Let us create more space to be, breathe, dance, love and connect with our hearts, to nourish its cracks, crevices, pain, pleasures and dreams.
