The small space in your heart
For quite some time I have been wondering about yoga and the heart and the different perspectives that three of my yoga teachers have on it. And it was actually with last week’s yoga class with Yoga Pursang (I have been practising yoga with Michelle for eleven years now!) that I felt and understood the importance and deeper meaning of the heart.
It’s not rare someone talking about the heart whether or not related to yoga. There seems to be a particular knowing in the heart. Don’t you have that sometimes that you hear yourself saying something, but at heart and/or belly level you feel completely the opposite?
And this has already been the case for ages. Let’s look at a few quotes:
Buddha: "Your work is to discover your world and then with all your heart give yourself to it."
Swami Sivananda: "Put your heart, mind, intellect and soul even into your smallest acts. This is the secret of success." Robert Valett: "The human heart feels things the eyes cannot see, and knows what the mind cannot understand." Blaise Pascal: "The heart has reasons that reason cannot know." François de la Rochefoucauld: "The heart is forever making the head its fool." Kahlil Gibran: "Beauty is not in the face; Beauty is a light in the heart." Confucius: "Wherever you go, go with all your heart." James Earl Jones: "One of the hardest things in life is having words in your heart that you can't utter."
You might have heard yoga teachers saying ‘open your heart’ or someone telling you “your heart knows it”, but I have been possibly resisting that, because if we were to look at the system of the chakras, there exists dual energy at all chakras.
Working consciously and ongoing with and meditating on the chakras creates a lot of clarity and a deep inner and energetic connection.
However, in my opinion and experience so far, it might feel that you have ‘completed’ the work at for instance the first and second chakra, however a particular daily challenge might bring you back to the first one again. It’s intense yet beautiful and ongoing work.
Let’s explore that dual energy a bit more in particular for the heart chakra, Anahata. The phrase “open your heart so that your love can stream” sounds really beautiful and tempting, but it proves out to be a challenging endeavour. Because what is the opposite of love…? Right, hate or fear….
I feel it can be risky to tell your yoga clients to open your heart, because basically a lot of sh** can come out. This is dependent upon the work and practices you have been doing with them and how well you know and feel them.
I feel strongly connected to that with Anahata Chakra, however through the yoga practices with Michelle where we use a lot of Kapalbhati breath (breath of fire) and/or opening and reinforcement of the chest area, I have felt strong energetic changes at the level of the heart. And it wasn’t until last Monday that I got it!
She read out a very interesting article about the heart and addressed the yoga practice to it.
The article is called “The small space in the heart” (translated from Dutch) by Juno Burger in which he refers to how more and more research is carried out by the Institute of HeartMath providing more insight into the incredible intelligence of the heart. Compared to the brains, the electromagnetic field of the heart is electrically 100x stronger and magnetically 5000x. A lot of energy is needed to arouse such a field and that energy in particular emerges out of polarities from our daily lives, in which our mind plays a significant role. The more our mind interferes, the more polarities are created or kept in place, which ultimately leads to stress.
He furthermore outlines that the field that the heart generates is toroidal. A toroid is a mathematical object in the shape of a doughnut and this field is able to take in information and energy via this hole of the doughnut.
In the Veda they talk about ‘the small space in the heart’ and it’s the only space in our system where there aren’t any polarities.
And this is what I have started to experience through the yoga practices and which has allowed me to let experiences, disagreements, daily obstacles and comments run through me and not get stuck in my body, mind or spirit. But also, the more I practice yoga and the more I meditate on the heart area, the more my heart feels open, protected and filled, allowing me to reach out to people and support them.
The more you reinforce the heart area (through yoga for instance), practice the breath of fire, dive into the chakras and meditate more, I believe you can truly connect your head, heart and hands to live and be more consciously, which ultimately is important for yourself, for other people and for our planet.