The Heart Knows, The Heart Heals

The heart is your great communicator. It communicates with all the parts of your body, and with your brain. It communicates with the outside environment, picking up signals through its electromagnetic field, especially emotional responses. Your senses—sight, sound, smell, taste and feel—tell the heart of what is happening on the outside so that your heart feels and knows everything. When it feels something, the heart tells the brain to put the feeling into context. The brain, in turn, guides thoughts, behaviors and actions through mobilizing the endocrine, cardiac, immune, musculoskeletal, immune and other systems. In short, the heart feels, tells the brain, the brain puts it all together, then stimulates the heart and other organ systems to work together to create the necessary action appropriate for the situation. It’s a tight system.rnThe heart remembers all the feelings you have experienced your entire life--positive and negative. When you have an experience now that is joyful, the heart will reflect back to a similar experience and induce the same kind of good feelings you had in the past. In contrast, if you have a stressful experience, the opposite will happen and negative feelings from your past will come back. To protect you from being hurt again, the heart will signal the brain and the stress response will be evoked. A wall to protect you will be put up. Hidden WoundsrnWhy do you think you react? Why do you react with anger, shame, or fear, often with a much bigger reaction than the situation warrants? We all have wounds. We have all had experiences in our lives that taught our hearts to shut down or to close down. These experiences lie deep within your memory, so as you go through your lives, situations may stimulate these memories, causing you to automatically react in fear, angry, shame or other negative emotion, which stimulates an automatic physical action associated with that emotion. The reaction is instantaneous, like the reflex that occur when the hammer hits the knee at the doctor’s office. The reaction is part of the stress response. When the stress response is over-activated, it becomes the Fear Response. If it doesn’t stop, you body’s system will break down in one form or another, resulting in some kind of physical or mental problem—insomnia, fatigue, body aches, inflammation, over-eating, you name it. For this reason, learning to heal your heart and the memories of hurt from your past also heals your body and mind. By reprogramming your unconscious mind with new active beliefs that are positive and loving and by surrounding yourself and your heart with unconditional love, your physiology can shift into the Love Response rather than the Fear Response. Here’s an example how: EXERCISE: Acknowledging the heart Close your eyes.rnBring your awareness to your chest, to your heart.rnJust notice what your chest feels like.rnNotice your breath moving in and outrnNotice any sensation in your chestrnSimply now acknowledge your heart and all your memories, from the past and the present.rnImagine now that the sun shines down upon you rays of golden love filled with unconditional love and grace.rnThose rays of light are beginning to flow into your chest, right into your heart.rnThose rays of light are massaging your heart, healing your heart.rnAs the golden light surrounds you and fills your heart, repeat these words: “I deserve this love and I accept this love with gratitude.”rnHold this image and repeat these words as often as you wish.