What people say
I can honestly say that, for the first time in 50 years, I’m learning how to just be. How to relish the present moment, which, magically and mysteriously, unlocks the door to the treasure house that is the rest of my life.
- Jennifer Green, Salem, Oregon
From the moment Jon and I connected, I had this deep experience of loving presence and complete trust. Something bypassed my mind and my ability to figure things out, and communicated directly to my heart and soul that I was safe and in the right place. There was a creation of power in our relationship that he honored and witnessed as being mine. It was my power. I had the experience of being wonderfully, beautifully powerful, in the most loving, energized way.
- Laura Lind-Blum, The Idea Midwife, Waterbury Center, Vermont
Jon can help you recognize where you are, and become more clear. My work with him has not been about plotting out my future, it has been about helping me come into deeper relationship with myself so that next steps unfold easily and effortlessly.
He creates a safe, spacious container for you to go as deep or wide or high as you’re capable of in any given moment. It’s a matter of him being able to see the facets and help me make them real in me.
- Sandra Leader, Carmel, CA
My feelings changed from, “Quick, fix me, I can’t stand how I feel, make it better, hurry,” to, it’s not about hurry, and it’s not about fixing, it’s about staying where you are and getting more and more and deeper and deeper sensations that this is okay. You’re fine, this is okay.
It helps me reframe experience. I don’t see anything that’s happening quite the same as I’ve ever seen it before, because my viewpoint has been enlarged. There’s more, there’s peace, there’s joy, there’s love, there’s health, there’s everything.
- Layne Young, artist, Salem, Oregon
Living from the Heart
June 29 2010
What does it mean to live from the heart?
Not as an intellectual exercise — but as a day-to-day reality?
Society teaches us to live from our minds. Problem-solving, thinking things through, figuring things out — it’s all about what happens in the mind. From school on into careers and even relationships, we’re taught that what’s important is being rational and logical and knowing what to do.
From that perspective, living from the heart feels vulnerable and unsafe. In fact, if you’re like many of my clients, you’ve spent most of your life constructing defenses, protecting your heart from the outside world.
Unfortunately, you can’t build those defenses selectively — it’s simply not possible. In protecting your heart from the people and situations who have hurt you over the years, you also cut your heart off from connecting with the people you love — and from yourself.
Living from the heart means opening your heart. It means allowing those defenses to fall away.
That may sound frightening. And in the process there are often many emotions, sometimes quite painful, that arise and need to be allowed to release. Yet as one of my clients describes, the ultimate experience is liberating. “It’s empowering. The strength of vulnerability is amazing. The ability to make true connections with other people is beautiful!”
Even more than that, though, is how it enables your intimate connection with life itself.
“When I move into my heart,” writes a client, “the world becomes richer, more accessible, more beautiful. In connecting with myself, I become connected with all of life in a way I’d never imagined. And even in times of sadness or pain, the sense of connection with myself means there’s always a feeling of stability and love — as strange as that might sound.”
How can you begin to experience connection with your own heart? Here are a few approaches to try.
A brief meditation
Even if you have a regular meditation practice, when you really experience what’s happening, you may find that your meditation has been mostly in your mind. As I mentioned, in protecting your heart you hide it from yourself as well as from others.
Take a moment right now to sit quietly, with your eyes closed. Breathe naturally, and notice how the breath flows through your body.
Imagine yourself moving into the center of your chest. Feel yourself expanding into your heart. What does it feel like? Some clients tell me they experience warmth and a poignant sense of opening. Others initially find pain and sadness — the unexpressed tears or anger of a lifetime. One client says she can almost literally feel herself climbing down out of her head and moving into her heart.
Spend a few moments being with your heart, allowing yourself to feel whatever’s there.
Seeing with the heart’s eyes
The heart sees life differently from the mind.
Look around you. What do you see?
Now close your eyes for a moment and move into your heart even more deeply. Stay there, deep in your chest, as you open your eyes again.
What’s the experience of seeing from your heart?
Try looking at someone, especially someone you love, with the eyes of your heart. You may find a new depth and richness in the experience of simply seeing them.
It’s even more interesting to look at someone you don’t like from this place!
Breathe into your heart
Many people have walled themselves off from their hearts in very deep ways. If you’re feeling unable to find the connection, you’re far from alone.
In the first meditation exercise, I asked you to notice how the breath flows through your body.
Sit quietly now, with your eyes closed, and bring your attention back to your breath. For a moment or two, feel what it’s like to just breathe. Feel how something deep within you draws it in. Feel how it’s released, going forward from you.
Now locate the space in the center your chest. Can you feel your heart beating? Breathe into that space; breathe into your heartbeat. Feel the breath moving through that space, supporting your heartbeat without changing it.
As you breathe, feel your sense of self within your chest and within your heart. The experience of being in your heart is subtle; you may be overlooking it, expecting it to be bigger or more obvious.
Rest into your heart and rest into these meditations over and over again during the days and weeks to come. In time, you’ll find your connection deepening. And when you begin to feel what it’s like to be in connection instead of in separation, you’ll start seeing how your heart’s barriers might not be as necessary as you’d thought.
When your heart is walled off, it can feel like that’s the only thing that’s keeping it from being hurt, from breaking. But ultimately, the sense of isolation and disconnection that comes from keeping yourself separate from life and from yourself is far more painful.
“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” Anais Nin, 1903-1977, French author and poet
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