Hello and welcome to this heart-centered meditation.
Today we're going to focus on the heart and to do that we're going to use our breath as a gateway to feeling more into our hearts.
So why our hearts?
Our hearts are home to everything in our psyche that matters to us.
To be human,
The way our mind and our body works,
Is to best be cohered through the heart.
The heart acts like a central column that brings everything else into alignment.
When the way we orient toward ourselves,
Toward other people,
And toward the world,
Is with the intelligence of our heart,
Then our mind is calmer and our body is happier.
So our hearts hold everyone that we love.
Our passion for our work,
Our drive to live a good life and be a human who contributes to others and to society.
Our hearts hold our ambition and our aspirations for our futures.
It holds our capacity to be able to recognize when we're tired and we need to rest.
And so in many ways,
Our heart is this central organizing force for so much of our experience.
So to begin,
Let's close your eyes or bring your gaze downward.
And first I want you to bring your attention out wide to all of the sounds that are in your environment.
Tune in and listen closely to every little and big noise around you.
Bright and aware what's happening in your environment.
And then I want you to notice,
Zoom out a little bit,
How are you interacting with these sounds in your environment?
Does anything annoy you?
Is it pleasing?
Maybe you're neutral.
Maybe you're curious and kind of leaning forward about what's coming next.
So just include the wide span of your auditory field as well as your metacognition and your awareness of your own internal experience.
And just notice what's arising for a moment.
And now I'd like to shift our attention to your breath.
You can breathe normally.
You don't have to change anything about your breath.
Or if you want to slow it down and breathe more deeply,
You can do that.
Just feel for a moment this heart in your chest as you breathe.
And we're going to explore all the dimensions of the heart,
All of its layers and its wisdom.
First we're going to explore the expansive left and right movements of our heart.
So as you breathe,
Notice the way that your heart reaches out to the sides and it connects you to other people and to the world around you.
Almost like you had additional arms that could extend out from your chest and reach out to others.
Our heart is sometimes wide open and far-reaching.
And sometimes when we're hurt or we're feeling rejected,
It's the sides of our heart that kind of retract and withdraw.
So as you breathe,
Just continually feel the right and the left expansion of your heart outward and back in.
With your next breath,
Feel the way that your heart reaches up.
This is your aspiration and your hope.
So your heart soars high when you're feeling hopeful and encouraged,
When you're excited for tomorrow or for a new beginning.
Your heart can reach high all the way up into your throat and it carries out the words into the world.
Think of all the great speakers and activists and leaders who have created visions of height and life.
Sometimes they seem to nearly stand on the tips of their toes with the power of their passion.
So feel this dimension of your heart and it shows up in your own life.
What do you hope for and aspire to?
How does this carry you upward beyond what you already know?
With your next breath,
Feel the forward movement of your heart and as you breathe,
Notice this quality of our heart as it moves forward out in front of us,
As if it's sensing into what lies ahead.
So our heart has the quality of will and drive,
Of strength in what it knows and what it wants.
Feel your heart reaching out to find its way and how this capacity serves you in your own life.
Feel forward as you breathe out,
Inward as you breathe in,
Or maybe for you it's the other way around.
Both are perfect.
And as your next breath returns in,
Move back,
Back into your heart,
Back behind all of the aspirations and the forward movement.
The back of the heart is quiet,
It's still.
Here there is peace and calm.
This part of the heart is like a cave.
It's a retreat when we need to rest.
How does it feel to return here now and settle for a moment?
What is the role that rest and peace plays in your life?
And last,
With your next breath in or out,
Let's move down into our depths,
The bottoms of our hearts where the deep ocean of our own inner world lives.
Here we find our wellspring,
Our reservoir to fuel our lives.
It reaches deep into our bellies to connect us to our innermost knowing.
It's interesting how the depth of heart is the connection to our wisdom,
Down into our bellies.
It's here that our love for our children was born,
The fire for the people in the circumstances in our lives that matter most to us.
All of it springs from here.
When we really mean something,
We say that we say it from the bottom of our hearts.
And so feel your own depths for just a moment.
As you breathe in down into your belly and welcome this as an important puzzle piece to your own humanity.
I'd also like you to notice with these next few breaths,
You can use these aspects of a heart like a joystick or a gyroscope.
So you can both go forward and up at the same time.
You can lean into your drive and to your aspiration.
What is that like?
Or what's it like to move out to the left and right and down to both connect to the outside and to bring a depth from within you as you do?
Or how about resting back and being at peace while you also move forward balancing your action with calm and groundedness.
So for a few moments,
Where does your heart naturally want to go?
Let your breath just move you and follow your own intuition.
And finally,
We'll bring this to a close.
With your next breath,
Feel yourself sitting in your chair or lying in your bed or sitting on your cushion.
Notice yourself in this space that you are in.
Picture yourself wherever you are and when you're ready you can open your eyes.
