Heart Centered Living: Why Should I Learn to Live from the Heart?

When I was a child, actually for the first thirty five years of my life, I had a real aversion to anything to do with the heart or whimsy.  Hearts on Valentines (or anytime, really)- ick. Mushy, gooey, sentiment- gross. Unicorns and butterflies and the Care Bears – disgusting.   It’s not that I didn’t want love, or seek love aggressively and blindly at times, but I viewed anything too vulnerable or lovey as weakness.  If you had told me I would eventually teach something called Heart Based Meditation I would have laughed you out of the room.  Love, to me, meant danger. Love meant pain. It meant opening yourself up only to have the person you trusted obliterate you. I grew up with a mother who said “I love you more than anything else in the world” and five minutes later would say, while sobbing, “You are the root of all evil and all my sadness is because of your wretched existence”.  Talk about mixed messages.  It’s why I honestly wasn’t very good at loving others for a long time, and made horrible mistakes that hurt people. It’s why I’m on my third marriage.  It’s why I swore I would never have children even though I very much wanted to be a mother.

I thought I had to shut off the deepest parts of my heart in order to be safe.

Heck, even the most surface level of my heart was a scary place to be.  Most of us struggle with feeling deficient. Feeling wrong; like we aren’t doing it right. Some of us have that feeling reinforced day after day after day during our childhood, or in the relationships we choose as adults. I thought the answer was to close my heart even more.

And then I found Ayurveda, and Heart Based Meditation, and began to see for myself that putting walls around my heart wasn’t helping me. Instead, it was creating the environment of closed off pain I was desperate to be free from.  Bit by bit, with an incredible amount of support and some very painful realizations, I began to open up again. I began to explore the facets of the heart.  I found Compassion and Forgiveness for my mother, and others who hurt me along the way. I began to truly find Acceptance for myself and my life. I began to actually be Grateful for my path. I let go of all the “shoulds” and started living a live fully Aligned with who I truly am, not who others wanted me to be. Joy came, unexpectedly and more powerful than I ever imagined. I realized that I am Invincible- not in the hokey superhero kind of way – but that it is actually possible to not only survive but thrive no matter what life throws at you. I’m now more Present to my life than I ever thought I could be; ever thought I would want to be.  I love my people well, now. I’m a true partner to my incredible husband. I am a Mom- A good one, who may not get everything right (because none of us do), but by God the cycle of abuse has been stopped.

As much as a part of me still cringes and shakes my head in disbelief when I say it…

Love heals all. Living from the Heart is actually the answer to every form of the question “How do I heal from this mental/emotional/spiritual pain?”

But… what does that mean in real life? How do we do it?  This is what we will cover in this 90 minute workshop that will briefly touch on all ten facets of the heart and give you a starting point for pursuing a life well loved.  This is also the first in an eleven part monthly workshop series- each of the following workshops will cover a particular facet of the heart and help you explore your relationship to it. You don’t have to attend this one to attend the rest, nor do you have to attend them all (though you will get the most out of it if you do!).

When: Sunday January 15th 5:00-6:30pm

Where: Online (I will email you a zoom link after you register) or in person at The Healing Center 3100 Grandview Drive Simpsonville SC

Investment: $25

Please let me know if you have any questions; I hope to see you there!