A Meditation To Support Your Heart
If I were to be completely honest today, I would say it’s been a really painful past month. A lot of uncertainty with overwhelming amounts of guilt sprinkled throughout. My instinct (like anyone else’s) in transition is to run away…either that or go numb so meditation has been challenging. I know I am not alone in this. Friends are feeling anxious, neighbours experiencing loss and family dynamics are changing. It seems that most people are ‘in it’ right now. Working through some deeply personal stuff. For myself, it has primarily been taking on the pain of someone else, as well as guilt. Oh man, a heap load of guilt.
In these transition phases, where stability comes crashing down around you, meditation can take a back seat. Because it’s hard. Your brain is where you intellectually process all the heaviness around you. Every emotion stored in your body eventually makes its way into your head where you are then met with the lovely task of overanalyzing, dissecting & filtering through. Sitting still with all that? No thank you.
Except for that is what this life requires. That is what our hearts require. For growth and to move forward gracefully, with the least resistance possible.
When I know I’ve got some healing to do, I notice myself gravitating towards practices I feel I should be doing, instead of listening to what I need. Meditations like ‘open heart’ or ‘heal your emotional wounds’. Grieving and out of answers, we seek to repair the parts of ourselves we deem broken. We gravitate towards practices like these when we are in pain because we want to move past it, it makes sense. What I’ve come to find though, is it’s a completely backwards way of thinking. How can you possibly heal something before you’ve had a chance to digest it? To look at it where it’s at? Raw, hurting, vulnerable. Your heart is already open if you’re feeling any of those things. Maybe what your heart requires is tenderness. Though opening & healing are powerful, so powerful in fact, there is a time & a place. The prerequisite before you get there is tenderness, feeling (and knowing) that you are not alone and holding. Holding your heart where it’s at. This is not about constriction, or pushing down, shoving away –but about a softening, a gentle letting go. A holding.
In that gentleness is where the warmth seeps through.
I was quick to try and heal because holding required acknowledging the fact that I was (am) not okay. Every time I sit, I’m nervous. And then I realize that I really can take every emotion one breath at a time. Riding every single wave with one breath. And once I get past those waves, it’s quiet. And with that quiet comes relief.
A Meditation For Your Heart
Hold your heart (left hand on chest, right hand on top) & pay attention, acknowledge where it’s at simply by breathing. When you pay attention to your breath, you are setting the foundation to also pay attention to emotions that arise.
If acknowledging feels too painful, just reassure. Tell her (or him) that everything is going to be okay. Even if you don’t believe it, say it anyways. Repeat it. Hold on to it. Say it like a chant.
“Everything is going to be okay”
“Everything is going to be okay”
“Everything is going to be okay”
Until eventually, with enough practice, you start listening to what you’re telling yourself. You start to believe it. If you say it enough, your mind will start to understand. Your heart will start to feel.
In that belief, you recognize all the areas where you are not okay. Being okay with the fact that you are not okay.
And one day, you take steps to actively heal. Or you choose to simply let time pass. As the time passes, choosing to hold your heart along the way.
And it doesn’t have to be seated, take this outside if you have to. Walk. It’s a meditative motion. Just like meditation, it helps to move stagnant energy & emotions in the body.
May you be held on your way to healing.
When holding your heart feels too heavy to do on your own, look to those around you. Ask them to walk or sit with you.
Because we all deserve it. To fall apart & be picked up by love. Picked up by all those around us who want to help, who want to be there while we soothe our pain. Fall apart. And let yourself be held.