Through the heart, again and again…
Today in Yoga Teacher Training, the training I’m a part of leading, we’re moving through the hormonal energy centers in the body; the Chakras. Each day is dedicated to a different energy center, and today, we arrived at Anahata, the Heart Chakra.
Teaching the heart is one of my favorites. Why? Because my whole life, I’ve been a deep feeler. Since I was a little girl, I remember feeling things a bit deeper than others around me. This isn’t to place myself on a pedestal, it has taken me 28 years to learn how to navigate this depth in a healthy way, to learn how to swim within these waters without being taken away by the current. At times, I’ve drowned. Now, I try to take what I have learned throughout my time here on earth and tread with intention.
When we tune into the vibrancy of the heart, the place from which love flows, we stand at the bridge between earth and heaven, between the groundedness of our prayers and the breath of God. And when we stand on that bridge, it’s inevitable that we also feel love’s counterpart: suffering, greed, separation, violence, and all the heaviness that comes with being human. The heart invites us to feel it all. And from that place, an opportunity presents itself - an opportunity for gentleness, compassion, and forgiveness.
Love is the wellspring from which life flows around us. How we tune into the heart influences how the world reflects itself back to us as we walk through our human experience.
Teaching love also brings up the places where we’ve neglected to love ourselves. Tending to the fire of love within us feels more important than ever as destruction grows in the belly of greed and power. It also brought up for me how freely I give love, expecting nothing in return. An act of conscious generosity in a world that insists nothing is free. But this teaching is wrong. Love is free. Kindness is free. Compassion is free.
It begins by meeting these facets of ourselves first before we have the capacity to give them freely to the world.
The same lesson will find us through new faces until we truly learn it. This was one of the hardest for me so far, other than learning how to navigate the depth of love that resides in my heart. Learning this realm of navigation is not a one and done type of victory, it is a continuous return, again, and again - each time with greater understanding, greater love. And at times when we find ourselves returning, may we always seek to love before we seek to understand.
Speaking of…Love…it brings me to the love we really do hold for ourselves. Ah, the realm of self betrayal, a sticky one, quick- sand that is self-imposed. Often, we know better than to betray ourselves rather than to trust ourselves. I mean, isn’t this what we’ve been conditioned to believe? TO depend on anything else other than the truth of your own heart in a dance with your faith in God? I don’t have to forgive myself for loving deeply in the past where I have been hurt. I have to forgive myself for allowing complacency to become the tendrils from which that love grew.
So, for what it’s worth - this is my reminder to you: be gentle with yourself on your path of self-discovery. As you have probably heard me say before: the path of self-discovery is the adventure of a lifetime. A friend and I have said countless times, “We’re always on the same wave.” But are we? Now when I hear this I know that’s not entirely true at all. Each of our paths is different. How we handle moments of realization, grief, forgiveness, and growth is entirely unique. This is the beauty of HUMANNESS.
Don’t let fear disguised as hope take advantage of the love you so freely give. You owe it to yourself to offer forgiveness for the ways you may have unknowingly betrayed your own heart and named it something else. Take it from me, my friend.
May we keep learning to love with discernment.
May we keep meeting ourselves with tenderness.
May the heart remain the bridge through which the breath of God flows.
With great love overflowing from the center,
— T
