yoga at home

I fell in love once, so deeply in ‘love’. Every part of my body surged with energy. My hands shook. My heart trembled. My body burst into a million stars that lighted up my sky. I dreamed of a future, one I never knew I even wanted. My mind, almost all day, every day was sick with love and dreams. Fragmented, I flowed with these overwhelming feelings in an ocean that embraced me in its watery swells. I had met a man. I fell fast, and I fell HARD.

We walked along the canal in Venice, little twinkles of light bounced of the tiny waves of water lapping against the cement sides of the canal, little angels blessing us. The sound of the waves of the Pacific mingled with laughter and chatter making beautiful music.

It was a dream…that soon became a nightmare, because I drowned. I had actually been drowning the entire time, I just could not see it. I drowned in the darkness that inevitably followed my sweet dream, that sucked the light and life out of my stars, into a black void, my horizon was again pitch.

It has happened to us all hasn’t it? Heartbreak. Still to this day I have an old kind of ache in my heart when I think about it. How it affected my body, my heart was ripped out of my chest when it ended (all three or five times, we couldn’t manage to establish good boundaries, but that is another blog post).

When this happens, we always interrogate ourselves with a mountain of questions – If only things had gone a different way, then I would be satisfied. If only I had done this, or said that, then he/she would not have left. Rubbish, and we know where rubbish goes; in the recycling. That is the egos trick isn’t it? Looking for satisfaction, looking for love, as if it can only be gotten from outside ourselves.

Truth be told it took years to recover from that relationship. In fact I only just recovered, and at the expense of another relationship. Which its failing, I have blamed myself for, and my inability to let go of the past, even though I wanted to and made it a priority to do so. I know both notions are not rooted in truth, or a perspective that will yield nurturing results.

Even though this person has been in my life, a good friend, there was this weight and sadness that lived among the perfect tranquility of an innocent friendship, but it only lived within me, and had nothing to do with our past. But I did something, as I do with all my relationships. I used it to love myself more, to expand my experience of myself, and my strength, and to learn. To heal the separation from the communication and love of my soul. When someone pushes me away, there is one place I will go. To myself. I sit, pray, meditate, and chant. I do whatever I need to use that experience to:

• Learn strength and compassion. To grow stronger with each disappointment. To face it with love for myself and the other person.
• Burn baby burn. My karma.
• To be thankful I even got to feel that way once, twice. Whatever it was, however it was, whomever it was. To remember how beautiful our emotions are. That we must take them all, accept them all, and use them.

Write a song, a book, paint a painting, take a photograph. Take your sorrow and throw it to the wind, let the sun soak it up and turn it into a flower. It’s energy. Be a magician.

Stifling and burying emotion under layers of resentment is a symbolic death of the heart. It blackens and burns it until it eats away at itself, it cries in its cage and weeps to be let free. The heart begs for love, for recognition, and for warm tenderness. Sometimes it is hard to even know how to shower love on ourselves. How can we create that energy if we are so low. Luckily, I have yoga and meditation.

It is possible to give yourself this love and tenderness, any time you are in need of it. And a beautiful thing is, you’re not going anywhere. You will always be your own best friend, and your greatest lover.

Our class of the month, all about using that ache of love, to connect with ourselves, and all that is, because all that is, is divine.

Some science…

The heart is a wielder of cosmic energy. The electrical component of our heart’s electromagnetic field is 60 times greater in amplitude then the brain and it permeates every cell of our body. The magnetic component of the heart’s electromagnetic field is approximately 5000 times stronger than our brain and the magnetic field can be detected several feet away from our body. A neural communication network links our heart to our brain and body and it is this network from which the heart communicates information to the brain and throughout the body via the electromagnetic field interactions. It is the heart that generates our body’s most powerful and most extensive rhythmic electromagnetic field.

Our emotional state is communicated throughout the body through the heart’s electromagnetic field. As we experience different emotions the rhythmic beating patterns of the heart change. Positive emotions of love, gratitude, and appreciation create smooth waves, ordered in coherent beating patterns. ‘Changes in the heart’s beating patterns create corresponding changes in the structure of the electromagnetic field radiated by the heart’. The rhythmic field of the heart has a powerful influence on processes throughout the body. ‘Brain rhythms naturally synchronize to the heart’s rhythmic activity, and during sustained feelings of love or appreciation, the blood pressure and respiratory rhythms, among other oscillatory systems, entrain to the heart’s rhythm.’ It is the heart that generates the pace and pulse of the rhythm of life.