By: Bethanie Jones
I was speaking to a friend pretty deeply about love and life, when they say to me…”You can’t just follow your heart all the time. It just isn’t practical.”
This was some time ago and I still can’t seem to let the sentiment go. Why is it that our heart’s deepest desires are kept locked away and so far removed from the rest of our lives? When did we learn it is better to be shielded than to be vulnerable? When did we learn to stop tackling obstacles and to avoid them instead? Why are our heads and hearts so disconnected from one another, and how did the mind become the one to trust?
We do heart opening poses in yoga a lot, and for some, these are the most difficult poses of all. Most of us prefer to stay in the safe zone. We drop our head toward our chest and we walk with a hunched over back, so as not to openly expose our hearts. Constantly and subconsciously, we are always protecting the most vulnerable area of ourselves.
The heart is the center of truth. It is the place that everything real actually exists. It is the place where all the answers to our problems lie. It is from this place, that we feel. Why do faith, love and trust sometimes feel like unnatural concepts? Why do we readily dismiss anything sincere and heartfelt as overly simplistic, naïve or impractical?
As sentient beings we are blessed with layers of depth and feeling that other living things like trees and plants do not experience. We feel intimacy, eroticism, consciousness, sorrow, yearning, and excitement. These layers allow us to experience the world in the most profound ways, but these layers and feelings are most often the very things we deny and stifle the most.
What would your life look like, if you followed nothing but your heart, and kept the mind chatter out of it?
Can you close your eyes and remember a time when you felt truly alive? Were you lying on a couch, drenched in candlelight, entangled with another, feeling nothing but your breath and their hands sliding across your skin? Were you lying near the ocean, feeling its vastness, listening to the waves and looking up at the stars? Can you recall a song piercing into your soul and filling your eyes with tears?
Find what sets your soul on fire, and do more of it.
Where would you be if you let your heart lead the way?