Find Your Heart

We begin our heart's training by finding the heart. Step one get yourself into a comfortable seated position that might be on the floor, that might be in a chair. Snuggle in. Big deliberate inhale and exhale. Let a (deeply exhales) happen.

Do that again. Inhale (deeply inhales), and exhale, let a (deeply exhales) happen. Let your eyes close or softly rest on a spot in front of you. Just really do your best to really feel yourself in your seat. Soft belly, easy back of the heart, let your elbows get a little heavier to have the shoulders drop a bit.

Now just so tenderly let your skull find her alignment on your spine. See if you can find that place where the skull seems to weigh less. Nice. Okay. Step two start to become aware of your breath.

To help that, tune your awareness into your left lung. With your awareness on your left lung, start to feel the inhale open and expand. Feel how the exhale softens. Feel the inflation of the inhale and the ease of the exhale. Let your attention move towards the back of your left lung maybe even the bottom of the lung just to really start to become more intimate with the landscape here.

Nice. Now move your awareness, your attention over to the right lung. The same idea feel the breath opening and feel the softening. Become aware of your ability to expand, grow, widen with the inhale, and feel your ability to soften. Become curious about spots of the lung that are less obvious like the back or the bottom.

Excellent. Now move your attention back over towards the left lung. Our third step is to start to become more aware of the physical heart something that we can all probably agree on. The physical heart tucks, snuggles into the left lung. She sits center, but she leans left.

Just now do your best. Start to see if you can hone your attention into this area slightly snuggled into the left lung. See if you can maybe start to sense your actual heart. If it would help, you might even place your right hand over where you imagine your heart to be just to see if you can feel her movement. When we tend to be more aware of the front of the body, can you become a little bit more aware of her dimensions?

Can you feel her from the back and the sides? While the physical heart is a heart that most of us can agree on it's not unusual as we become aware of this area to feel pain. Please don't be alarmed if that's occurring. It's quite normal and quite usual. These practices are designed to help relieve some of that pain.

If you're comfortable with this area, the physical heart, then you could stay here, but maybe as an exploration let's find a second possible heart. What the yogis usually refer to as the spiritual heart. So tenderly now, move your awareness please to the region of your breastbone more the center of your chest. Just see if you can become more aware of feeling the movement of your breath here. Just slightly to the right of the physical heart, more around the region of the breastbone.

These are pointers not accurate locations. Here also, please start to become more intimate with the dimension of this region. Soften a little bit behind the shoulder blades, and see if you can become aware more of a quality of spaciousness here. You're not just breathing at the front of the chest, you're really kind of aware of the back of you, the sides of you. Okay, a little softer in the jaw.

Relax the unnecessary effort you might be putting towards this. Really nice. You might feel very comfortable here. This might be more comfortable than your physical heart. As we continue our practice together, this might be from where you emanate just to add one more possible region into to your toolkit because this area also can sometimes feel painful.

For the purposes of exploration and curiosity, please now drop your awareness just below this spiritual heart more to the region of the diaphragm. We're aiming to find what our dowess friends sometimes call the true heart, what our yogi friends call the wish fulfilling tree. Just let your awareness drop down into here. Sometimes it feels like it's in the center. Sometimes it feels slightly to the left towards more in the direction of the physical heart.

Sometimes you'll know you've landed there because there'll be this sense that it's been waiting for you as if it's been hollow without you. It'll feel like you've filled a part of yourself. Just the same idea, just let you're attention rest here, and feel the movement of the breath. Again, because now we're in an area that's much less agreeable and concrete, you may or may not feel more comfortable here. You might feel less comfortable here.

Couple more moments, this region too you has a dimension. Really feel your ability to inhale here and exhale here. Beautiful and now what I'd like to ask you to do is just choose which heart feels most correct for you. Again, it might be your physical, your spiritual, or your true. Just let your attention rest there as you pay a little bit more attention to your hands now.

Last real step of setting ourselves up for success. Ensure that your hands now are open like with the palms out. Maybe that's resting on your thighs, maybe it's on your knees. Again, let the elbows get a little heavier so the shoulders relax back and down. Let your palms be open, soft.

The rumor of the hands is that they are our extensions of our heart, and so as the practices are designed to allow our heart to feel more generous, more open, more clear. We can assist that by allowing our hands to feel the same way. Let your palms feel receptive and offering. Feel the space in between the fingers. Endeavor to let your hands touch something that maybe you can't see.

Beautiful, last handful of moments here. Just rest with the quality and awareness of soft hands living, breathing heart. Beautiful, really nice. So glad to be here together. Thank you.